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Our Unique Approach

Strategic Commitment®

Any organization that wants to achieve extraordinary results through total alignment and engagement must address both the content and context of the strategy.

By content, we mean ensuring that everyone is on the same page, with a clear understanding of the direction, objectives and plans for the organization.

By context, we mean the environment in which people are working. That it is one of honesty, cohesion and trust, as well as people having high levels of confidence in their leaders' credibility, courage, competence and care for the workforce.

Most leaders focus on content because it is familiar, comfortable and tangible. They avoid context because they don't know how to address it, or they underestimate its critical impact on organizational performance. At best, addressing the content alone will produce a dynamic of half-hearted compliance (and fear) that will be insufficient to achieve extraordinary results. Attending to the context alone will also not work either because un-channeled enthusiasm cannot be effective or sustainable.

Based on twenty-plus years of working with hundreds of executive teams from industry-leading organizations around the world, we have developed a unique approach - Strategic Commitment® - that simultaneously addresses both the content and context of the strategy. This empowers organizations to achieve extraordinary results consistently, through total alignment and engagement. No matter what the starting point of the organization, this powerful approach has proven itself time after time.

Three principles are fundamental to this approach:

1. A strategy is only as good as people's commitment to it. The most accurate, valid and well-crafted strategies will fail if people's ownership and accountability toward them is weak. On the other hand, an adequate strategy is much more likely to succeed when people truly feel a sense of ownership and commitment toward it. Strategic Commitment® transforms people's relationship to the strategy to one of total ownership, commitment and accountability.
2. Extraordinary results will only be achieved if people can face reality. This means telling the truth about organizational dynamics that are preventing progress, including politics, turf battles, silos, apathy, resignation and cynicism at all levels. Facing reality often requires courage; to admit mistakes, to hear direct feedback, and to set egos aside. Without full awareness and ownership of the current condition, change initiatives quickly stagnate and are greeted with "This too shall pass."
3. Organizational performance is determined by the future, not the past. The anticipated future determines the mood, spirit, behaviors and ultimately, an organization's results. Unfortunately, most organizations define their future by merely extrapolating the past, or unintentionally assign it to factors outside their control. "Market conditions are softening." "Exogenous factors are impacting our ability to deliver." "Current economic conditions prevent us from growing." We've heard these and many similar comments repeatedly from executives who were defining the future based on the past and the present. But a powerful, inspiring vision - one that galvanizes people to go beyond what they previously believed was possible - allows an organization to take its destiny into its own hands. The results organizations produce when people are oriented around a bold, compelling - and plausible - future, can be startling to those who believe strategic planning is merely an exercise in adjusting last year's budget for inflation. As Alan Kay, an ex-Apple Fellow said, "The only way to predict the future is to create it."