The DNA of leading Daily Business

You may wonder why it's worth looking into the DNA of leading the Daily Business, when my main focus is leading development, change, and improvements.

It's all about having a base for comparison.

By understanding the DNA of leading the day-to-day Business it will become easier to see how it differs from leading more development-oriented initiatives, where they are similar, and where to pay special attention.

Starting at the very core

Before we go practical let's first look at the core of leadership:

Deep down, leadership in all aspects is about building the balance between Direction and Action - or simply put:

WHAT to achieve

and

HOW to make it happen


We have a goal of X (WHAT) which we achieve by doing Y (HOW).
When looking at the DNA of leading the Daily Business, we often define WHAT to achieve as targets, objectives, KPIs or other measures for 'what good looks like'.
And we often express these in relation to Quantity and Time, for example to sell X.000 pcs within Y days, produce Z items within Q hours etc.

Next to the often measurable elements there is an additional Quality aspect. This may be clearly defined, yet at other times it remains unspoken. This includes things like quality in customer interaction, 0 errors in the financial report etc.
The HOW to make things happen is about what physically is taking place in the team to get things gets done.
Considering the tasks happening on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, lots of these tasks are re-occuring. These re-occuring tasks are often done in more or less the same way or they follow the same pattern in the way they are done.
That means there is an element of process being repeated every time the task is done.
Think of the finance team closing the books every month, the process of producing products in a factory, the steps project managers always go through when leading an IT project. That is repetition again and again in steps = a process.
Finally, there are different controls to ensure that things happen in the right way and produce the right results. These controls include the sales report, production report, the testing of IT functionality, the reconsciliation of books in finance.
We define WHAT we want to achieve in Time, Quantities and Qualities.
And we make it happen (HOW) through Processes and Controls to ensure we get what we strive for.

How does this look in reality?

To this intoere are 3 examples of how the 4 elements work in reality (scroll left/right to see more):

With this framework in place, it becomes easier to understand the fundamentals of leading development, improvement, and change.

The book LEADERSHIP: LESSON ONE provides extensive details on this, and you might want to start the conversation with your peers:

Conversation starter

...because real development begin with real human-to-human conversations

  How clear are the targets = what-good-looks-like for your team on a day-to-day basis?

  Do we have clarity of HOW we want to improve things for even better performance in the future?