“Update now or risk losing access to your company’s systems and services.” Executives have likely seen this kind of message regularly sent to their company-issued mobile phone or computer. And when it pops up, they know exactly what it means and why: upgrading a device’s operating system can help protect it against bugs or unlock new features for more effectiveness.
As a leader, updates to your own operating system can be just as critical—if not more so. Your operating system—what we call your personal operating model—defines the way you get work done and ultimately determines your impact. This system comprises the choices you make about your priorities, the roles you choose to play, how you spend your time, and how you sustain your energy.
There are many inflection points in your life when you will need to review and upgrade your personal operating model: at career milestones, such as starting a new role, moving to a different location, or beginning a second term as CEO; when facing new realities for your company, such as a major business transformation, a new strategy, a new organizational structure, a drop in employee engagement, or a new return-to-office policy; or when adjusting personal priorities in the face of issues such as health challenges, relationship changes, or urgent family needs.
But unlike push notifications from electronic devices, the signals to upgrade your personal operating model can be drowned out by daily noise. There is no mandate to change your operating model at various inflection points. For leaders, push notifications must be generated from within.
We have worked with a range of senior leaders across industries and geographies, providing one-on-one coaching during business transformations and in leadership development programs. These conversations reveal that in high-stakes settings, the leaders who are most effective at driving change are vigilant about adapting their personal operating model.
One technology CEO led a turnaround for his new company by taking up the mandate to foster a more performance-driven culture. A leader at a professional-services firm improved collaboration among newly acquired companies by making it his visible personal priority. An insurance CEO boosted engagement with his team by, counterintuitively, establishing clear boundaries around his time. Another leader in the insurance industry increased his energy and productivity by establishing new healthy habits.
Other leaders can reap similar benefits. In this article, we explore the four drivers of the personal operating model, critical questions associated with each, and best practices for building and maintaining such models at both the individual and organizational levels. Making space to regularly reflect on and adapt your personal operating model is a keystone habit for executives. Often, enlisting an accountability partner is critical to ensure that you step back and make the right changes. Leaders who continually upgrade their personal operating model report being more productive, working more consciously, and driving change more effectively.
The four drivers of the personal operating model
The personal operating model consists of four drivers: priorities, roles, time, and energy. Depending on the professional and personal circumstances executives face, these can be either a drain on productivity or a source of personal resilience (see sidebar, “The four drivers of the personal operating model”). As new realities emerge, leaders need to continually question their approaches to managing each of these elements.
Assess your priorities
Effective leadership begins with defining clear priorities—the work to be done, the highest-impact problems to be solved, and the biggest opportunities to be pursued. To help sharpen their priority setting, leaders can consider the following questions.
Do you fully understand your mandates?
Our work with leaders in high-stakes transformations has demonstrated that clear priorities must be grounded in a deep understanding of what your stakeholders expect from you and where you may be overshooting or underdelivering on those expectations, whether deliberately or not.
Start by identifying those stakeholders who can directly affect, or who are directly affected by, the actions and outcomes you envision. Internal stakeholders might include the board of directors, senior leadership colleagues, and certain employee groups. External stakeholders may include shareholders, top customers, critical partners or suppliers, regulators, or activist nongovernmental organizations.
Second, reflect on how clearly you understand your stakeholders’ implicit or explicit mandate. Try to understand their minimum and maximum expectations for the change you intend to make. In our experience, change leaders often don’t set ambitious enough plans, because they worry that some stakeholders will oppose their ideas.
The third step is the most difficult: deciding which mandates you will fill and fail, and how to be clear about your plans. As Harvard University scholars Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky have noted, “Leadership can be understood, in part, as disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb.”1
For example, a new CEO took the helm at an Asian telecommunications company that was known for its harmonious culture. He thought the company needed to shift to a performance-driven approach to improve results, but he was hesitant to implement this change and be seen as the newcomer who “broke” the culture. However, his perspective shifted after conversations with the leadership team and employee representatives. They shared that a culture change was long overdue, and they expected the new CEO to make it happen. This clear mandate provided the backing he needed to propel culture shifts in the organization. READ MORE
By Arne Gast with Suchita Prasad
Source: mckinsey.com
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