Creative Huddle

When everyone from finance to HR joins the strategy conversation, you avoid echo chambers, spark fresh perspectives, and gain the kind of alignment that turns plans into real, actionable success.

How can you include more people in your strategy creation process? By inviting the wider company to react to and contribute to strategy creation, leaders can improve buy-in, alignment, and the quality of the strategy itself – thanks to the IKEA effect.

Problems with meeting deadlines can be frustrating for even the most skilled teams. I’ve been working this week with a manufacturing team, exploring opportunities to improve their chances of delivering on time, in full. On-time in-full (OTIF) is a supply chain metric that refers to a supplier’s ability to deliver a product when it’s been promised and at full quantities ordered. Achieving OTIF is not always easy. This company makes big machines - £500k a pop - with hundreds of parts delivered by multiple suppliers and build times of 1000 hours. Getting all the parts on time is tricky, and you can only order them when you know you need them - they’re too expensive to order on spec and have them sitting around in a warehouse. We were tasked together to identify the problems that were causing delays, and come up with ideas to solve them. We spent a morning thoroughly exploring the workings of the factory, pinpointing bottlenecks and root causes. We viewed problems from different perspectives. It helped that I had read the book “The Goal” several years back, so I could quickly identify the common challenges and characteristics. The team decided they needed a better planning system to manage everything, that would enable them to forecast and allocate resources when and where they were needed. They also needed to build flexibility into the system so they could react when needed. It quickly became clear that this was a big idea. Big in the sense that the team would need buy-in and cooperation from multiple other departments. They would also need help from senior leaders to sponsor the project and empower them to make significant asks of these other departments. We talked about the team’s internal brand, and how it would be important to build this to exert influence to get the cooperation they needed. They needed to build trust with other teams and be clear in their communication and rationale. This internal brand would be important to gain trust and confidence from senior leaders and stakeholders. I work on this a lot with teams. To get the best success as a team, it’s not just about how you work together but about how you also work with those outside your team to achieve shared success. We worked on these ideas for the rest of the workshop. We built out the projects in detail, with actions for a 3 month sprint, plus milestones, mechanisms for accountability and regular check ins. We worked on messaging to communicate the planning system project, being clear on the objectives and impact, making it compelling to gain buy-in. At the end of the session it was clear that the group were excited about both big ideas. They were on less familiar ground with the team branding project, but could clearly see its benefits and importance. I look forward to checking in with them again in a few months to celebrate their progress. For more like this, sign up to my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eeurX9b2

A reflection on how I handled a potentially tricky workshop this week.

I’m working today with a leadership team, running a retrospective on an £80m project. Taking time to reflect and learn from experience - and sometimes failure - is incredibly valuable. Analysing the reasons for successes or failures helps us repeat the good and avoid the bad. In facilitating these sessions I guide teams through a series of tailored retrospective questions to help them review their work from various angles. Where relevant I challenge participants to dig deeper to reveal the root causes of events and key learnings they can extract. Often the successful projects are those where everyone had a shared understanding of the key priorities and had developed good systems to get the work done between them. The less successful projects are invariably where those things don't exist. It's communication that helps here - purposely developing a shared understanding of priorities through discussion and clarification, and working together to make sure everyone is clear on roles, responsibilities and working practices that will benefit the team as a whole. Here are some useful retrospective questions that I often include, depending on the project: APPRAISAL OF EFFORTS What went well? What are we proud of? What impact did we make? What would we go back and change if we could? Where did we compromise? What have we learned? How did we embody our core values / purpose? What are others in the market doing? CRITICAL THINKING Where could we have been more decisive / dynamic? Where did we get lucky? What needs changing? What mistakes did we make? What expertise do we need to bring in? What do we need to learn? Where are we at risk? What are our weaknesses? What do we find difficult? How resistant to change are we? LOOKING AHEAD What new opportunities are there? What unsolved problems are there? What are our biggest priorities? What new thinking do we have? What do we find easy? What’s likely to happen over the next 12 months? How are we placed to cope / profit? How adaptable / flexible are we? Which relationships are strong? Which need work? Are we being ambitious enough? What are our stretch goals? CLEARING ROADBLOCKS What blocks our progress? Are we doing anything we shouldn’t? What would we start / stop doing if we could? GETTING PERSONAL Are you proud of our progress? What have you found personally difficult? What’s your personal highlight? What’s your personal goal? How will you feel if we achieve these goals? What difference will it make to other employees? How can we better embody our values as leaders? What retrospective questions or approaches do you find useful? For more like this, sign up to my newsletter: https://lnkd.in/eeurX9b2

This practical toolkit includes 10 simple tools to help you generate original ideas and solve problems. The toolkit features techniques like 𝗕𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗿’𝘀 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗱, which encourages approaching problems with a fresh perspective, and 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀, a method for breaking down complex issues into their fundamental elements. Each tool is crafted to stimulate different aspects of creativity, from generating transformative concepts with 𝗕𝗶𝗴 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗮 to fast iteration with 𝗛𝗮𝗹𝗳-𝗕𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗜𝗱𝗲𝗮𝘀. This Toolkit is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to improve their ideation processes and achieve breakthrough results. Used in workshops these tools empower teams to think differently, harness their collective intelligence, and drive meaningful innovation in their projects. Download the toolkit today and unlock your creative potential! https://lnkd.in/ex9Xns99

This practical toolkit includes 10 simple tools to help you generate original ideas and solve problems. The toolkit features techniques like Beginner’s Mind, which encourages approaching problems with a fresh perspective, and First Principles, a method for breaking down complex issues into their fundamental elements. Each tool is crafted to stimulate different aspects of creativity, from generating transformative concepts with Big Idea to fast iteration with Half-Baked Ideas. This Toolkit is an invaluable resource for anyone looking to improve their ideation processes and achieve breakthrough results. Used in workshops these tools empower teams to think differently, harness their collective intelligence, and drive meaningful innovation in their projects. Download the toolkit today and unlock your creative potential! https://lnkd.in/gkH5a_b

#HighPerformance reading matter. What have you read from this stack? What would you add?