Leveraging Leadership

Turning Tactical Requests Into Visionary Department Plans

• Emily Sander • Season 1 • Episode 216

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Emily shares a story about someone who gave their boss a basic org chart when asked about their department’s future, but missed the bigger picture the boss wanted. She explains how to shift from being just a task-doer to a strategic leader by connecting department changes to the company’s new vision, outlining system upgrades, communication plans, and several org chart options that align with that vision. Emily encourages thinking beyond simple answers and looking for ways to add value at a higher level.


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Who Am I?

If we haven’t yet before - Hi👋 I’m Emily, Chief of Staff turned Executive Leadership Coach. After a thrilling ride up the corporate ladder, I’m focusing on what I love - working with people to realize their professional and personal goals. Through my videos here on this channel, books, podcast guest spots, and newsletter, I share new ideas and practical and tactical tools to help you be more productive and build the career and life you want. 

 

Time Stamps:

00:25 Introduction: From Doer to Strategic Leader
01:53 Understanding the Boss's Request
04:01 Context and Company Background
05:34 Revisiting the Org Chart
06:40 Vision Casting for the Future
09:21 Implementing the Vision
11:44 The Difference Between Tactical and Strategic Thinking
16:31 Encouraging Strategic Leadership
18:29 Conclusion and Takeaways

