EMPOWER YOUR ORGANIZATION'S GROWTH CAPABILITY
FOCUS AREAS
Nine focus areas to empower your growth capability
Build long-term value and healthy, enduring growth by focusing on the areas that matter most
The nine focus areas describe the organizational characteristics that are common to organizations that have succeeded in building long-term value and healthy enduring growth. The nine focus areas suggest what organisations can do to cultivate, nurture, and enhance these characteristics and to help organizations emphasize them. The focus areas also build a common language and a framework for empowering the capacity for growth and innovation, and help organizations focus on what has the greatest impact.
Build a common language and a deep understanding of what your organization can become
”When action and values align, great things happen”
Purpose-driven
BUILD SUSTAINED ENGAGEMENT, BY CONNECTING PEOPLE WITH A SENSE OF HIGER PURPOSE AND A CLEAR AND MEANINGFUL "WHY".
A higher purpose is not about economic exchanges. It reflects something more aspirational. It explains how the people involved in an organization are making a difference, it gives them a sense of meaning and gains their support. A purpose extended into the core of an organization, adding meaning to the day-to-day experience of their participants. It’s also the key to building an empathetic organization.
In a purpose-driven organization shared values and purpose guide participation and these values— more so than arbitrary geographical locations or hierarchical positions— help determine the organization's boundaries and conditions of participation and are instrumental in defining the conditions for an organization's success or failure. While core values are clear, they are also subject to continual revision and critique.
In a purpose-driven organization people bring their intelligence and creativity to their jobs. They are performing up to their potential and constitute a more committed workforce.
Organizations that are purpose-driven experience an increase in employee engagement and find it easier to attract both new talent and customers.
”Always put yourself in the shoes of the customer and minimize customer effort while maximizing customer value”
Customer Centricity
PUT CUSTOMER AT THE CENTRE OF DESIGN THINKING AND DEVELOPMENT OF PRODUCTS, PROCESSES AND DECISIONS.
Organizations that put the customer at the heart of their organization create a culture around the customer and their needs. This commitment to delivering customer value is both genuine and passionate. They truly believe that the customer comes first and try to see the world through the eyes of the customer (and walk in theirs shoes). organization. They don’t primarily focus on how much they can extract from the customers, but instead they focus on how much value they can provide back to the customer during their lifetime.
Everyone, regardless of position in the organization, focuses on customer experience where the customer can be found both internally and externally.
There is an understanding of the entire customer process, and the customer's life cycle and departments and teams work together to create a seamless customer experience,.
The organization constantly focuses on improving the value delivered to the customer and the customer's experience of this. They use customer data to capture customer insights and share this across the organization.
Companies that are evolving to be more Customer Centric are also experiencing an increase in customer lifetime value (CLV).
”Test fast, Learn fast, Scale fast”
Transformation of Work
THE ABILITY TO EXPERIMENT AND TRANSFORM WHAT WORK IS AND HOW IT GETS DONE BY USING NEW TOOLS, TECHNOLOGY AND NEW BUSINESS MODELS
To remain competitive, companies need to ensure that they have a robust future-of-work transformation strategy that starts with the mindsets and actions of leadership.
An organization that has a transformation of work strategy actively explores new and innovative ways of doing business (i.e. delivering even more value to customers) and continuously develops new business models. They are good at quickly adapting and developing working methods to align with new business models. They prioritize and focus on what provides most value and become better at opting out.
The leaders are sensitive to suggestions about how to improve the way of working and are willing to experiment and learn from success and failure. The employees are encouraged to think outside the box, to try new ways of working and to use new tools and technology.
Companies that have a robust future-of-work transformation strategy develop an increased ability to find new innovative ways of working in order to deliver even more customer value. They also experience an increase in employee and customer experience.
”Going digital is not just building a spaceship, but taking it all the way to the moon”
Technology Adoption
THE ABILITY TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF OPPORTUNITIES OFFERED BY NEW TECHNOLOGY: DIGITAL MATURITY
Technology adoption refers to the acceptance, integration and use of new technology. Corporations need to fundamentally rethink their organizational setup and embed digital into their DNA in order to remain competitive and reap the benefits of emerging technological opportunities.
