Todd M. Girvin

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Category: Leadership

  • Innovating on Purpose

    Innovation is a change you choose. Lead it like one, and the same team delivers twice the impact.

    By Todd Girvin, founder of Futuremakers

    The 32-hour win nobody wanted to celebrate

    A CEO I coach told me a story a few weeks ago that I haven’t been able to put down.

    His marketing firm had just won a bid to analyze a client’s position in its market and build a strategy from what they found. The team scoped it at 120 hours. Even at that, they knew the honest truth about engagements like this one: you only get to look at a fraction of the competitive landscape, the market dynamics, and what the customer’s customer actually needs. You do your best inside the hours you sold.

    This time, one of his researchers used AI to help with the assessment.

    She didn’t hand the work to a machine. She steered it. She pointed it at hundreds of potential competitors instead of the twenty or thirty she would normally have had time for. She used what came back to identify the client’s real niche and true differentiators, then went deep on the handful of competitors who actually mattered. She shaped the findings into an approach for a strategic plan, polished it, and presented it.

    The client was elated.

    Total time: 32 hours.

    Here’s the part that matters most. The client could not have done this with AI on their own. They don’t have the market understanding or the expertise to steer the research to the right level and pull out what’s salient. Her judgment was the product. AI just gave her judgment more room, both breadth and depth, to work.

    The innovation brought more value for the client, more profit for the firm, and less effort for the researcher. By any scoreboard you’d care to pick, that’s a huge win.

    So why was the CEO worried about how it would be received?

    Because some of his people are already afraid of being replaced by AI. They resist the tools, especially for the creative work that they take pride in. Meanwhile, the colleagues who have embraced the tools are far more productive and far less stressed. The gap between the two groups was widening, and a 32-hour win was about to make it visible to everyone.

    That’s the moment I keep coming back to.

    It’s not the tool, not the hours – it’s the fear that a genuine win would land as a threat.

    I’ve heard versions of this story from several of the leaders I coach, in companies that make things, companies that serve people, and nonprofits that exist to change lives. The details change. The pattern doesn’t. The innovation works. But, the people aren’t sure they want it to.

    That CEO’s marketing firm is now doing what I’d recommend to anyone: taking a systematic look at its core processes, finding the biggest inefficiencies, and addressing them one at a time, with the team. AI happens to be the innovation on his desk this year. It won’t be the last. A new service line. A redesigned intake process. A merger. A program that finally reaches the people you’ve been missing. Innovation comes in many flavors, and every one of them lands on people the way the 32-hour win did. From that firm and others like it, I’ve pulled out an approach I call innovating on purpose, in both senses of the phrase. Chosen deliberately, because it serves the future your organization exists to create. And managed deliberately, as the intentional change it is, so every person on your team can see how it helps them do more of the work they already care about.

    The rest of this paper lays out that approach. But first, a word about what happens when the purpose quietly goes missing and the scoreboard takes its place.

    When the scoreboard becomes the purpose

    Every organization keeps score: revenue, margin, growth, utilization, dollars raised, families served.

    Let me be clear: I’m not against the numbers. Money is the lifeblood of an organization, and the scoreboard tells you whether you’re healthy and whether you’re moving forward.

    The trouble starts when the numbers stop describing the mission and start replacing it.

    You know the pattern. A team that exists to hit a better number makes short-sighted choices. People work for the quarter instead of the customer. Your best performers start to wonder what all the effort is really for, and some of them go find the answer somewhere else. Meanwhile the scoreboard looks fine, so nobody notices the organization is drifting. Drift is hard to see from the inside.

    Here’s the version every CEO has lived. A sales team, or a development team, gets measured on activity: calls made, meetings booked, goals met. Activity is easy to count and easy to coach, so it becomes the number. Before long the team is hitting it every month. The calls go out. The meetings happen. The revenue and the donations drift anyway, because the people on the phone are working for the tally, not the customer or the donor on the other end. And your best closer, the one who brings in half the money on a third of the calls, starts to wonder why she’s being graded on dials.

