What 2025 looks like
Get your kids into genetics, robotics and cyber security – that’s where the future lies according to an expert on the radio the other day. Given the huge pressure on infrastructure I would add civil engineering to that list.
A customer recently asked me what 2025 will look like, as if I have any idea. After a short conversation we concluded that the construction industry will still be digging holes, pouring concrete and laying black top, much as it has done in the last forty years of my experience.
Truth is I don’t know what 2025 will look like, though I definitely know what I am working on as a coach in the next ten years. My focus is on leadership, management and team working. These are massive subjects in their own right though I have a narrow focus on each. If I can help my customers establish some world class basics in each of these three areas I know it will make a big difference.
So this is my 2025 vision for the organisations I serve.
Leadership – There is clarity on mission, why the organisation exists. The leader has an inspiring vision of where the organisation needs to be in five years’ time. The values are lived across the whole organisation and are guiding decisions, actions and behaviours. The leader has a strategy, a high level plan to get from here to the vision and is able to effect change. I think mission, vision, values, strategy and bringing about change are the world class basics necessary to create the environment for success which is the art of leadership. I used to think leadership was about having a big personality and while that may help, without these basics there will be a lack of direction and lots of ‘noise’
I am less interested in the science of management though there are a few basics that my customers have worked on and which now help with the effective running of their organisation. Firstly, their meetings are short, to the point, energetic and very effective – they are the occasion where people get together on purpose and collectively make things happen. A far cry from the disorganised and overlong affairs of 2015. Secondly, managers now effectively delegate the outcomes that need to be delivered and are free to ‘manage’ rather than ‘do’ all the time. World class meetings and delegation have transformed day to day running of the business from stop, start, wait, rushing around like headless chickens to ‘flow’ – things just seem to happen.
Team working – success is even more reliant on people working across the boundaries of companies, geography and culture and while they are digitally networked there is a deep understanding of the need to work ‘on’ the team rather than simply ‘in’ it. Most big projects and frameworks are delivered by joint ventures with key people spread across the nation and increasingly around the world therefore most teams are virtual teams. My work builds relationships with the key players and brings about common purpose, continually refreshed alignment and an intense focus and follow-through on what needs to happen to move from current location to delivery of success. World class relationships, alignment, focus and follow-through are the team basics now demanded by my customers. Back in 2016 the industry assumption was ‘throw them all together and they will sort it out and if they don’t, then there is always the contract’. My customers were already better than that and have since jumped even further ahead of the pack.
These leadership, management and team-working world class basics combine to transform organisational performance and results. There are many more things to work on though I believe these offer a solid route to success; I would bet my mortgage on it, indeed I do every day.
If you are reading this and are thinking “my organisation could do with a bit of that” I ought to let you know I am full up for 2016 and the early part of 2017 though that still leaves time up to 2025 so give me a call and we can at least have an early conversation about your way forward.