What Are the SOPs of Leading?
Are you doing your work or your team’s? The SOPs of leading help leaders ground themselves in “The Why, What, and How” of leading. Many leaders struggle with these concepts… and, truthfully, the leadership development community hasn’t traditionally been that helpful. View our short video below to see how these complicated concepts can be clarified in just one sentence!
Leading is a full-time job.
Every step on the journey from Expert to Executive leads away from your craft.
This sentiment is easier to grasp than embrace; and neither grasping nor embracing it is a requirement for reaching the rank, responsibilities, or rewards of an executive. Many experts successfully climb the career ladder unaware their value to the organization is shifting. With each step, they continue to cling to their technical capabilities, hanging onto the belief that it is the autonomy, scope, and impact of their work (not the work itself) that is changing.
Meanwhile, under the surface, a dangerous dynamic is unfolding.
The more time leaders spends on the team’s work — the less they leave for leading. Strategy development and coordination, organizational alignment, coaching and other core dimensions of leading become an afterthought.
We believe the core problem feeding this dynamic is clarity. What is leading? Why do we do it? What are the work functions and what are the workstreams?
The LeadershipSOPs is a breakthrough methodology and framework for leading which promotes the development of habitual systems of action (standard operating procedures) aimed at the three critical domains of leading (structuring, operating and perfecting communities of effort).
But what’s the job description?
LeadershipSOPs are your standard operating procedures for structuring, operating and perfecting your communities of effort.
Establishing your LeadershipSOPs is the secret sauce to meaningful and lasting change to leadership behaviors. It translates your existing attitudes, competencies, and skills into a repeatable system of leadership processes, increasing personal proficiency (through repetition and continuous improvement) and establishing predictability (which fosters trust and collaboration). Aiming your LeadershipSOPs at the three domains (structuring, operating and perfecting communities of effort), ensures a comprehensive approach to leading which leaves no stone unturned.
STRUCTURE
For a community of effort to exist, it must be designed and organized.
SCOPE the WORK
STRUCTURE is the first critical domain of leadership within the LeadershipSOPs framework. It involves assessing the primary organizing principles of a community of effort to ensure that the community is aligned with the organizing principles of the larger organization.
LeadershipSOPs aimed at structuring a community of effort incorporate all the actions leaders take to design and assess its SCOPE (Strategies, Culture, Objectives, Purpose and Ecosystem) and translate the SCOPE into the WORK (work methods, organizational structure, rewards and recognition, and knowledge and capabilities). By consistently assessing the structure of their organizations and teams, leaders begin to build their enterprise-level thinking, as well as their organizational agility.
SCOPE
Involves the primary organizing principles of a community of effort:
WORK
The core elements of an organizational design:
OPERATE
For a community of effort to run according to its design, it must be engaged.
Set the PASE
OPERATE is the second critical leadership domain in the LeadershipSOPs methodology, where it’s important to “Set the PASE”, which encompasses all of a leader’s planning activities, accountability mechanisms and methods for stakeholders engagement. Many leaders have their most naturally well-developed LeadershipSOPs in this domain as it addresses how to execute to the work itself.
PASE
The three core components which drive the majority of a leader’s engagement on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis:
Planning: strategic, operational and financial planning
Accountability: assign, execute, monitor, evaluate and act
Stakeholder Engagement: interactions with all internal and external stakeholders
PERFECT
For a community of effort to survive, it must continually evolve.
Explore, Clarify, Transform & Master - ECT(M)
PERFECT is the third and final critical leadership domain, and involves driving development across individuals, teams and organizations to achieve increased performance, effectiveness and transformation. The main model we use to drive this development is the ECT(M) Model for Transformation. This model encompasses the steps taken for individual coaching and feedback, team development and coaching through change.
ECT(M)
Explore: orient, investigate & listen
Clarify: internalize, prioritize & plan
Transform: reframe, learn & experiment
Master: integrate, extend & mentor