    Numbers can tell you how you’re doing. They can’t tell you why you’re doing it.

    Innovation is a change you choose

    Here’s a second story, from another CEO I work with, and it has nothing to do with AI.

    His company books hotel rooms for traveling work crews: restaurant openings, construction projects, disaster recovery. The relationship managers are the heart of the business. They know the clients, they know the hotels, and they know how to get a crew of twelve into a town where every room is taken.

    Over the past year his team built some automation to handle the paperwork and trained a lower-cost support team to take the simple, short bookings: the one-night stay, the extension, the cancellation at nine at night. The idea was straightforward. Pull the time-consuming, low-value tasks away from the highest-value people so they can spend their days listening for future needs, negotiating better rates, and solving the hard problems for their biggest clients. Lower cost on the simple work + Higher value on the complex work = Better margins and better service, at the same time.

    The relationship managers pushed back.

    Not on the technology. On the change itself. Those small tasks felt like their work. Booking the one-night stay at nine at night was how they showed a client they cared. Giving it up felt like giving up a piece of the relationship.

    Which was exactly backwards. The whole point was to give them MORE of the relationship.

    People don’t resist the innovation. They resist losing the part of the old way that felt like them.

    Put the two stories side by side and the pattern is hard to miss. One is a researcher with an AI tool. One is a reorganization with some automation underneath it. The flavor is different. The human response is the same.

    That’s why I don’t think of this as an AI problem. Innovation comes in many flavors: a new tool, a new service, a redesigned process, a merger, a program that finally reaches the people you’ve been missing. Every one of them changes how someone does their work. And every one of them lands on people before it lands on the scoreboard.

    Author Jimmy Blackman put it best: “The only thing that likes change is a wet baby!”

    So here’s the thesis of this paper in two lines.

    Innovation is a change you choose. So, manage it like one.

    This summer I heard a change-management consultant, Alison French of Alto Solutions, speak to a room of CEOs. The biggest pothole she sees? Leaders who call her six months after the rollout started, once the resistance has set in. The playbook for leading change has been around for decades. Build the case for change. Align the leaders. Check readiness level by level. Communicate by group. Train, reinforce, repeat. Most of us know it. Most of us skip it when the innovation is exciting enough, because we assume a good idea sells itself.

    But it doesn’t. One line from her talk stuck with me: leaders who rely solely on data and logic can increase resistance. The 32-hour win is data. To the colleagues watching, it was also a message, and the message they heard wasn’t the one the CEO meant.

    What’s different this time

    If innovation has always been change, why does this moment feel harder? Three reasons.

    • Change used to come in projects. Now it comes continuously. Leaders are testing ideas in an afternoon that used to take a month. Individuals are reshaping their own work week by week. Whole departments are changing how they operate. The old habit of “roll it out and get back to normal” no longer works, because there is no back to normal.
    • The fear is personal. The question under the surface isn’t “I don’t get it.” It’s “Will I still matter?” Facts alone don’t reach that question. Trust does.
    • The tools are cheap. For the first time in my career, the people are the bottleneck, not the technology. The 32-hour win was the easy part. The reception was the hard part.

    That last point is the one I want you to sit with. It used to take months to change things. And whether you built custom solutions or bought off-the-shelf products, it was an expensive endeavor that you managed to ensure a positive ROI. But software is getting cheaper and changing faster. And if the technology is no longer the limiting factor, then the limiting factor is how well you lead people through the change. That’s good news. It’s the one factor you control.

    The questions people are quietly asking

    While you’re wrestling with strategy, your people are wrestling with something more personal. Most of them won’t say it in a meeting. But they’re asking it anyway, and each question deserves a plain answer that you can stand behind.

