War Councils (IOD GLOBAL – CV19 #3)

While we learn to trust people who have largely been led before, yet need less direction now, it is time to consider engaging even more with those closest to us organisationally as well as domestically.
At home, patterns of connection (and the importance and quality of those patterns) are evolving. Exercise, eating, socialising and more need to find their natural flow.
With work colleagues, weekly management meetings may need to become daily, even if they are shorter for the time being. We are finding new patterns.  At a time like this, they should never be ‘mandatory’ though if someone doesn’t make it they go to the top of our personal welfare call list.
And the definition of who ‘attends’ these meetings changes.   We invite other people who have strengths we might want to tap into but are perhaps underrepresented at present.
We are establishing, for want of a better analogy, ‘war councils’. As the new form of the senior leadership team takes shape, so should the teams that report into it, and so on.  The HR team, the operations team, the finance team, the marketing team and so on – each can reconfigure now for maximum impact when they are needed most.
Indeed, is it time to have a daily ‘war council’ at home?
Dr. Graham Wilson is an executive confidant and part-time Tutor in Psychology and Counselling at the University of Oxford where he leads their Coaching Programmes. He was awarded the Distinguished Fellowship of the IOD in 1993.

This is one of a series of posts that are also appearing on the Institute of Directors Global Blog (blog.iodglobal.com)

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