What We’ve Done So Far

Let’s start by going back to each pillar of Conscious Capitalism covered earlier and recall what you or your team have identified as the highest-priority actions or initiatives with the most impact. If you have been doing the exercises in the book, you should go back and review your work in each chapter. For each pillar, capture the top three or four action items that you have developed. It is our experience that this is a very powerful exercise for your team, both in looking at the areas for development in each pillar and in building alignment on what is the highest priority area for each pillar. Figure 18-1 will help you compile all these ideas and initiatives together on one page.

Your Top-Ten List

Having listed twelve to sixteen potential action items, you can next prioritize these actions according to potential impact—a top-ten list of initiatives that you will address over the next three years—by doing the following exercise.

The following prioritization techniques ensure that everyone has a chance to add his or perspective to the list of priorities. First, use a whiteboard or flip chart to list all the action items identified in figure 18-1, by pillar. You can set up the chart like figure 18-2 (we’ll explain the last column later).

Next, hand out dot stickers or small sticky notes (four for each participant), which people will use to vote with. Have all the team members go to the flip chart or whiteboard and place their four markers next to the four items that they consider the organization’s highest priority. Try to avoid having each individual voting one at a time; it is a group exercise whose goal is to see what the whole team thinks, not how one individual (including the leader) thinks. We suggest that the leader be the last person to vote to avoid unduly influencing the choices of the other team members. At the end of this exercise, the highest vote initiatives will usually be obvious by the number of stickers (votes) each received. Typically, a handful (three to five) initiatives will clearly be agreed to by most; these are the highest priorities and should be added to the top of your top-ten list (figure 18-3). Then there is usually a second group with several votes but no broad support and, finally, a number of initiatives that have one or no votes.

Remove the clearly agreed-to items from the main list (they are on your new top-ten list). Now do a second round of voting with everyone having three votes this time. Everyone chooses three top priorities from the remaining list and places their sticky notes or dots beside these choices. Review the second round of voting, and discuss as a team the remaining priorities. Transfer to the top-ten list the new “prioritized” initiatives from the second round. Do this until you have ten top priorities. If a third round is necessary, give each team member only two votes. The goal here is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Get this list to the 80 percent level of team agreement, and then move on to the next exercise.

Further Prioritizing Actions: The Vital First Few

We are now going to do a further sorting of priorities by balancing business impact and the effort or resources required to execute the initiative. Inevitably, there will be excitement at this stage about moving forward with several initiatives. However, as stated earlier, finishing a few key initiatives is better than starting many and finishing few. The team should consider the resources that might need to be shifted and should work on these priority initiatives. Because these resources are limited, it is important to get a rough sense of your organization’s available resources for change. To do this, you can organize your top-ten list into a two-by-two matrix (figure 18-4).

Source: Adapted from Alex Lowy and Phil Hood, The Power of the 2 × 2 Matrix: Using 2 × 2 Thinking to Solve Business Problems and Make Better Decisions (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010).

You’ll now compare the estimated resources required to execute this initiative and its potential impact on your business. The vertical axis depicts business impact, and the horizontal axis roughly represents the level of resources or effort required. At this point, you don’t need to be precise about estimating the resources. Think in terms of a high, medium, or low level of resources relative to the size of your organization. What might take three or four people would be a high-resource requirement in a startup but might be a low-resource requirement in a larger organization. Review this prioritization matrix as a team, and decide roughly what you mean by impact and resource level. Now take your top-ten list, and, one initiative at a time, starting at number one, place your initiatives in the matrix. Using the prioritization matrix diagram, you can identify four groups of initiatives (figure 18-5):

With this priority matrix in hand, we will now develop a phased approach to our execution plan.

A Phased Approach

You have created a top-ten list and prioritized it in terms of impact and resources required. In this section, we will create a phased approach to executing these initiatives. We will seek to ensure that you have clear focus in the short term and a road map that reaches out twenty-four to thirty-six months. Although you want to be practical and take one step at a time on this journey, you also need a map of what comes next and why. For this reason, think in terms of what you can accomplish in three phases: within six to twelve months (phase 1), within twelve to twenty-four months (phase 2), and within thirty-six months (phase 3).

