LEADERSHIP STRATEGY: HOW TO GENERATE CORPORATE ENERGY

corporate energy comes from the core
Successful organizations, like hurricanes, have a central core around which everything revolves and toward which everything is focused. At the center are values (what the organization believes in) and vision (where the organization is going). Business plans and the hierarchy of organization charts make no sense in the “I” where the generation of sustainable corporate energy is the goal.
To tap the energy of executives, managers, supervisors, and individual contributors—to mold them into a power source greater than the sum of their parts—your organization must revolve around a set of Cultural-values that will draw employees in and keep them focused on a corporate vision that inspires.
Cultural-values and vision are to the organization what water and warmth are to hurricanes—elements that catalytic leaders must tap. Once people lose touch with the Cultural-values and vision, the organization’s energy will begin to dissipate and drift back to become just another part of general market patterns, reacting rather setting its own course.
Similar to weather disturbances, organizations form in a variety of ways. Some begin as winning entities. They generate sufficient corporate energy to immediately set themselves up as world-beaters. They differentiate themselves from lesser start-ups by having a clear vision, a sense of purpose, and clarity about what they believe in. They possess fury and excitement, but after a few years the majority lose touch with what produced their initial success. They become preoccupied with systems and procedures. As with hurricanes, they will lose their capacity to generate corporate energy once they move away from their power source. They become just another member of the industry herd, struggling to maintain profit margins and protect market share.
Once employees and customers lose a sense of a company’s differentiation, their winning ways won’t hold together.
This post sponsored by an updated rewrite of the international best seller, The “I” of the Hurricane: How to Generate and Focus Corporate Energy
(now available for windows and mac downloads…will be in all E bookstores in January 2012.)