Ready for Your Next Inflection Point?
Does anyone else feel like the shoe is about to drop... you just don't know where? when? and what shoe, precisely?
While we can't predict the future, we have worked through enough big changes to have something to say on how to prepare for the next inflection point. Whether and how you take advantage of the next opportunity, be it a challenge to work through or an unexpected puff of wind in your sails, depends on several factors that you can work on right now.
When we talk about inflection points, we’re referring to big moments in the life of a business (or individual, frankly), that can result in a significant upturn… or downturn. That makes them really important turning points, which is why we take a special focus on them within FlexPoint Consulting.
So, we've put together a set of resources on how to be ready for your next inflection point:
How your team works together: decision-making, prioritization, and resolving conflict
How you deliver as promised: work management, adapting capacity, and working rhythms
Strategic stretch roles: team coverage, equipping people, and succession planning
Finances: multipliers, critical enablers, and nice-to-haves
Each is described below, with an audit of core components and tips to shore up any deficits.
How your team works together
Teams need to work productively together to take advantage of an inflection point. Information is often in short supply, options may not seem clear, and disagreements can bubble up.
Here's a quick audit of your approach to decision-making, prioritization, resolving conflicts. And, if you feel like any area deserves a bit of work, we've included several tips for success on each to be ready for the next opportunity or challenge that comes your way.
Decision-Making Audit
Is it clear who makes decisions and how?
Are you confident that follow-up items will be taken forward?
When you reach a critical moment in a discussion where someone needs to make a path forward, is it clear who everyone turns to?
Decision-Making Tips
If the answer to any of those questions wasn't a resounding yes, it's worth clarifying roles and responsibilities.
We love using the GRPI (Goals, Roles, Processes, & Interpersonal Relationships) framework to strengthen any type of team.
We're partial to the DARE (Deciders, Advisors, Recommenders, and Execution Stakeholders) tool for projects and programs.
And, when in doubt, create a lightweight charter for standing groups/meetings, describing the expectations for each role.
Prioritization Audit
Is it clear how we prioritize what gets done now, and later?
Do priorities stay relatively stable through the month? quarter?
Can you point to a widely accessible artifact that illustrates top priorities for your company? department? team?
Prioritization Tips
If you're shaky on any of those questions, you owe it to your team to set and keep clear goals.
If goals are set but not easily accessible, publish them and refer to them often in all-company channels.
If a team is using a goal-setting framework successfully, have them help roll it out company-wide.
If you're looking for a new prioritization method, we're fans of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), defined for the enterprise and cascaded to departments and teams.
Conflict Resolution Audit
When we have conflict, do we have a consistent track record of seeking productive resolution?
Can we separate conflict on the content of our work from conflict with coworkers?
Do we have the real conversation in the meeting, rather than in the meeting after the meeting?
Conflict Resolution Tips
If the answer to any of those questions was no or "I don't know," this is an area to invest in.
This starts from company guiding principles and culture. Make sure every employee has easy access to observable behaviors that are and aren't okay.
Facilitate a ground rule definition exercise in recurring meetings, and empower facilitators and participants to call out deviations from what was agreed upon.
Work with your HR/people ops team to invest in courage- and trust-building capabilities.
Investing in high-performing teams will enable you to take advantage of the next inflection point in your growth journey.
How you deliver as promised
Inflection points typically include lots of cross-team work, shifting capacity and expectations, and delivering day in and day out. This can put any delivery function to the test, and can reveal any cracks that exist in the system, so it’s of benefit to proactively assess how your teams deliver as promised.
Here's a targeted audit of your approach to work management, adapting capacity, and working rhythms. And, if any of the topics leave you with more questions than answers, we've included several tips for success on each to be ready for the next opportunity or challenge that comes your way.
Work Management Audit
Do you have a clear way to divvy up work, particularly across teams?
Do you know if work you've requested of another team is in the queue? completed?
What if one person has too much to do and another has too little: do we have visibility? are there ways to adjust workloads?
Work Management Tips
If the answer to any of those questions was something other than yes, it's worth clarifying how work is shared across team.
Create a lightweight shared board that includes requests and tasks crossing teams. This can be a spreadsheet, task list, Kanban board: just something to provide visibility.
Define practices of picking up work with spare capacity; have team leaders keep an eye out for people being overloaded via 1:1 sessions and tools like time reporting.
Capacity Adaptation Audit
If half the delivery team was suddenly unavailable, do you have an idea of how you'd adapt?
If twice as much work came into the pipeline, do you have a first and second step to address it?
Do you have a short- and medium-term talent acquisition plan, potentially in addition to typical recruiting channels?
Capacity Adaptation Tips
If those topics prompt more questions than answers, this is an opportunity to think about capacity contingency plans.
Make sure delegation and escalation rules are enabled in your delivery platform, to accommodate planned and ad-hoc capacity challenges.
Clearly identify priority and urgency in requests, so the most important items get worked first.
Proactively vet contract or temporary resource partners, to have someone to call in case of dramatic swings in capacity or incoming work.
Working Rhythms Audit
Do you have a consistent, reliable way to understand plans, progress, blockers, and issues from your team?
Are you happy with how visioning, planning, and retrospectives take place across teams?
Do you and your team have adequate time to do the work, not just talk about doing it?
Working Rhythms Tips
If the answer to any of those questions was a strenuous no, focusing on work rhythms will likely yield real benefits.
Add or update regular stand-ups with your team, timeboxing responses to typical scrum questions.
Work with other team leaders to design planning sessions across teams, with candid discussion around goals, plans, dependencies, and challenges.