    • Q: “Will this replace me?” A: If it’s true, say it directly: “We’re doing this to grow with the team we have, not to shrink it.” If it isn’t true, don’t say it. Say what IS true.
    • Q: “If I give this up, what’s left of my job?” A: “The parts that need judgment, care, and relationships just became more valuable, not less.” That was true for the relationship managers. It was true for the researcher.
    • Q: “What if it gets something wrong, and I’m the one blamed?” A: “The tools draft. People decide. You stay in charge of the work, and we’ll set clear ground rules for what it’s used for.”
    • Q: “Can I keep up?” A: “Yes, and you won’t do it alone. We’ll learn together, on real work, at a pace we can manage.”
    • Q: “What happens to my team?” A: “The time we get back goes toward serving more people, better.”

    A leader who ignores these questions finds that fear travels faster than any new tool or innovation. A leader who names them, and answers them in light of the organization’s purpose, builds trust at exactly the moment it’s needed most.

    Which brings me to the approach. Four steps. I’ve watched leaders use them on AI, on reorganizations, on new service lines, and even on mergers. The steps don’t change. The flavor does.

    Step 1: Set the vision, and share it until you’re tired of hearing yourself

    The first job is yours, and you can’t delegate it.

    A clear purpose answers one question: what future is our organization helping create? For a leader, that answer becomes a North Star. Not a slogan on the wall. A practical filter. When two good opportunities compete for the same time and money, purpose helps you choose. When a decision is hard, it tells you what you’re protecting. When you’re tired, it reminds you why the work is worth it.

    Author Patrick Lencioni tells of a friend who built a billion-dollar company and summed it up this way: “If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, at any time.”

    Purpose points the boat. The vision for a specific innovation tells the crew why this stroke, right now, moves us toward it.

    So for every innovation you choose, connect it to the purpose and say out loud what it does for the people you serve. For the research firm, the WHY was never “faster.” It was this: our clients get a strategy built on the whole landscape instead of a sliver of it, and our people spend their hours on the judgment only they can provide. For the lodging company, the WHY was that the biggest clients get a partner, negotiator, and problem-solver instead of just an order-taker.

    Then name the loss. This is the step most of us skip. Alison French put it plainly: people focus first on what they must give up. So say it for them. “Here’s what we’re giving up. And here’s why it’s worth it.” A loss you name is a loss people can grieve and move past. A loss you skip becomes a rumor quietly whispered in online chats.

    And say all of it more often than feels natural. The test is simple: could each person on your team say the WHY back in their own words? If not, you haven’t finished step 1, no matter how many times you think you’ve said it.

    If the WHY lives only in your head, it isn’t a vision. It’s just a secret dream.

    One more thing belongs here. Choose your innovations on purpose. Don’t adopt a tool because it’s new. Start where your customers wait: the slow process, the delayed response, the question that takes days to answer, the engagement scoped at 120 hours because that’s all the client could afford. Faster there means more people served, and it means the WHY is visible to everyone from the first week.

    Step 2: Hand the HOW to the people who do the work

    You own the WHY. You don’t own the HOW.

    Start with your top leaders. Give them the vision, then ask them how their part of the organization gets there. Then ask them to do the same with their teams. And their teams with theirs, all the way down to the individual contributor. Each level gets the WHY handed to them and the HOW handed back.

    Why so? Because:

    • People support what they help create. A plan someone designed is a plan someone owns and defends.
    • The people closest to the work know the obstacles. They know which step is really the bottleneck and which “simple task” isn’t that simple.
    • It’s how you find the resistance before it finds you. Fear that comes out in a planning conversation is workable. Fear that comes out in the hallway discussion or the Slack channel is not.

    Imagine the lodging company running step 2. The CEO asks the relationship managers one question: “Which of these tasks could you hand off without your client noticing, and which ones can’t you?” Now they’re designing the handoff. The worry about losing the client is in the room, where it can be answered, instead of in the private chat, where it grows and the fear compounds. And the one-night stay at nine at night gets a real conversation, because maybe one or two clients really do need the relationship manager’s voice on that call, and the rest never did.

    This is also where you align your leadership team first and check readiness level by level before you move down. Alison shared a list of the ways leaders unintentionally create resistance. I’ve seen every one of them (usually in the mirror):

    • Deciding what people think instead of asking them.
    • Not naming the losses.
    • Treating every group the same when their stakes are different.
    • Launching the next change before the last one landed.
    • Forgetting to keep answering “What’s in it for me?”

