The component of a Burning Imperative that is most important in building a high-performing team is co-creating. Bryan Smith laid out five ways to “persuade” someone: tell – sell – test – consult – co-create. If you tell someone to do something, the best you can ever hope for is compliance. If you want them to contribute you have to invite them by selling, testing, or consulting. If you want them to commit, they have to co-create the imperative and their own norms for how they are going to work together so they share a complete picture of success.
A Burning Imperative is one of the building blocks of Tactical Capacity that together accelerate executive onboarding and the development of high-performing teams. Each building block has a key component. It’s important to put all the building blocks in place and even more important to focus on the key components:
- Burning Imperative: Co-created shared purpose
- Milestone Management: Systemic approach to learning and adapting
- Early Wins: Disciplined delegation
- Role Sort: Leveraging complementary strengths
- Communication: Two ways all the time
The Burning Imperative is a sharply defined, intensely shared, and purposefully urgent understanding from the team members of what they are “supposed to do now” and how this works with the larger aspirations of the team and the organization. Mission, vision, values, goals, objectives, and action-based strategies are key components of the Burning Imperative. The essence of the imperative is articulated in the rallying cry that everyone understands and can act on.
Boundaries of co-creation
Trying to let everyone co-create everything is a recipe for chaos. Give people direction, boundaries, and guiding principles to focus their co-creation.
Things nest.
CULTURAL leadership is about who you are and what you stand for. This is the purview of the CEO and plays out across strategic, organizational, and operational processes.
STRATEGIC leadership is about arranging resources before deployment. This is the purview of senior leaders and is more long-term focused spanning years, driving a master narrative, and communicating intent.
CAMPAIGN or OPERATIONAL leadership bridges between strategies and tactics. This is the purview of middle managers and is more mid-range focused with programs spanning months made up of shorter-term tactic al projects.
TACTICAL leadership is about deploying and adjusting resources in real time. This is the purview of front-line supervisors and is more short-term mission, project focused, bounded by strategies and operating principles.
Things flow best when these leaders take the work of those above them as input into the co-creation their own imperatives to provide input to those below them in turn.
One CEO used a 4/6/90 rule.
He said 90% of the decisions in the organization would be made by others and he had to support them. He did not mess with campaign or tactical decisions that fit with the culture and the strategy.
4% of decisions were his to make and he expected others to support his choices – especially around the culture.
6% of decisions were shared with his senior leadership team. They decided strategy together.
The point is that high-performing teams at any level should co-create their own Burning Imperative, and let other teams do the same for their Burning Imperatives in line with their direction/intent, boundaries/mandatory policies, and guiding principles.
Step-down example
We were working with a new division president. He pulled his leadership team together for an imperative workshop with these steps:
- His boss started the meeting by laying out the overall organization’s mission and priorities and explained how this division fit with that. Then his boss left, leaving the division president in charge.
- The division leadership team co-created their own mission and priorities, nested within those of the overall organization.
- They pulled together their direct reports and stepped down the process. They laid out the division’s mission and priorities and explained how the different sub-groups fit with that.
- The sub-groups broke out and co-created their sub-group mission, priorities and action plans.
- The sub-groups came back together to share their current best thinking with the rest of the division. Everyone got a chance to ask questions for clarification, highlight what they thought was particularly valuable, and offer suggestions for how to ratchet up that current best thinking and how to make things work across sub-groups.
This worked because each level co-created what they were empowered to co-create. They didn’t try to change what they were given. They didn’t over-manage those below them. They knew what was theirs to choose, where they could provide input, and what should be left for others.
John Hall
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