Strategy & Organisational Change
IMPLEMENTING STRATEGY
A heavy burden Three lessons for CEOs who are struggling with strategy
4 Create communities of good conduct The responsibility for all this ultimately lies at an organisation and a sub-organisation level, in the culture within individual departments. That is where you can intervene effectively. Companies can set up peer-led, cross-team communities to encourage the desired conduct and discourage professionals from making bad decisions. To be most effective, these groups should be empowered to review and recommend changing any incentives that are at odds with sound professional conduct. Companies can also open multi-stakeholder conversations about right and wrong choices, what influences misconduct, and how unethical decisions can negatively impact on others. Focusing on changing the system does not replace an individual’s responsibility for their actions. But if an organisation fails to ensure the right culture is in place, it is at least partly culpable for what goes wrong. It could also find that more problems arise in the future. Organisations need to work hard to keep their reputation intact, particularly when it comes to ethical behaviour. After all, Enron remains an infamous example more than two decades after it collapsed. Once a business gets tarred with the professional misconduct brush, it can be very difficult to change perceptions.
T hree years into his out to do. You’re not tired of the change, but you’re tired of the fact that it’s just not working”. This ʻendless treadmill’ wasn’t just getting him down. It was seriously compromising the company’s ability to navigate significant post-COVID challenges. John was one of 27 CEOs in the UK that we spoke to as part of a wider project to understand how executives are implementing strategy amid current workforce challenges. Tellingly, 71 per cent of CEOs said that successful strategy execution has never felt harder. Not only are they facing complex CEO role, John was feeling deflated. As he put it: “We don’t seem to achieve what we set new issues, but the tried-and- tested solutions they honed over by Andrea Adams & Maja Korica
Challenge 1 : Shifting working models Organisations have been under more pressure to focus on flexibility, with employees increasingly expecting at least some remote work as a norm. But two thirds of the CEOS we spoke to described problems associated with the rise in hybrid working. This included falling employee engagement, less collaboration and cohesion, and more inter-staff friction. As one CEO put it: “It’s harder to see where things aren’t working the way you want them to.” Challenge 2 : Changing employee expectations While some might call for a blanket return-to-office policy to boost engagement, many challenges are less about location and more about how people relate to work.
the previous decade are no longer producing results. “Both the external context and the employee context have changed,” said John. “The amount of thought, the dexterity needed, and the ability to be nimble and nuanced require very different skills. It’s not transactional, it’s not following a rule book; it is very different.” As a result, many CEOs like John are feeling overwhelmed and burned out. They are also struggling to achieve organisational growth and success. But there is a way forward. We take a closer look at the challenges facing organisations today and provide three key strategies to overcome workforce difficulties and achieve strategic success. The leaders we spoke to told us that today’s workforce challenges centre around three key themes.
stages, we need to think about the diffuse boundaries that can develop between regulators and those being regulated. We also need to consider the ways in which professionals and companies can move across borders to avoid regulation. Regulation needs to be combined with other, normative cultural elements, which can change organisational and Any apple can turn rotten in the wrong environment, so organisations need to ensure they promote the right sort of employee development. Companies should reflect on their HR policies, from recruitment to their practices around performance management. Individuals need a supportive structure. Interventions around health and wellbeing are important, particularly in high-pressure environments where stress levels can build quickly and lead to bad decisions being made. At a practical level, companies individual behaviour. 2 Promote employee development
need to look for where people may be feeling particularly pressured. They can then put interventions in place to relieve that stress. 3 Foster an ethical culture Equally, organisations should interrogate their culture to check its toxicity, and promote a workplace culture that helps to prevent and dissuade people from engaging in misconduct. There is a continuum from professional misconduct towards less serious, but still unethical, missteps. People can start engaging in bad behaviour if they think it is acceptable or even expected. Perhaps it serves the client’s interest or is normalised within their working environment. This can then progress to more serious acts of misconduct. To tackle that, managers should outline clear ethical principles, then focus on acknowledging and rewarding sound decisions and on calling out unethical actions. Behaviour can change for good and bad, depending on how one has been socialised, the influence of role models, and the context of training.
Discover more about Master's programmes at Warwick Business School.
Sustainable Development Goals
Warwick Business School | wbs.ac.uk
wbs.ac.uk | Warwick Business School
24
25
Made with FlippingBook Learn more on our blog