Do you have white knuckles?
How often do you find yourself holding on a little too tight? Do you have a "kung-fu grip" on your project, program, responsibilities, transformation, and/or life? In a recent exchange with colleagues, we discussed this phenomenon. Enterprise transformations have pros and cons and tendency to cause white knuckles more often than not. One of the pros is the once in a lifetime journey that these endeavors provide, and one of the cons is the once in a lifetime journey that these endeavors provide!
Enterprise transformations are launched with the goal of rebuilding companies through significant change. You might think having the right goals, organizational structure, products, feasibility to meet financial commitments, partners, go to market strategy, etc. are the key to your transformation. While all these are vitally important to the end result of the transformation, I would suggest that to truly thrive in these environments, you look inside yourself and embrace your own personal change on the following 4 levels:
- Intellectual - What is your capacity to deal with complexity, unexpected challenges, first of a kind problems, thinking on your feet, etc.?
- Physical - Quite simply, how healthy are you?
- Emotional - How do you deal with adversity, ambiguity, self-confidence, self-doubt, self-awareness, conflict?
- Spiritual - What do you believe? Who do you believe in? What are your life philosophies? From where do you draw energy?
Do you know if you are holding on too tight? How? Do you know when you are squeezing the life out of your project, program, teammates, friends, family? Enterprise transformations will undoubtedly challenge your capacity across these 4 personal levels. What investments will you make to change your intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual capacity?
If this resonates with you, you may want to check out Noel Tichy's famous book "The Leadership Engine". In this book he describes that each of us lead based on three concepts: Ideas, Values, and E3 (emotional energy, & edge). Noel's model is very useful, and put into practice can help you understand your personal leadership model, which in turn will help you navigate the intellectual, physical, emotional, and spiritual growth offered via enterprise transformations.
No matter what leadership model, or personalization you inject into your enterprise transformation, recall that it is unacceptable for any one person in a transformation to acknowledge that the enterprise is undergoing drastic change, but not them personally.
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