    Step 2 is the cure for all five. You can’t hand someone the HOW without asking what they think.

    Advice doesn’t create ownership. Authorship does.

    Step 3: Decide what you’ll measure, and which behaviors have to change

    Now we come back to the scoreboard, and this time it’s on our side.

    The numbers that drift an organization off course are the ones that replaced the purpose. The numbers that keep an innovation on course are the ones that serve it. The difference is whether you chose them on purpose.

    You need two kinds.

    The first is the outcome you want to improve: Hours per engagement, Days from inquiry to answer, The share of short bookings handled by the support team, Families served per staff member. Pick the one or two that prove the WHY is working. Measure the baseline before you start, so your 32-hour win is a result everyone can see and not just a story that one person tells.

    The second is the few behaviors that have to change to get there. This is the part most leaders leave out, and it’s the part people can actually do on Monday. Some examples:

    • Every engagement starts with an AI-assisted scan of the whole landscape before anyone opens a document.
    • Every booking under ten nights goes to the support team, no exceptions, for ninety days.
    • Every proposal gets a second pass with the tool before it leaves the building.

    Keep both lists short. Three behaviors you can see are worth thirty that you can’t.

    And set a rhythm your team can absorb. One change at a time. Measure it, let it take root, then add the next. A steady monthly rhythm beats a big-bang rollout every time, because people can only carry so much change at once. Alison calls it cognitive load. I call it the difference between a team that’s learning and a team that’s drowning.

    Measure the outcome so you know it worked. Name the behavior so people know what to do.

    Step 4: Practice on purpose, and celebrate out loud

    Another line from Alison’s talk with the group: confidence drops before it rises.

    When you hand someone a new way of working, they feel clumsy at something they used to be good at. The researcher who’s great at interviews feels like a beginner in front of the tool. The relationship manager who could book a crew in her sleep now has to explain the job to someone else – and learn to trust them to do it. That dip is normal. Left alone, it’s also where people quit the change and go back to what has always worked.

    So don’t leave it alone. Four moves.

    • Make time for deliberate practice. Not a one-hour demo. Regular, protected time to use the new tools or processes on real work, with permission to be bad at it for a while. Pair your champion early adopters with the cautious. The researcher who found the 32-hour win can teach her technique in an afternoon, and that afternoon is worth more than any outside training.
    • Teach the techniques, and keep teaching them. Show people exactly how a win was made. What she asked. How she steered. Where she overrode the tool with her own judgment. Skill is what turns the fearful question “Can I keep up?” into “Oh, that’s all it is.”
    • Highlight the benefits and celebrate wins out loud, at every level. This is the CEO’s part, and it’s the part my client was nervous about. The 32-hour story only lands as a threat if it’s told as “look how fast.” Told as “look what we gave the client, and look what she didn’t have to spend her nights on,” it’s an invitation. Tell it so the hero is her judgment and the beneficiary is the customer. Then ask who wants to be the next story. Celebrate the people who are learning and sharing, not just the fastest.
    • Put it in the compensation. Make individual and departmental achievements against the metrics from step 3 part of how people get paid and promoted. What gets rewarded gets repeated. Team incentives work better than individual ones here, because they take the “you versus me” out of a change that already feels personal. Alison French puts recognition from direct leaders, celebration of small wins, and team incentives together under one word: reinforcement. Without it, old habits come back.

    And keep listening. Create regular moments for people to raise concerns and ideas, then act on what you hear. The questions from earlier in this paper don’t get asked once. They get asked every time something new arrives.

    What you celebrate, you get more of. What you pay for, you keep.

    Innovating on purpose

    Back to the CEO from the opening.

    He was worried about how a genuine win would land. I understand the worry. I also think he’s holding the best story his company has had all year, and the four steps tell him how to use it.