Incorporate retrospectives on both what was done and how it was done. Make space to experiment with new ways of working for a set period of time with clear goals, then come back together and keep improving.
Creating clear mechanisms to work on what’s most important and to deliver as promised, within and across teams, is worth effort to set you up well for the next inflection point.
Strategic Stretch Roles
If you had to start a new team today, who would lead it? Are they ready for the challenge?
Inflection points often ask a lot of teams, and using having a plan for equipping and elevating folks is a great way to prepare.
Here's a targeted audit of your use of strategic stretch roles, focused on team coverage, equipping people, and succession planning. And, if any of the questions prompt follow-ups, we've included several tips for success on each to be ready for the next opportunity or challenge that comes your way.
Team Coverage Audit
Have you identified strategic roles -- those that are critical to success -- for each department, function, and team?
Are each team's strategic roles filled with top talent?
Have you created job success profiles for any openings? These should include:
Key success factors and performance factors
Essential traits and exceptional skills
Experience and education requirements
Team Coverage Tips
If any of those questions prompt a no, it's time to work with your talent management and development team to:
Segment roles, prioritizing teams with vacancies, into:
Strategic: vital to success, holes compromise future success, and evolving with strategy
Core: important for operational success, holes risk goal achievement, and aiming for constant coverage
Supporting: keep operations running smoothly
Create job success profiles for strategic and core roles.
Map out coverage by role segment.
Equipping Individuals Audit
Assess folks in strategic roles:
Are they a great fit on essential traits?
Have they mastered most of the key success and performance factors?
Consider those in line for strategic roles:
Are they on track to complete experience requirements of potential roles?
Have the potential role's performance, skill, and experience expectations been clearly communicated to them?
Equipping Individuals Tips
If there were any shaky yeses or maybes in your answers, this is an opportunity to equip individuals for success.
Take the next performance review with those in strategic roles as an opportunity to clarify responsibility and performance expectations
Sit down with up-and-coming individuals and discuss:
Potential roles of interest
Skill and experience expectations for those roles
Areas for them to address to be considered ready
Identify a stretch role that will move them toward readiness and provide extra support through it
Succession Planning Audit
Do you have at least one potential successor (ideally, three) for strategic roles in each department, function, and team?
Do people managers consistently point to the skills, traits, and experience that are needed to advance within a team?
Do team and project leaders identify specific skills and experience development goals?
Succession Planning Tips
If succession planning is an area of opportunity, consider the following (again, working with your talent team!).
Have people managers and those in-role identify potential successors. Queue up conversations to understand interest from potential successors.
For those interested in moving up, work with them to identify the next relevant stretch goal, and find/create a stretch role for them (with extra support!).
Top up people, team, and project leaders' training and resources around framing goals and feedback around skills, traits, and experiences.
Using strategic stretch roles to prepare key folks for the next challenge will really pay off in an inflection point. It'll be worth the effort!
Finances
If you had to make a big bet on the business next week, do you know where you would look first to direct resources? Alternately, if you had to cut 10% tomorrow, do you know which expenses come off the board first?
Inflection points typically prompt a careful look at budgets, and having a sense for what matters most will help you be ready. In our final installment of this series, we have a targeted audit of your use of financial priorities, focused on multipliers, critical enablers, and nice-to-haves.
Here's an audit of your financial priorities, focused on multipliers, critical enablers, and nice-to-haves. As always, if any of the questions prompt follow-ups, we've included several tips for success on each to be ready for the next opportunity or challenge that comes your way.
Multipliers Audit
Does your financial performance reporting connect clearly to strategic priorities and high-level activities?
Is it clear which budget lines contribute to others’ success, effectively acting as multipliers?
If you had to make a big bet on the business next week, do you know where you would look first to direct resources?
Multipliers Tips
If any of those questions prompt a no, it's time to work with your leadership team to:
Connect key performance metrics and dashboards to company-wide objectives and key results.
Understand which activities, functions, or teams contribute an outsized impact to the organization, potentially through magnifying others’ work.
Create a shortlist of potential big bets, shovel-ready projects, or experiments to run with spare funds.
Critical Enablers Audit
Do you have an immediate, strong response to the question, “what are our critical enablers?” (This could be a support team, a core process, a specific automation, a technology platform, etc.)
Do you have a sense for your team’s must-have list, the things they couldn’t succeed without?
Are parts of the annual budget essentially off-limits (with recent evidence-based reasons)?
Critical Enablers Tips
If those prompted more follow-up questions than answers, this is an opportunity to get clear on crucial support areas.
In 1:1s and informal discussions, ask people throughout the organization what they consider to be critical enablers. Try not to give too much narrowing information if they ask for clarification: people, process, technology, it’s all fair game!
Test findings with people you trust, aiming to identify the unsung heroes that make everything better.
Review budgets for the past several years and understand more about items that are constants.
Nice-to-Haves
With multipliers and critical enablers identified, you can direct limited funds toward the items that are likely to contribute to success.
Aim to hold nice-to-haves lightly, particularly faced with tough decisions that are often inherent in inflection points.
While talk about budgets is never completely comfortable, trust us that thinking through what’s worth prioritizing (and what’s not) will help future decision-making to be more successful!
Closing
We hope that considering several aspects of delivery – how your team works together, how you deliver as promised, using strategic stretch roles, and prioritizing finances – will set you up to respond to the next opportunity or challenge from a position of strength.
If the FlexPoint team can help you think through any of this, please set up 30 minutes with our Founder and CEO, Michael Daehne. We’d love to help make sure you’re ready for your next inflection point.
