Achieving more with less

Achieving more with less

I’m curious about the current climate and how leaders are having to achieve more with less. For some of us, we may have had to reduce our team recently while still trying to navigate the way forward. For others, it’s been about changing direction which may have increased the workload, but you still need to get through with either the numbers of employees you had, or less. Regardless of the reason for how we got here – the reality for a lot of us is the need for more with less, it’s as simple as that.

I was talking with a leader the other day who mentioned that his team is now having to be a bit more agile, each person is maybe having to wear a few more hats and take on additional areas of responsibility to help the business move from survival mode through to thriving and achieving the results they want.

It’s in these challenging moments that, as leaders, we are digging deep to not only get the best out of our people, but to also bring the best of ourselves to the fore every day. This can be tough sometimes, so if it’s feeling a bit hard at the moment, just know, you’re not the only one feeling that way.

So, what to do?

There’s no doubt about it, we are all on a bit of a journey at the moment to get things back on track or to a place where we want them to be. It’s funny isn’t it, when you look back to what you thought was challenging in January and February this year to what we are trying to wade through now – talk about perspective! Now more than ever, we need to lead with impact.

So, some of us may be feeling a bit overwhelmed and we might be getting a bit frustrated because things aren’t working the way we would like them too. It was Albert Einstein who said, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”. If your leadership is feeling a bit like this, now is a great opportunity to gain some awareness around how you are doing your leadership – your inner game – to see how you can shift the dial to see some different results.

Once we are armed with this awareness of how we are playing our ‘inner game’ it’s decision time. Do we accept that the way we have been doing things has gotten us the results of the past and, that’s not what will help us get to where we want or need to be now? Once leaders make this decision, the focus shifts to the ‘outer game’, working with our team, impacting the culture of our organisation or increasing engagement and productivity which will ultimately increase results.

Leaders who do well in this space have figured out what their strengths are, what their de-railing behaviours or blind spots are, and they know what they value and are passionate about. Armed with this knowledge they then get clarity on everything that is on their plate or ‘to do’ list; they focus in on the things that really matter and will shift the dial on performance; they take consistent action so they and their teams are in a better place and achieving the results they need.

When we look at the above, we think that sounds easy and at a logical level it is, if we can see past the blind spots we have. Therein lies the opportunity. We need to disrupt our old patterns of thinking and behaving and we can’t always do that for ourselves – this is why people don’t achieve some of their goals, they keep coming back to their ‘old way’ of thinking and doing.

The leaders who notice that they need to do things differently and take action to remedy this will be the leaders who will thrive and hit the target every time.

There’s no question it’s tough out there at the moment and a huge number of people have been impacted. Our key challenge now is to do what we can to get things back on track so we can stimulate our economy and get back to a place where everyone gets back to doing the work they love.

So I’m curious, what have you had to change in your leadership to adapt to what is required now?

Lead with impact,