Why Focus On The Strengths In Your Ecosystem?
Neil Samuels
The strategy of prospering BY forging a better world can be full of white water. A high performing, adaptive set of paddlers is needed. One key to this is everyone knowing each other’s strengths and everyone using their strengths.
With that in mind, which raft better reflects the working relationships you have with stakeholders in your business ecosystem raft today? Is it the one on the top, thriving in the water, in which everyone is fully absorbed in the task, and working in sync to enable a safe smooth journey no matter what challenges the river throws up? If so, count yourself fortunate. AGILITY in the face of turbulence of turbulence is a huge asset to any organization
Like the river, your business environment is full of unexpected rapids. And when all the people in your raft (both your organization and the organizations of your stakeholders) are bringing the best of their strengths to bear on “running the river” successfully, then chances of adapting effectively to every new rapid are substantially increased.
Is there evidence for this? Yes! Let’s start with the numbers. According to the Gallup Organization’s State of the American Workplace report, teams leveraging their strengths every day generates a 17% improvement in productivity, a 21% increase in profitability.
What underpins the numbers?
Research by Marcus Buckingham indicates that while corporate cultures vary by country and industry, our most powerful human need at work is to discover our strengths and to use them frequently. Trying to take advantage of new business opportunities with a mindset of reasons why we cant generates fatigue, blame, and resistance. Identifying, magnifying, and connecting the strengths and capabilities of your organization and its ecosystem partners moves us to a “how might we” mindset. This creates performance that resembles the raft on the right.
If your “ecosystem raft” resembles the one on the left—in which paddlers are not combining their strengths in smart ways. then of the ten people in your raft, three are pulling with all their might, six are paddling gently while admiring the canyon walls, and two are poking holes in the sides creating unresponsiveness. Can your ecosystem raft really afford that in today’s world?
The strategy of Co-Creating Mutual Value is a way to prosper. It is rooted in our practice of approaching any challenge by asking questions like:
- What are we good at, what resources do we have?
- What are others good at and what resources do they have?
- If we combined our strengths and resources, what might we accomplish?
We leave you with this thought: The ageless task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make the system’s weaknesses irrelevant. —Peter Drucker, Father of Modern Management
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