e-Newsletter November 2008

Welcome ...

to our first newsletter.  We intend to publish a newsletter every month which we hope you will find of interest and value.

It will not be possible to cover the full spectrum of our activities in every issue and so we will focus on just a couple of our key disciplines and highlight items of real interest to you.

The challenge of leadership

The aim of Decisive Operations is to help organisations realise their potential and become true high performing bodies.  To do that all organisations, teams or departments need to develop their leadership, the one constant to which acts as lifeblood or poison.

This has been an exciting month for observing examples from which to learn:

• Does a life in modern professional rugby limit the development of rounded individuals who can draw on wider experiences to shape them as leaders as Lawrence Dallaglio worries?

• Has the much criticised public silence of bank leaders over their management of our finances inspired or worried bank workers and their savers?  Do we now understand how these captains are steering their vessels?

• Whether you agree with his politics or not, Gordon Brown has led other world leaders in identifying an action plan which will hopefully take our economies out of their perilous position.

Decisive Operations can help you develop your organisation’s leaders.  From leadership workshops to bespoke development, why not give us a call to start a conversation about how we can help you really move forward.  leadership@decisiveoperations.com

Sticking with a Strategy

By the time you read this the US presidential election may well be over.  Each side has tried their hardest, whether following their chosen strategies or not.

Last week the Washington Post had a fantastic piece about the personal strategy that Barack Obama followed from the time he arrived in Washington DC as a junior senator. 

It describes the decisive steps he identified to enable him to attempt election, and the action plans he and his advisors created to deliver each of those decisive steps.  Pick the right path, hold your nerve and be prepared to grasp opportunities as they present themselves, are the lessons.

There is no point in producing a strategy that you will, or can, not follow.  Equally there is no point in acting unless it contributes to your business dream or vision.  If you would like to review or need to develop your strategy give us a call.  We have wide experience ranging from helping individual sportsmen and women to developing strategies for the international coalition in Iraq.

Are you resilient?

In March of this year the Chartered Institute of Management produced a report that stated that less than half of British firms have business continuity plans and an even smaller number had regularly maintained them.

Resilience is about more than business continuity but it’s a good start point.  Resilience is your ability to withstand all challenges alongside your community.  So how resilient are you?

This month we have had floods, a measles outbreak in Cheshire, moved into recession and the UK will have families affected by the recent earthquake in Pakistan.

Your ability to withstand these and other shocks is to develop your planning frame of mind.  We cannot all afford to allocate significant resources to possible contingencies but we probably can make the time to think it through and develop the understanding about what we will be able to do.