There’s no video ref in business. Or is there?
In professional sport these days the umpire or referee repeatedly refers to the video replay. In tennis this is to challenge a line call, in football it can be to confirm an offside, in rugby a try.
The professional tennis player can challenge a line call and have a ruling made. In your business are players able to challenge? For example, does your executive team challenge each other in a healthy way? Do they challenge the organisation’s values and purpose? How often does the CEO ask the team to challenge his/her decisions?
Line Challenges from the Players are important
A Board of Directors can sometimes act as the video ref, observing from a ‘helicopter view’. But the line challenge from the player who’s on the court, holding the racquet, taking the shots, sweating it out, is equally important. They have the ‘feel’ of the game and the shot, and know when a call doesn’t feel right.
Have you challenged your Values lately?
As an organisation grows and changes over time. It can be a beneficial exercise to revisit organizational values with the senior management team to re-align and ‘operationalise’ them. For example, those managing recruitment should be hiring (and firing) based on those values, but if they are not part of the selection criteria then are those values really relevant?
Brene Brown (Dare to Lead) tells us that only 10% of companies actually operationalize their values. That is, they turn them into behaviours, train their people and hold them accountable. She goes on to say, that without taking the time to translate them from ideals into behaviours they might as well be on the wall as a cat poster!
Invite line challenges from your team
If your organisation is aiming for excellence, be open for the occasional line call to be challenged. Welcome it by establishing regular opportunities for the executive team to challenge and realign organisational values with behaviours.