Robert H. Miles - Rapid, High-engagement, All-employee Cascade (Former HBS Professor & Lecturer)
"How can you engage and energize thousands of employees within a matter of weeks?"
Leaders don’t generally raise that question because they are not aware that such a feat can be accomplished in a rapid, reliable manner.
But it’s one of the major questions executive leaders – and especially transformation leaders -- should be asking when challenged with taking charge and launching the next major phase in an organization. Instead, many transformations stall at this point, where the planning work of the senior executives has drawn to a close, but before the subordinate managers and employees have begun aligning with and executing the transformation-defining initiatives. The common result in many aborted transformation launches is the great ideas and strategies constructed at the top never make it far enough down in the company to have a palpable impact on employees and customers, which is where it matters most.
Past efforts, employees recall, had taken months if not years to roll out from top to bottom in their very large, dispersed enterprise. Not surprising, a study of American workers revealed that only one in ten employees had a clear line of sight between their job tasks and their company’s goals. Moreover, only half of the surveyed employees felt there was follow through with discipline from above on the key transformation initiatives. No wonder that McKinsey, a global management consulting firm, recently reported that over 70 percent of attempted corporate transformations FAIL!
Read full overview here: https://flevy.com/blog/the-rapid-high...
Learn more about the Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) methodology through Robert H. Miles's 10-week online program: https://flevy.com/program/act
Robert H. Miles, Ph.D., President, Corporate Transformation Resources, is a global thought and practice leader in the fields of Corporate Transformation and Executive Leadership. Dr. Miles was a long-time faculty member at Harvard, Yale, and Emory business schools; and at the Stanford Executive Institute. He has published numerous books on Corporate Transformation and is published in the Harvard Business Review.
Through his decades of experience and leading 30+ Corporate Transformations, Bob has pioneered the Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) methodology.
The ACT methodology is a proven, enterprise-level process architecture. It enables an executive leader to rapidly orchestrate the launch of the next major phase of his or her organization in a simple, high-engagement manner to achieve breakthrough results.
The ACT methodology has been successfully implemented in some of the most iconic Corporate Transformations, including Apple, General Electric, IBM Global Services, Symantec, National Semiconductor, Office Depot, PricewaterhouseCoopers, PGA Tour, Rockwell International, Infineon Technologies, Southern Company, and Black & Veatch, as well as a number of emerging high-tech companies.
The ACT process architecture has been designed to quickly focus, align, and engage the full organization and then rigorously follow through for execution. It was also designed to be run by business leaders with light consulting and implementation support the first time through. ACT allows managers at all levels to effectively lead Organizational Transformation and Strategy Execution on their own, and it becomes part of a more rigorous management process by the end of the first year of implementation.
The proven ACT methodology succeeds because in each case, it adapts to the organization's specific Transformation challenges, supports leaders at all levels in the organization, creates well operationalized Transformation initiatives, aligns all subunits and engages all employees, overcomes the major "inhibitors" to Transformation launches, and quickly brings about breakthrough results.
The origins of ACT may be traced back to an innovative executive program chaired by Robert H. Miles at the Harvard Business School. The program invited CEO, business presidents, and their teams to the Harvard campus for 2 weeks, during which time they worked together to help each leader develop a plan for dealing with the major challenge confronting their organization. Executives and their teams returned to campus 9 months later to explore what they learned from trying to overcome their Corporate Transformation challenges. Follow up with these corporate teams and research conducted on their patterns of successes and failures formed the foundations of the ACT methodology.
To learn how to implement ACT in your organization, go here: https://flevy.com/program/act