    Say the WHY: our clients deserve a strategy built on the whole landscape, and our people deserve to spend their hours on judgment. Hand the HOW to the team: which of our engagements should work this way next, and how? Pick the measures: hours per engagement, and one new behavior at the start of every project. Then practice it, teach it, and tell the story out loud, with the researcher as the hero and the client as the winner. Over time, let the people who make the next win see it in their paycheck.

    Do that, and the gap between his two groups stops widening. Not because the fearful group was argued out of their fear, but because they were handed a way through it.

    I believe business can be one of the most powerful forces for good in the world, and this moment doesn’t change that. If anything, it raises the stakes. Innovation is coming to your organization whether you lead it well or not. The question is whether you’ll lead it on purpose.

    Here’s one step for next week. Pick one place your customers wait on you. Gather the people who do that work and ask two questions: “If we did this in half the time, who could we serve better?” and “How would you do it?” Then let the people closest to the work lead the first try.

    What’s the innovation sitting on your desk right now?

    Who on your team is quietly asking if they’ll still matter?

    And have you told them the WHY, or just the what?

    Innovation isn’t something that happens to your organization. It’s something you choose, and something you lead.

    I’d love to hear what you’re choosing.

    If you’d like to work through this with other leaders, two ways to start. Explore joining the CEO peer group I lead, where a dozen CEOs work on exactly these decisions together every month. Or bring one real business problem to the next AI Lab for CEOs, a half day where you use AI on a challenge of your choosing and leave with a usable first draft. Either way, you won’t be innovating alone.

  • The Upside of Context Switching

    The Upside of Context Switching

    Why Should I Care?

    We always hear about the downside of context switching – almost always tied to trying to multitask. Our brains pay a certain cost of switching from one thing to another. Often, we’re willing to pay the small price of missing a few sentences of a TV show while we’re reading an email or posting on social media. But the cost becomes too high when we have to go back and do things over because we weren’t paying full attention to the task at hand, or worse, make a wrong decision that can’t be undone. That’s the bad.

    But a member of my peer advisory board reminded me this week of the good kind of context switching, and the upside can be quite positive when it’s done well.

    Good Context Switching

    Julie Herres, CEO of GreenOak Accounting, told me that she likes getting out of the office and coming to our Vistage meetings each month because it encourages her to step away from all of the day-to-day issues and think about the big picture and decisions that are still off in the future. Taking it further, she said:

    “Any executive who can’t take a day a month away from their business, they are not a leader.”

    And to paraphrase her further explanation:

    If you can’t get away, you’re a slave to your business. You’re not delegating well. You don’t have systems in place. You are working in a business that cannot scale.

    Julie’s comments reminded me of James Clear’s advice in Atomic Habits. He actually wrote a whole chapter on it: 6. Motivation is Overrated; Environment Often Matters More. There he shares a sort of “life hack” where you use an environment for only one purpose, and in that context create one or more cues for the habits that help you towards that goal. For example, bed is for sleeping. Don’t watch TV or play on your phone in bed so that the environment of your bed cues you to relax and go to sleep. James also talks about designing your environment to be distraction free. So, get junk food out of sight so you’re not tempted or cued to eat it all the time.

    Creating Context for Strategic Thinking

    Our monthly Vistage executive peer advisory meetings work in exactly these ways. Firstly, we have a meeting with other top executives that are thinking about issues at the same level. We talk about big decisions, global trends, organizational design, strategies, and other major issues. Being in the context of that group of people cues your brain to start thinking at that level. Secondly, we meet in a board room, away from laptops and other the distractions of work or home so we can focus on the important issues at hand and not the coworkers at the door or on instant messaging.

    By switching context into a focused environment where you have to think strategically and talk about high-level issues with others, you build a good habit of stepping away from working “in your business” and instead work “on your business” for at least one day a month. And of course, this can give you the clarity you need to set better priorities and focus on the most important things the other days of the month.

    And that is actually how Vistage pays for itself in time and money. It helps you work on the most important things in your business (and life), so you have more time to get the most valuable things done. You’ll almost certainly save more time and make back more money than invested.