Your goal is to make sure that you have focused on one or two high-impact items for the next six to twelve months (phase 1) and perhaps one or two smaller, evolutionary initiatives that can be done with few resources or that can be added to programs already in process.

Go to your priority matrix in figure 18-5, and answer the following questions with your team:

•   Which items can you work on immediately and will have the highest impact on your business—the “one big thing”—over the next six to twelve months?
•   Which items will take longer to get started and may require more advanced planning before you can address them?
•   Which items do you see as being important and having an impact but will take a couple of years for the organization to be ready to address them?

These answers guide your decision on what you’ll do in phase 1 (6 to 12 months); phase 2 (12 to 24 months); and phase 3 (36 months and beyond). Use the chart in figure 18-6 to help you see the overall time frame of your transformation to a conscious company, and then answer the questions below.

The goal in this exercise was about focus and impact. Often people struggle with where to start on the journey to Conscious Capitalism. Hopefully, you and your team now have clearer answers to the question “What are the few things that, if done well, would make the biggest difference to your business?”

Action Plans and Initiative Teams

After deciding on your phase 1 initiatives, focus on moving from high-level intentions to an action plan that is concrete, with actual time commitments, resource requirements, and clear next steps. Figure 18-7 is an illustration of what a good initiative plan includes.

This exercise should be done with your team. The goal is to keep it simple, yet at the same time to have enough detail around the action plan that it is clear who is accountable for what and when. Take your first item in phase 1, and fill in the action plan. Repeat this process for your next two items in phase 1. This is basically the team charter or starting point you will use to launch the teams that are responsible for executing on these initiatives.

In our experience, it is best to appoint one or two members of the executive leadership team to be the champions of each of these phase 1 initiatives. Sometimes, having two champions creates the balance needed for credibility and execution across the organization—for instance, the right mix of functional expertise (HR, information technology, etc.) and frontline operating expertise (operational management of the business). The champions create and empower a team to execute the initiative, provide the team members with the resources they need, break down barriers, and are held accountable to the executive team for the impact of the initiative.

The initiative team, the group tasked with the everyday execution of this initiative, can consist of an additional two to four people who either have direct day-to-day responsibility or experience in the appropriate area or have a deep passion for the topic. For example, a field project manager at a construction company stepped into a role that she was passionate about: lean construction. She went on to lead a new organizational function that gained nationwide recognition for the impact it has had on advancing the whole field. The initiative team will ensure that the initiative delivers the impact that is expected. Once the team is formed, its first step is to create a more detailed project plan of how it will execute the initiative, building on the team charter above.

Commitment and Next Steps

It is one thing to develop an action plan; it’s another to commit to it. Think of your organization as a sponge; how much water can it hold? As you run your day-to-day business, prioritized initiatives in your journey to Conscious Capitalism will take time and resources from the business. You and your team need to be deeply committed to make sure that this day-to-day pressure does not overwhelm these key initiatives. The trick is to ensure that your top team is committed to the importance of all these initiatives. This commitment goes beyond the individual champions for the initiatives. The leadership team is ultimately responsible for getting regular updates on progress (monthly) and for maintaining focus and keeping resources on these initiatives as needed.

At the same time, you need to make sure you have a concrete commitment to the immediate next steps to get started. You can obtain such a commitment by calling a first meeting for an initiative team, proposing a budget, or by having the two executive champions get together within the next two weeks to lay out the plan of action in more detail. The critical element is to identify action steps that you will take in the next thirty days. This kick start builds momentum around this effort. On a chart similar to the one in figure 18-9, you should therefore record the following information: What are the immediate next steps? When are they due? Who will be responsible for ensuring that these steps are taken? Include this chart in your meeting agenda to review progress at your next executive session.

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To summarize this chapter, we have asked you to reflect on the things that you have discussed and identified as potential areas to work on, in each pillar, on your journey to Conscious Capitalism. You prioritized this list in terms of impact, resources required, and time frames on which to work on these areas over the next thirty-six months. Armed with these tasks, you are now clear on what has been committed to getting executed over the next six to twelve months and are developing team charters for each initiative and a clear commitment to the immediate next steps in the next thirty days.

In this next chapter, we will discuss how to get the most leverage from these initiatives and how to prepare the organization for what is coming as you evolve your culture toward Conscious Capitalism.