Leadership Soapbox – 5 Points of Leadership Case Study

Thursday September 24, 2020

A case study on how a business used the 5 points of crisis leadership

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hi, my name is Neil Poynter, and welcome to this video from the Leadership Soapbox.

What I want to do in this video is something a bit different. I want to give you a case study from an organization that I’ve been involved with over a number of years now, and that has gone through a very specific change program. And I want to talk about it in the context of the five points that I did in my video about what leaders should be doing now.

And the reason I particularly want to do this is I think it exemplifies the importance of a number of the points in that video. And so I’m just going to walk you through those five points and talk in general terms about what this organization did.

So if you remember that video, the first point was about understanding the situation.

And I talked about understanding being not only having the insight about what is happening and why it’s happened but what it means going forward.

So this is how this all started, and the MD of this particular organization was paying particular attention to an area of his business and what was going on in his marketplace. And he saw a very very clear threat on the horizon that was coming towards them from a competitor. And he saw it and was able because of his ability to work through the figures, et cetera, to predict the impact that it would have.

Now, this led him to the conclusion that something had to change, that he had to do something differently within his organization. But here’s the point. If he didn’t have such a thorough understanding of his environment, of the context, of the situation and what that might’ve meant going forward, he wouldn’t have been able to make the decisions.

So, that point one in that other video about understanding your situation, and this is absolutely critical in this case study.

Now, once that understanding was clear, he was able to move through, get with some useful people, some people who knew what they were talking about and make some really good decisions and plans about what needed to happen and what needed to change in the organization. So the decisions and plans were made that was point two.

Point three was about engagement and motivation.

Now, a huge effort went into publicizing, why the organization needed to change. What was the impetus? What was it that was so potentially threatening that meant this organization needed to change?

And so a lot of effort went into that third point about engagement, engagement and motivation to change, to follow through on the plans and decisions.

Now then we went into stage four, which was the delivery and execution of that change. And again, monitoring and I made the point in the previous video about the importance of monitoring.

There were special meetings set up, there were special sessions, there were special ways of reporting all to do with making sure that these plans and decisions were being pushed through.

Now, if you remember, the final point was about constant review and this being a circular process that people went round in terms of understanding the situation, if you like overall, then the decision making and planning, then there was the engagement, then there was the delivery and execution and this constant flow around all three.

Now, this is what this organization has done. And indeed what it’s seeing now is that because of the changes that it went through, it actually has survived and positively thriving this year in the COVID environment, because the culture that’s been put in place in the organization now is one that has been much more able to deal with what has gone on.

Now, if you’d like to know more about that and perhaps how that impacts or could impact on your organization, please drop me an email and let’s have that conversation and let’s start talking about it.

Thanks very much.

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