In this week’s Asking for a Friend, I talk with Meredith Elliott Powell, Author of Thrive– Turning Uncertainty to a Competitive Advantage.  Meredith offers practical approaches to help your team prepare for an uncertain future.

The Skeptic Model for Helping Your Team Prepare For an Uncertain Future

I love her Skeptic model to help your team think through future scenarios for dealing with uncertainty and change.

Consider what is happening in the following areas:

Fun Side Note

I got to know Meredith when we were on a philanthropic speaking tour in Southeast Asia with Together We Can Change the World.

This is the organization that we partner with to build our clean water Winning Wells in Cambodia.

I’d love to hear from you. How do you help your team prepare for an uncertain future?

Related Articles

7 Ways to Help Your Team  Deal with Ambiguity

How to Help Your Team Navigate the Chaos

4 Strategic Questions to Have With Your Team Before Year End

The post How Do I Prepare My Team for an Uncertain Future? (Video Interview) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

And yet, it can all feel like a lot. Where do you start?

Use This Strategic Planning Conversation Starter To Get Your Team Talking

Focus on the 5 Cs

Today we’re sharing a tool we use in our leadership programs to help leaders think strategically about their business and prioritize the next steps. You can download it for free here to assist with your strategic planning conversations.

1. To start, give each member of your team a copy of the 5Cs assessment in advance of your strategic planning session.
2. Then take each of the five categories and calibrate your individual assessments around the five strategic areas.
   • Clarity: We know where we’re going and how we will get there.
   • Capacity: We invest in building our people, systems, and tools.
   • Commitment: We keep our promises.
   • Curiosity: We ask great questions and take appropriate risks.
   • Connection: We trust one another and invest in our mutual success.
3. You’ll likely come up with more strategic areas to focus on than time to address them. Here’s where the prioritization comes in. Consider what will have the biggest strategic impact and focus your planning there.

Let’s Grow Leaders 5 Cs Strategic Planning Tool

This strategic planning tool is just the beginning of the conversation. We’d love to talk with you more about your planning efforts and how we might help. Just give us a call at 443-750-1249 or drop us a note at karin.hurt@letsgrowleaders.com.

See Also:

End of Year Meetings: How to Make Yours Remarkable

Own the U.G.L.Y. Four Strategic Conversations to Have by Year End

Virtual Kick-Off Meeting: Why You Should Have One and How to Make it Great

How to Cultivate More Solutions-Oriented Employees

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Our Own the U.G.L.Y. strategic conversation process helps your team have the tough conversations they’re longing to have; to stare squarely in the face of what’s not working and generate new ideas for a brighter, bolder future.

Own the Ugly: A Powerful Example

The other day I was facilitating a 2-day offsite strategic planning retreat for one of my start-up clients.

We used the Own the U.G.L.Y. strategic conversation process to encourage people to share their strategic ideas.

Within 60 seconds of the first rotation talking about G- What’s Gotta Go, one group listed every “efficiency” tool their company was using to make “work easier” and then created two columns on their easel sheet–a  “should it stay or should it go” vote.

Everyone who rotated through their station got a vote and indicated what workgroup they were in. By the end of the session over half of the tools were “voted off the island.” The COO raised his eyebrows, but took the lead in initiating a curiosity conversation.

What they found was that the tools they had selected one at a time for good reasons all made sense, but the requirements to keep everything up to date were driving people crazy.

I’m convinced that this 40-minute conversation will save them thousands of hours of frustration next year.

“Why didn’t you raise this before?” Well, “No one asked.”

Own the Ugly. Make it safe to talk about what’s not working. It’s getting talked about somewhere. Best to lift it up, stare at it, vent if needed, and then figure out what must happen next.

Teams admire managers who “Own the Ugly.” Winning Well managers have the confidence and humility to have more strategic conversations about what’s not working. Start the conversation, and then listen deeply to the solutions.

4 Strategic Conversations to Have With Your Team

Here are four strategic conversations to have with your team.

U– What are we Underestimating?

Competitive pressures? New technology? Risk?  The destruction that the new manager is doing to our culture? The opportunity that we “don’t have time for?

G– What’s Gotta Go?

What are we doing now that doesn’t make sense anymore? What processes are more habit than value? What meetings are wasting our time? What’s gotta go for us to be remarkable?

L– Where are we Losing?

Where are we still under-performing despite our best efforts? Why? Who’s doing it better? How?

Y– Where are we missing the Yes?

What must we say “Yes” to in the coming year? What new opportunities are yearning for our attention? Where must we invest more deeply?

click image to download this tool

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I’ve been intrigued by the unleashing approach described in the new white paper, Unleashing the Future of Work.

This highly collaborative methodology empowers teams to dig deeper for answers– working together to find synergistic solutions.

“The cornerstone of Unleashing™ is emphasizing the journey as an essential change and learning process rather than simply devising and implementing a solution. For it is through this journey that individuals learn and develop their ability to think strategically, collaborate and take action. This approach aims to engage and stimulate people as they go along, creating self-efficacy, empowerment and commitment in the individuals and teams. Its focus is both on the organisation as a whole and on the individuals.”

Unleashing Framework

The research-based unleashing approach, is closely aligned with the philosophical approach we’ve been discussing in our LGL community. For example:

• “Purpose as basis for strategy” vs. “Shareholder value as basis for strategy” (and driving shareholder value in the process)
• “Shared strategic direction” vs. “Strategic planning”
• “Adaptive strategy execution” vs. “Strategy implementation”
• “Learning through action” vs. “Classroom training”
• “Process innovation” vs. “Process optimization”
• “Mentoring, self-directed career development” vs. “Metrics-based performance management”

I asked white paper co-author, Therese Kinal, about the inspiration for their research:

“My co-founders Robert Thong, Corrina Kane and I realized that traditional approaches to Management weren’t working anymore and our industry was doing as much harm as it was good. In many organisations innovation was dead and employees had little or no understanding of their company’s strategy and they certainly didn’t feel personal ownership and excitement about making it happen. Companies had tried to solve this through structural changes, sending their people on leadership development training or hiring innovation firms to do it for them. Consultants were forcing through simplistic solutions to complex problems.”

If you’re looking for creative ways to unleash the powerful potential of your team, it’s worth a read. Share your comments and insights with the LGL community.

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