The goal that drives the organization’s strategy regarding new technology must be more than simply achieving a high ROI on the software investment. It’s about using technology to get ahead of competitors and to ensure that the technology is used to its fullest extent extent while minimizing the demands on users.
In order to reach a high adoption rate and speed, it is crucial to develop the company’s digital literacy. And whenever an organization introduces a new technology it must take into account that not all employees are the same. In order to gain the maximum benefit from the technology, it has to customize its launch approach to suit the different types of employees in the organization.
Organizations that know how to drive technology adoption achieve a state in which the tools are used as intended, in new innovative ways and to their fullest extent.
”When you thrive on change and get stronger it becomes a source of real competitive advantage - That’s what we call agility!”
Organise for agility
ORGANIZE FOR AUTONOMOUS TEAMS THAT ARE NIMBLE, HAVE MANDATE TO MAKE DECISIONS AND THE ABILITY TO SOLVE COMPLEX PROBLEMS.
Agility is the ability of an organization to renew itself, adapt, change quickly and succeed in a rapidly changing, ambiguous, turbulent environment. Agility focuses on making organizations more nimble, responsive, and adaptable to uncertainties, rather than honing their tired and obsolete techniques for predicting and controlling the unknown.
Organizational agility needs dynamic capability, the ability to move fast, nimbleness and responsiveness but also a stable foundation—a platform to build upon. Agility requires less control, fewer structures, processes, rules etc. Instead, it needs stable backbone with a clear purpose.
Organizational agility means that the work is driven forward by those who know and who can (i.e., the performers/practitioners rather than the managers or top management) and that the focus is on simplicity instead of complex solutions.
The team can decide how to organize themselves, and who in the team performs which tasks. The team is responsible for ensuring that everyone's skills and potential are used to create the best possible outcomes. When organizing for agility decision-making is pushed lower down in the organization taking place at all levels and rarely needing to be escalated to the top of the organization. The decision-making process is transparent and creates participation and commitment.
Organizational agility also means that the organization does not always stick to the long-term static plans, but is constantly prepared to reconsider and change plans and decisions by testing, learning and modifying (instead of planning, delegating/prescribing and executing)
By organizing into cross-functional teams a greater customer understanding is also created throughout the organization. By collaborating across departmental boundaries, an understanding and knowledge of the entire customer process and the customer's lifecycle is created.
Companies that organize for agility can deliver value faster to the customer, while achieving high-performance operation and a more engaged workforce in a rapidly changing world.
”Collaborating and finding the answers together is clearly a better strategy than struggling alone in the face of information abundance ”
Intentionally collaborative
DESIGNING HOW TO WORK TOGETHER IN SYNC ACROSS TEAMS, FUNCTIONS, BUSINESS UNITS AND BEYOND THE ORGANIZATION
In order to contribute to building value employees and leaders must connect more purposefully, both within the organization and beyond its boundaries. Participants believe that joint work produces better (more effective, more sustainable) outcomes, and specifically seek to involve others in their efforts. People tend to work collaboratively from the outset, rather than "adding collaboration" after they've each completed their individual work components.
Guidelines for participation are clear, widely available and acknowledged, allowing the constructive inclusion of diverse perspectives. Organizations must go beyond a systematic approach to create diversity, inclusion and counteracting intentional and unintentional discrimination, bias and prejudice and put focus on enabling equality, promoting openness and fostering belonging.
Digital platforms change collaboration by providing two key capabilities: managing networks and sharing digital content. Benefits of collaboration include transactive memory (transparency and permanence of content) and collective intelligence (better decision-making).
By engaging in intentional collaboration an organization's content and knowledge become more broadly accessible, the awareness of “who knows what” increases and the organization's collective intelligence quotient rises. Engaging in intentional collaboration is a key characteristic of digitally maturing organizations.
”Open leadership is the fuel for creating truly innovative and resilient organizations and propelling them confidently into the future”
Open leadership
LEADERS EMBRACE OPEN PRINCIPLES AND WORKING TO INSPIRE, GUIDE AND ASSIST OTHERS, AND BELIVE IN AND WORK FOR A TRUST-BASED LEADERSHIP.