    More Information

    If you like this topic, I highly recommend that you check out the following:

    This article was first published on LinkedIn. Read the original.

  • Vistage: A CEO’s proven system for better decisions and better results.

    Vistage: A CEO’s proven system for better decisions and better results.

    Find out how CEOs, business owners, and key executives are using peer advisory groups, executive coaching, and executive mentors to gain a competitive advantage. Visit www.vistage.com/how-vistage-works/overview-peer-advisory-group

    This article was first published on LinkedIn. Read the original.

  • Is this Imposter Syndrome?

    Is this Imposter Syndrome?

    The Conversation

    I was talking with a CEO of a good-sized company – roughly $400M in yearly revenue – about joining my CEO Peer Advisory Board.

    He asked about the financial investment required, which I shared, and he said something to the effect of, “That’s not insignificant.”

    Surprised, I laughed and said, “Really? You’d spend that in a heartbeat on someone in your executive team. Why is it an issue to spend money on your own leadership development?”

    Agreeing, he said, “Yeah, well, I was appointed by the Board to run this company, and they expect me to be capable of running it without me needing ‘development’.”

    Reflection

    I reflected on that surprising scenario and later shared it with my Vistage group. One of my peers said, “Wow! Is that a subtle form of Imposter Syndrome?” It hadn’t hit me that way until asked, but I think the answer is YES.

    Definition: Imposter syndrome is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents, or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.

    Now, I didn’t get the feeling from this CEO that he doubted his own skills or accomplishments. To the contrary, he came across as a confident and comfortable leader who only mentioned his background and accomplishments when I asked. He didn’t act like someone who had something to prove. But the fact that he was reluctant to expose to the Board of Directors who had appointed him that he might benefit from a leadership development program definitely says he’s not completely secure in his position, or at the very least still concerned with appearances. And, I do think that’s a subtle form of Imposter Syndrome.

    Food for Thought

    So, I ask you this question: If you’re an appointed CEO, President, MD, or COO running a company, are you always concerned about appearances and what your superiors might think of your interest in improving your leadership abilities? Is this a common malady?

    I do find that it’s easier for founders and majority owner CEOs to join my Executive Peer Advisory Board than for appointed and minority owners. You might think that the time and financial investment impacts them more directly and they’d be reluctant, but the flip side is that they can do the math and know that it will pay back an ROI well worth it – and that impacts them more.

    Now here’s the irony: Most company owners and board members have experienced their own leadership journeys. They know that having outside advisors and coaches can make a world of difference. In most cases, if a CEO asks a board or majority shareholder for permission to invest in themselves, the board will be all for it. I know this because I was a board member when a CEO asked, and we unanimously approved the investment. And that CEO turned around and pushed most of what he learned through coaching back into his executive leadership team and throughout the organization. In fact, that’s why I’m here today doing what I’m doing – helping leaders grow without learning everything the hard way.

    Afterward

    The CEO in my story didn’t join my group. But, one of his biggest competitors did.

    This article was first published on LinkedIn. Read the original.

  • Team Accountability and Trust Starts with You

    Team Accountability and Trust Starts with You

    In my coaching practice this week and in talking with CEOs/COOs/Presidents at large, I’ve heard repeatedly that their teams have a problem with following through on commitments. And, if I’m honest, I have a problem with the leaders that I talk to everyday flaking out on scheduled meetings and commitments, too. It’s enough to shake my faith in humanity when everyone is so flakey!

    My advice to all leaders is to foster a culture of accountability by first practicing and promoting personal integrity. As Stephen M.R. Covey says in The Speed of Trust, personal integrity is the foundation for building trust-based relationships. Before anyone we work with (or live with, for that matter) can trust us, we must practice personal integrity. And by personal integrity, I mean doing what you say you’re going to do and following through on commitments. If you schedule an appointment, you stick to it. If you say you’re going to get something done, you do it. There are always going to be exceptions, but those should be rare and explicitly communicated with respect, not dodged and ignored like something we’re ashamed of.

