The Leadership OS
The Leadership OS is a universal approach for accelerating enterprise growth and evolution organized around six milestones. These milestones are like steps along a path to higher-sustainable performance.
At Growth River we have proven that when these six milestones are introduced in the right order to leadership teams, even the toughest alignment conversations can be managed.
Notice that all of six of these milestones are required for any business to sustainably grow and adapt.
Businesses, like all complex living systems or ecosystems, grow in stages. The way that small changes to key conditions combine like little waves into bigger waves is called punctuated evolution. When introduced in the right sequence, the six milestones build on and magnify each other in a similar way to create an unstoppable wave that transforms leaders, teams, cultures and businesses.
For example, here are the first two little waves:
The first perspective is Vertical Leadership, which is the impulse “to do the right things” above personal comfort or security. The vertical leadership impulse must be present first before a leadership team can even begin to seriously address larger business system concerns like culture and system-of-roles.
The second perspective is Enterprise Culture, which includes among other topics the nature of hierarchy and the legitimate use of power. These topics need to be addressed before a team can seriously address critical topics like system-of-roles, role-alignment, competitive advantage and key capabilities.
Evolutionary Stages
Enterprise teams and cultures evolve through predictable stages. At each stage, performance increases to higher sustainable levels. The Evolutionary Stages Clock a useful way to visualize these stages.
Using the six milestones as benchmarks, movement through these four stages is accelerated. Knowing the current stage helps when trying to map how to get to the next stage.
I. Individual Contributor Stage
• An enterprise is led by a loose confederation of leaders.
• The key question that leaders ask is “What is in it for me?”
• Individual leaders define the roles they play based more on what they want than on what the enterprise or team needs.
II. Directive Leadership Stage
• A single directive leader has final call on who plays which role and what the investment priorities are.
• The key question that leaders ask in this stage is “What does the boss or the top leader want?”
• The culture is a reflection of the top leader’s ways-of-thinking-and-acting.
III. Interdependent Roles & Strategies Stage
• All leaders are expected to be directive.
• The key question that leaders ask in this stage is “What is my role?”
• The top leader now becomes an enterprise leader responsible for a key capability strategy.
• Function leaders are responsible for function strategies that support business strategies.
• Conflicts inevitably erupt at key points of interdependency between businesses and functions.
• Bottom-up budgeting becomes possible.
IV. Self-Evolving Teams Stage
• Formal decision-making and conflict resolution protocols are negotiated.
• Leaders judge team success by speed to vertical alignment rather than by consensus.
• There are no major issues around ways-of-thinking-and-acting, the system-of-roles, or strategies.
Rules That Can’t Be Avoided
There are rules that apply to how teams and enterprise cultures evolve that can’t be avoided:
Higher stages can appear threatening to lower stages. For example, if I am successful as an individual contributor, I might reject the need for a more directive leader. Or if I am a successful directive leader, I might reject the need for a more complete system-of-roles and strategies.
Each stage creates problems that are resolved by the following stage. For example, a lack of shared focus among individual contributors in Stage I is resolved by directive leaders in Stage II. And then lack of bandwidth among top leaders in Stage II is solved by a interdependent system-of-roles and strategies in Stage III. And then persistent conflict among roles in Stage III is solved in Stage IV.
Each stage transcends and includes previous stages. For example, in Stage II there is one central directive leader and top team. In Stage III, the central directive leader and top team remain but their roles are now more limited. They are now an enterprise leadership team to which directive leaders and teams in charge of businesses and functions report.
A team can backslide to a lower stage and performance level. For example, when a higher Stage IV business leadership team sells their business to a lower Stage II team.
In Conclusion
The Growth River Leadership OS is organized around six milestones, all of which must be present for sustainable enterprise growth and evolution.
Once all six milestones have been adopted by an enterprise team, then the key conditions that make innovative, scalable, sustainable and profitable enterprise growth inevitable are present.
As the six milestones are introduced, enterprise cultures and teams move to higher evolutionary stages and higher levels of sustainable performance.
But the six milestones must be introduced in exactly the right sequence, otherwise your efforts risk being attacked and neutralized by cultural antibodies and toxic rock stars.
Yet If done right, it is possible for leaders to systematically accelerate business growth and evolution.
