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People Strategy: What difference has 2020 made on how we work and lead?

No one has a crystal ball to know what the impact of Covid will have on how we work.

Some questions I keep getting: Are we really in a new day of work from home (WFH)? Are companies going to change where and how people work because of the impact of Covid? Are we going back to the way of work we had in “BeforeLand” sometime in 2021?

Recently-published research from ResumeLab found that 99% of people prefer to work remotely at least some of the time.

And, a Gallup poll cited 59% of U.S. workers who have been doing their jobs from home during the coronavirus pandemic would prefer to continue to work remotely as much as possible (once public health restrictions are lifted).

I have been asked my opinion for years about WFH and the impact on teams, work output and the mental health of team members. Having worked from home for the majority of my career, I can honestly say that I don’t think full time WFH is for everyone. Here are three areas impacted when team members are working remotely:

COLLABORATION: The collaboration and comradery that happen during the “in-between times” of being together really does have an impact. Both from the standpoint of bouncing ideas around more freely, which could increase business and improve systems, and from the need for us to have connection with others. CONTINUE READING...

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Strategy is Like Winning a Race Over and Over (not just once!)

The question I am asked all the time is… “What is Strategy?” With so many definitions out there, it is very confusing.

In his best-seller, How will you Measure your Life?, written by one of my favorite Harvard Business School professors, Clayton Christensen, strategy is described as, “At the basic level, a strategy is what you want to achieve and how you will get there.”

Strategic planning was formally defined as a concept by the military. “The plan to win” makes sense when you are at war! As it applies to business, however, strategy has many definitions. At the most basic level it is how to win in the market-place and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage.

Remember the book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins? One of his foundational beliefs is that “good is the enemy of great.” Many organizations are good. They have been in business for many years and they are doing “good.” I compare Strategy to deciding if you want your company to be great, like “winning” a race versus just participating in the race.

This is proactive planning (vs. reactive), making choices and trade-offs (vs. saying yes to everything) and gaining alignment (vs. telling people what do). For a company who wants to be great, you first need to decide (1) Why do you want to be great? How do you define “winning”? And (2) What “choices” to you need to make to “win”? I’ve worked with hundreds of companies and they’ve all had different definitions of winning and they make much different choices – that’s the fun part! Let’s think about this for a bit, using my Race analogy. Here are some “race” examples: CONTINUE READING...

Culture fuels strategy in a thriving business. And, that's precisely how we help clients succeed. Working with mid-size, growth-oriented companies, Stretch Strategic Leaders bridge the gap between culture, strategy, and implementation. Stretch co-founders Cyndi Wineinger and Darcy Bien also serve clients through The Wineinger Company and Partners in Change.