    Once you’ve mastered it, personal integrity and following through on your commitments become foundational in building trust within a team. When team members demonstrate personal integrity, they show that they are honest, reliable, and committed to the team’s goals and values. This, in turn, fosters an environment of trust and respect among team members.

    According to Forbes, accountability is necessary for team members to have high levels of trust and performance. Accountability builds team trust by enabling clear expectations, an environment where team members deliver on commitments, and a sense of accomplishment through delivering on goals.

    In addition to accountability, personal integrity is also crucial in building trust within a team. Personal integrity encompasses the moral principles one holds themselves to gain trust, show self-respect, and display a professional work ethic. And, integrity can help companies attract employees and customers.

    By following through on your commitments, you set the standard for your team and yourself. Without accountability for yourself as a leader, you’ll find it difficult to build trust among your employees as well. And if you build a culture of integrity and trust in your leadership team, they can promote it throughout the organization.

    In conclusion, personal integrity and following through on your commitments are the foundation of team trust. By fostering an environment of accountability and personal integrity, you can create a culture of trust that promotes collaboration and success.

    As it happens, my #Vistage group’s special guest speaker this month is talking to us about accountability as the key to driving high-performance culture. If you’d like to be a part of it, email me at Todd.Girvin@VistageChair.com.

    What are your thoughts on personal integrity and following through on commitments in teams? Share your insights in the comments below!

    This article was first published on LinkedIn. Read the original.

  • The Vistage Manifesto

    The Vistage Manifesto

    How My CEO Peer Advisory Group Can Make You More Agile

    In 2001, 17 delegates from the global software development community convened to formulate the “Agile Manifesto.” It might sound like a skull and crossbones secret society, but it’s the guiding principles for the Agile methodology to help teams deliver more value — the antidote to corporate rigidity and red tape.

    I’ll admit, I was skeptical at first. It felt like a formalization of what many of us developers had been doing well informally. We were bucking the structured, linear engineering approach to software development by meeting with customers, having conversations, and building, testing, and delivering what they needed iteratively. But once this manifesto sunk in, it was validating that our iterative and incremental processes had a formal stamp of approval. I felt relief that there was now a movement around a better way to build software. From there, I realized Agile is not just a better way to build software but a better way to run teams, organizations, and even companies. As a software developer turned CEO and executive coach, it permeates nearly everything I do now.

    The Agile Mindset

    I’m struck by how many businesses still have very linear processes. When a deliverable hits a milestone or meets certain criteria, it gets moved to the next department and, with that, it suffers a context transfer. Once it reaches a particular stage, it goes up for review and feedback. Linearization of the process is a recipe for failure and introduces risk because you’re not evaluating, reviewing, and learning along the way. If things change, such as a deadline or a budget, you might scrap the whole thing and lose all the value. Agile methods allow us to proceed in a much more interactive and incremental way, where we’re creating and retaining value all along — even if the work product is never delivered, perhaps somebody can use it for subsequent work or even in other parts of the business.

    I hear it nearly every day as a Vistage Chair, CEO coach, when executives tell me they have difficulty communicating priorities or their people don’t know how to delegate. Some CEOs try to take on too many things, while others say they can never take a break. In either case, if you don’t have your organization structured and processes defined well, you can’t be confident that your business will keep running smoothly if you step away.

    Before becoming a Vistage chair, I was part of 11 startups and founder of four, including one ongoing success called Improving. The original mission of this technology consultancy and training organization was to bring the “Agile mindset” to the software development world, especially corporate IT. We started by teaching software developers to use these methods, such as responding to change and collaborating — eventually working our way up to their managers, department heads, and the whole C-suite. With CEOs, we found ourselves talking about how the entire company could be more agile if they took advantage of the values and principles already implemented lower down in IT departments. We led executives through Agile practices in actions such as planning, strategy, budget cycles, and delivering value to the customer. We even created an Agile-centric conference and used Agile practices to deliver it in multiple cities for many years.