Open leaders embrace open principles such as transparency, inclusivity, and community when working to inspire, guide, or assist others. Open leaders tend to be transparent about both their goals and constraints, sharing data and resources as widely and thoroughly as possible. Open leaders are honest about the problems they face, the worries they carry, and the limits they possess – because, in the end, the problems leaders s face are the problems everyone faces. The attitude of open leaders is that shared knowledge brings success.
Open leaders link people both to each other and to a larger, shared picture in order to help people understand how they can contribute to a collective effort in meaningful way. They have a philosophy that everyone wins when they enable one another to achieve shared goals and purpose. An open leader aligns passion with purpose, and action with vision.
Open leaders believe that everyone has something special to contribute and that everyone is capable of learning and growing. They are open to giving and receiving feedback and actively work to ensure that feedback loops genuinely and materially impact the way people operate. They not only welcome diverse points of view but also implement specific mechanisms for inviting multiple perspectives into dialog wherever and whenever possible.
Companies that embrace Open leadership experience an increase in the number of people who are of innovative and passionate about their work and who bring out the best in one another.
”A growth mindset has a remarkable impact on performance and learning”
Growth Mindset
THE BELIEF THAT IT'S POSSIBLE FOR ANYONE TO LEARN, DEVELOP, AND GROW, AS WELL AS FOCUS ON SEEING OPPORTUNITIES INSTEAD OF PROBLEM
A growth mindset means seeing skills as things that can be improved with effort. A growth mindset thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as an encouraging springboard for growth and stretching our existing ability. With just a change in mindset, employees can become more engaged, more primed to spot opportunities, and more resilient in the face of change, which has a remarkable impact on performance and learning.
Shared values and public goals that connect people with a sense of higher purpose are crucial to building sustained engagement and a culture of growth mindset. There are processes for collective problem solving, collaborative decision making, and continuous learning in place.
The organization rewards both personal and team learning to reinforce a growth mindset.
Companies that embrace a growth mindset experience remarkable impact on performance, learning and employee engagement. They also have happier employees and a more innovative, risk-taking culture.
”Learning must go beyond training. It's about finding and seeking learning in nearly everything – being in a constant state of growth”
Continual learning
DYNAMIC SKILL BILDNING LINKED TO BUSINESS GOALS. FLEXIBILITY IN HOW AND WHEN LEARNING OCCURS, USING BOTH FORMAL AND INFORMAL LEARNING AS WELL AS LEARNING IN THE WORKFLOW.
In order to build a capability and a culture of continual learning, learning must extend beyond formal training programs, and learning plans need to be embedded into the workflow. There must be opportunities for employees to learn and to help others learn in both everyday work and outside the workplace. The capacity to learn and to help others learn is seen as a strategic skill.
Continual learning is an inherent part of the way a business is run. Business goals are linked to necessary skills and an actionable plan how to support them. Planned training programs are aligned with the needed strategical skills.
Both informal and formal learning take advantage of new tools and technology.
Companies that embrace continual learning become better at critical thinking and adapting to change, and the workforce becomes more high-performing and aligned with the company’s goals and overall purpose.
Culture, people, way of working and technology are the real keys to digital transformation
The nine focus areas embrace all of these and connect them to each other
Culture, people, way of working and technology have always been the special ingredients for all digital and IT-enabled change. You can’t change technology without changing people. Technology and culture change go hand in hand. In higher-performing organizations, cultural change, and technological change are orchestrated together.
The nine focus area together embrace culture, people, way of working and technology, and connect them to each other. The focus areas all have an impact on each other and are mutual dependent.
How to turn vision into breakthrough growth
Develop an actionable vision of what the organization should be - and form a concrete plan to bring it this about.
With Spry Growth Loop you will receive framework, a toolkit and a structured process to build a long-term sustained growth capability. You will discover and explore a growth framework covering the nine focus areas, explore your organization's current status in all areas, develop and deploy an actionable vision of what the organisation should be - and form a concrete plan to bring this about.
