Taking the lead with purpose:
Consulting for a global group

What do we bring into the world in our role? Consulting case of managers working for an international group in the context of Neuwaldegg’s purpose and strategy consulting.

Preparing managers for disruptions

A global group gathers mana­gers from all over the world to prepare them for the leap into top manage­ment. What sounds like normal manage­ment deve­lo­p­ment at first is intended to make a very specific contri­bu­tion to prepa­ring the manage­ment team for major uphe­avals: hybrid orga­ni­sa­tion, busi­ness model inno­va­tion, agility, disrup­tion and Enter­prise 2.0 deter­mine the internal discus­sions and plan­ning. And top manage­ment is serious: if you want to have a career, you need to be fit here and be able to act in this kind of context.

Bringing the VUCA world to life

Toge­ther with those respon­sible for the group, we develop a programme for around 150–180 mana­gers per year. In smaller groups, they develop new skills to make the orga­ni­sa­tion more agile, to further develop busi­ness models and manage­ment prac­tice through various modules using simu­la­tions, lear­ning jour­neys and input from us. One ques­tion crops up more and more frequently and becomes more important: What do we want to bring into the world? It’s clear to many: without purpose, the VUCA world lacks drive and orien­ta­tion. At the end of the lear­ning journey, ever­yone should ther­e­fore come toge­ther and explore the purpose of their leader­ship work within the scope of a major event.

Finding purpose within the scope of a major event

In a small team we develop a concept on how we can work with 180 people from all over the world on the purpose of their roles. When the major event starts, the first thing to do is for ever­yone to get to know each other and to collect and share the lessons learned from the previous lear­ning journey. The next day we will then fully immerse ourselves in the subject of purpose. In small groups of eight to nine people, we let the parti­ci­pants talk about their personal expe­ri­ences first, about moments when they were parti­cu­larly proud to work as mana­gers at this company. The stories show what “leader­ship at its best” stands for. Stories that find great reso­nance among the group members are then shared again with ever­yone in the plenary session. What emerged was over­whel­ming. More than a dozen fasci­na­ting, touching and enter­tai­ning stories were presented in the plenary. In the end, there were still some stories untold, but the room was charged with inspi­ra­tion and pride in their own orga­ni­sa­tion.
After­wards we went back into the groups. We asked them to filter the specific contri­bu­tions that leader­ship had made for others from their stories. These were recorded as verbs and “action phrases”, each captu­ring the essence of the contri­bu­tions, and projected onto a screen as a word cloud of the contri­bu­tions from all groups. Trust, purpose, inspire, team and people were most frequently mentioned and briefly reflected upon in the plenary session.
In the next round, the mana­gers then went in search of the state­ments hidden in the stories about their effects: What diffe­rence did leader­ship make for the employees, teams or clients in the stories? Satis­fac­tion, auto­nomy and trust, but also commit­ment, perfor­mance, pride and empower­ment were common.
The groups could then create a purpose state­ment from the terms they found and visua­lise it as a banner using coloured card­board. As a result, 21 purpose state­ments were suddenly hanging in the room after about four hours of work­shops. They were evaluated by the parti­ci­pants using a mode­ra­tion tool. Right at the front of the pack: “Inspi­ring people to create a better tomorrow” and “Empowe­ring teams for inspired solutions”.

Energised Purpose

Working with 180 mana­gers from all over the world on the purpose of their leader­ship role initi­ally seemed very chal­len­ging. How can a purpose process be desi­gned within the scope of a major event, which on the one hand opens and ener­gises but also produces an outcome that provides moti­va­tion and orien­ta­tion in ever­yday manage­ment? We succeeded in doing so with the process described above. In addi­tion, the mana­gers were able to use their own expe­ri­ence from the event to promote purpose work in their areas with the help of minor adjus­t­ments. And other mana­gers who were not there also became curious and asked: “How did you do that?”

Michael Moeller

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