    Using Agile practices on non-technical work was my foundation for applying it to other businesses and large organizations as a transformational coach. The pinnacle was working with a large government contractor doing business development. We helped them take customer relationships and RFPs and convert them into proposals built incrementally from pieces and parts used before. We would review along the way until it reached a sufficient quality, or we hit the time limit, doing away with stage gates while keeping important quality reviews. Agile methodologies made a world of difference in framework, structure, and monetary outcome.

    Smooth Operator

    During my monthly one-to-ones and Vistage group meetings, I reflect on the Agile teachings and how they may help us now. It’s a privilege to share my experience with the methodology — not only my successes and mistakes but the challenges faced by (and overcome by) others — to help CEOs deliver on their missions. It can be as fundamental as creating a prioritized list of initiatives. That alone allows executives to delegate downward, decide what not to do, and figure out when to outsource. As 2024 shapes up to be another year of economic uncertainty and change, here are some ways in which Agile tenets can help my Vistage members carry on:

    Open communication. Agile principles emphasize the importance of clear and open communication, up and down the chain, to pave the way for significant business decisions. It’s being honest and transparent about requirements, priorities, what you’re working on, and the progress you’re making, to name a few. In Vistage, we provide a confidential forum for you to share challenges among non-competing executive peers and get clarification to bring more concise communication back to your organization. You emerge from a peer group conversation with a vision statement about your company, a project, or why you’re restructuring or hiring a particular person — whatever issue is pressing you that month. Vistage helps you clarify your vision of where you want to go, align with your purpose and mission, and understand how it affects the organization to communicate it more clearly.

    Frequent feedback. Another Agile principle promotes regular feedback loops and retrospectives to assess progress and make process improvements. Getting a financial report at the end of a quarter is too slow to make real-time business decisions. Having metrics in place that allow for 360-degree feedback and early alerts is crucial. Vistage members benefit from CEO peer observations to refine their leadership style and decision-making. A Vistage meeting provides a safe and confidential space to receive and process constructive feedback, particularly compelling from diverse industry perspectives that help you arrive at an action plan. After processing Vistage members’ complex issues of dealing with a toxic personality or needing to expand into a new marketplace, I always ask what value they got out of it. The feedback is always a ” I got more than I ever expected — I’ve got a plan to move ahead now.”

    Adaptability and Flexibility. How often have we heard, “Well, that’s how we’ve always done it.” That mentality is the antithesis of Agile. An Agile mindset emphasizes the ability to adapt to change quickly. One of my Vistage members recently went through an acquisition and never forced process changes on either side of the merged organization. I’m encouraging them to promote small changes more frequently, such as regularly updating software and automated workflow. Then, it becomes less scary and part of the culture for more significant changes and improvements. Minor changes set the stage for bigger changes. If a new technology or market dynamic comes along and you’re not ready, you’re the victim. Then change happens to you. But if you’re ready and light on your feet, change becomes an opportunity. If you can respond faster than your competition, then every unexpected or unpredictable thing becomes an opportunity — that’s what an Agile organization does.

    The Smart Work Together

    When I reflect on my career as a software developer, instructor, coach, and executive — my greatest success stories were always with others involved. You learn a lot through bumps and bruises when you go it alone. However, I became a Vistage Chair to help CEOs avoid those bumps and bruises and lead with the confidence that they’re doing the right thing. I live for those a-ha moments, lifting uncertainty that might hold you back.

    Being a Vistage Chair is the pragmatic application of my two personalities — my communicative social side and my engineering-oriented, problem-solving side.

    The Agile Manifesto maintains that people should always be valued over process. Similarly, Vistage approaches the CEO as a whole person, not just the leader at the top of the organization’s hierarchy.

    Let’s see if we’re a fit.

    If Vistage sounds like something you’d like to explore and you’re based in D.C., Maryland, or Virginia, I love to connect with new people and cultivate a meaningful professional network. Please reach out here on LinkedIn or by email to Todd.Girvin@VistageChair.com.

    This article was first published on LinkedIn. Read the original.