Adding Value in the C Suite

Visionary leaders drive growth

Published: Monday, June 20, 2016 - 13:32

For top executives to add value to their organizations, those in the C suite must learn how to recruit, train, nurture, maintain, and retain exceptional employees who understand customers. If an organization wants to not just survive, but also succeed, it must anticipate its customers’ needs and adjust its direction and momentum accordingly. A successful company does that by fulfilling customer requirements and desires more effectively than the competition. Becoming an anticipatory organization guided by visionary leadership is essential for growth.

If you don’t have the internal resources to identify and enhance these value-added executive qualities, it’s worth the investment to reach out to someone who can assist you in the executive leadership enhancement process. Hopefully, your C suite is staffed with intelligent, motivated people who are experts in their specific areas of responsibility. However, that alone is no longer enough if you want to stand out as a value-added organization.

Ask yourself a few questions about your team, or even be brave enough to participate in a team leadership assessment. Take a strong look at your organization’s culture. There are professional assessment tools available to assist in unraveling this cultural puzzle. Research suggests that numerous outcomes have been associated either directly or indirectly with organizational culture. A change in culture can’t guarantee success, but empirical data suggest that a positive and collaborative organizational culture can give your company a competitive edge derived from innovation and great customer service. Other benefits are team cohesiveness, increased and consistent employee performance, increased morale, and an improved work ethic. The team is driven toward greater alignment with the company’s vision.

Each member of the C suite must understand what it means to be a visionary leader. Team members have to be a part of the vision and be driven by a core mission. Vision in business requires that you clearly see where you want and need to be in the future, and anticipate what you must do to get your organization there. Creating and sustaining a vision for an organization calls for discipline, creativity, and not being afraid to think outside the box. Just reflect briefly on a few of our visionary leaders of the past hundred years: Walt Disney, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Mother Theresa, and Henry Ford, to name a few. They all thought outside the box, but I didn’t even have to tell you who they were or what their companies or accomplishments were. Why? Because their visions became realities, and the way they did/do business positively affected the world.

Your leaders have to be effective communicators, both verbally and with the written word. In addition, through their actions both within the organization and in the community, your leaders must demonstrate what it means to live and lead a value-driven life. Employees take great pride in knowing that their bosses aren’t just respected at work but in their own communities as well.

Value-added leaders must understand what it means to be anticipatory, especially as you create your strategic plan or your roadmap to success. According to Daniel Burrus, a technological futurist, “To thrive in this new age of hyper-change and growing uncertainty, it is now an imperative to learn a new competency—how to accurately anticipate the future.

“This may seem impossible, but it’s not. The future is there for you to see when you know where and how to look for it. And when you and your employees master this skill, you’ll be able to create what I call an anticipatory organization,” says Burrus. “I have developed a way of separating what I call hard trends from soft trends. A hard trend is a projection based on measurable, tangible, and fully predictable facts, events, or objects. It’s something that will happen: a future fact that cannot be changed. In contrast, a soft trend is a projection based on statistics that have the appearance of being tangible, fully predictable facts. It’s something that might happen.”

These are all common-sense traits and talents, but sometimes we put them aside and don’t polish these gems of success. It’s easy to get caught in the trap of what is due today and not concentrate on what will make tomorrow a brighter day for you and the organization, including the people who support your mission. This is the team that will help you realize your vision. Invest in the development of value-added service and the people who can anticipate how to make that happen.

About The Author

Barry Plunkett

Barry Plunkett provides operations and management consulting to HORNE LLP clients. Plunkett works with companies to facilitate strategic and long range planning and create initiatives that ensure excellence in healthcare operations and in other arenas. Plunkett is a frequent speaker at local, regional, and national meetings, focusing on current trends in healthcare product development and marketing, and how today’s hospitals and healthcare delivery systems can partner with physicians and their communities.