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Here's an example of going from a tactical operational doer to a high level strategic leader. So here's the example. I was speaking with this individual, and this individual had received a request from their boss, and their boss had said, Hey, so and so, tell me what you want your org to look like. And so the individual. Went and prepared a very well designed and professional looking org chart on a slide deck and gave that back to the boss. And from the boss's overall response and reaction, it was clear that that wasn't quite what the boss was looking for, so then this individual and I were speaking and it became apparent that the org chart, while not wrong, was not the fulsome answer. The boss was looking for context for this. There were conversations before and around this request that made it apparent that the boss wasn't just asking for an org chart, so the context and the conversations were this boss came in and was trying to overhaul. This company, because the company was kind of archaic, old processes, old systems, old tools, stuck in an old mindset, very reactive. And this new boss was brought in to make this company cutting edge, to be at the forefront of the industry, to incorporate AI into what they were doing, to be a thought leader and to not be as reactive. And so the boss was going through to all the different main departments and saying. What do you need to revamp and overhaul and how, you know, tell me what you need to get us to that cutting edge. And all these very senior leaders were putting together proposals and going through all these different contingency plans and how this would interact with these teams and how this would interact with the other players in the market, et cetera, et cetera. And so the boss had gone through two main teams before this individual's team. And so when they got to this individual and said, what do you want your org to look like? And the individual gave them an org chart. It was kinda like head, head tilt, like, mm, what? No, no, I, I wanted a bit more from that. So in this individual's mind, it was, well, what do you want this org to look like? In kind of a literal sense was here's the org chart. I don't really think anything needs to change, per se,'cause it seems to be working okay now was kind of the gist and kind of the sentiment of the answer of the response. And in the discussion with this individual, I said, okay, let's think bigger picture, because I think a different question is being asked here. I think an org chart is part of the answer, but certainly not the entire answer. So we talked about. What is the vision for the overall company? This boss has a new vision for the company, and we talked about that, which was very well stated in, in presentations, in different meetings this individual had been in. And so this was pretty, this was pretty, you know, cutting edge AI thought leadership out in the industry. We're responding to our customers in a different way. We're responding to each other in a different way. All these different things that had been said. Okay, so the, to the individual, individual, how does your department feed into that vision? What does your department need to do to contribute to that vision and this specific department? Had a lot of interaction with the other teams and they were, uh, feeding the other teams a lot of information and then asking, receiving a lot of information from the other teams to assimilate that and produce data sets that the leadership team and the board could look at that were useful. And so this was, this was kind of the behind the scenes machine that had a lot of valuable intel and information if you collected and then. Sliced and diced data in different data sets for different constituents and groups to take action on. So this was a very powerful team. If, if it was done right and. We talked about connecting it to the overall vision of the company. We talked about the interaction that would be had with the other teams. We talked about the, you know, the vision for this department. What does it look like? What does it smell like? What does it, you know, taste like, all these different things. What does it sound like when you walk through the, this area of the. Of the building, what is, what should it sound like? All these different things. Just to paint the picture here. And this got us to a more robust and vibrant, okay, here's what we needed to be. And I had to nudge this person and kind of pull this out of the person.'cause this person had been there for quite some time and they were a little bit stuck in the old, archaic way of doing things. Well Emily, we can't do that.'cause this is how these teams work together. It is now, but in the new vision, what does that look like? Uh, you know what, what needs to happen with this data set? Well, we can't pull that.'cause this system's old. It doesn't do that with the data. Okay. It doesn't do that now. But how can we do that in the future? If you could do anything with the data, what would that look like? And we went through an exercise of let's capture what's happening in the current state, And then let's vision cast the future state, which I think is what the boss is asking around what's the future state? What's the ideal state? If you could have anything for your department, what would that be? Because it's kind of a catalyst carte blanche moment right here. Maybe not like to, you know, billions of dollars, you know, to fund your department and all the changes, but it looks like there's some fresh blood here. It looks like there's some opportunities to ask for what you want. So create that vision for yourself and for your department. And when we did that, then this larger conversation and this larger vision, then informed. Multiple pieces of the answer and of the recommendation back to the boss. Some of it was updating systems and tools like, look, this thing is old and ancient. There are dozens of other systems and software that we could move to. It'll take an initiative. It'll take at least a quarter, if not two, to move all of our information over to this new one, but it's well worth it. That's the baseline. There was talk about, Hey, we need a communication plan for this team to be talking to other teams while we're all moving. Right? Everything's moving. We're all trying to revamp and overhaul our respective teams and departments. We don't want anything to get. To get dropped. So an interim communication plan was proposed as well. So like let's just keep in touch, like we're gonna do manual, keep in touches before we get this stuff automated. But as we roll this stuff out, we don't want anything to drop. And then part of that answer was indeed the org structure. So to support the new vision and like what this department could do and how it could thrive, and how it could be robust and what kind of amazing data we can inform our internal folks with, we can inform external vendors and constituents with. That would be really useful and valuable. From that, informed by that we do indeed need to do a reorg. And in this case we, you know, we're talking about pods versus functional areas. Do we wanna make this function into actual two roles? So then we split people off into those two functions. There were different contingency plans and options for, Hey, here's option A, B, and C for the org chart. I recommend option A for these reasons, but there's other ways to do this as well. I wanted to get those on the table. All of these three, option A, B, and C are in support of this new vision for where I think the department needs to be to support the overall company's goal and objective. So can you see the difference? Can you hear the difference of what do you want your org to look like? Here's the org chart. Versus Here's the vision for the department. If we're going this direction as a company, I'm so excited because this department has been underutilized. We can do this, this, and this. Here's what it would take to do that. I think out of the seven things that I would love to do, I know we can't do all of them now. I would pick these two, like if you can give me three, I can get you this. So saying, if you give me this and this and this. I will get you this part of the vision that is the conversation, that is the answer that I think this boss was looking for. Part of that was the recommendations for the new system and the new org structure and the interim communication process. But just handing this person, just handing the boss an org chart, Was not the high level strategic answer. It was an org chart, which is needed at some level, at some stage of this thing. But, but it, it wasn't, it was, it was a task. It was check, check. I have it on my to-do list to deliver this thing to the boss. I got it off my list. Now it's done. That's tactical. The larger conversation and connecting the dots is where the strategy piece comes in, is where you add value as a strategic leader. And part of this too, a big part of this for this individual was they were used to getting a more specific ask. If someone wanted something, they would detail, I want it like this. I'm looking for this, this, and this. It needs to be this, not that. Make sure you don't do that. They, they put parameters and put kind of guideposts around it. In this case, it was more like you tell me. You tell me what it should look like. That is also a big jump from tactical operational doer. I complete tasks to, oh. You want me to paint the outline of what this department should look like or could look like, or what I think it should look like? Right. That's a different, that's a whole different animal. It's not, I'm giving you the box. Fill the box. It's like you tell me the box, you tell me the parameters. Oh, okay. That takes more thought. That's not a check. Check. Cross off my list. That takes like, think about it, like where do you see the department? Where do you think it could get to? Where do you think it could add the most value? And maybe you're not doing that today. Maybe it's a brand new way to add value. So what can you conceive of? What can you imagine? What's your vision for your department that's higher level thinking? Right? And then they gotta back into and reverse engineer into, okay, how do we make this thing happen? Which does include tactical and practical things. Which does include operationalizing that strategy. So you have to have both. Sometimes you delegate, sometimes you do it yourself. There is that component, but first and foremost is the larger question, is connecting the dots is going okay. The boss has basically given me a blank slate and a blank check for what I wanna do with this department. I'm not just gonna hand them an org chart, I'm gonna have this larger conversation and. This individual ended up having conversations with their team, so their direct reports like, Hey, like what is your vision? What are your ideas? Having it at their level.'cause they're closer to some of the things. on a day-to-day level than this individual. And then incorporating and kind of sizzling all of that into, okay, and here's what I was thinking about and here's what I've heard the boss say. And here's what I've seen other people do when they're overhauling their departments. And here's some conversations I had with some other leadership team members over on the side here. I'm taking this all in, I'm taking the best parts of it. I'm discarding what's not useful. I am, I'm formulating this fulsome robust, vibrant answer. And then delivering that to the boss. And then maybe as a later part of that conversation, or maybe even a subsequent conversation, or maybe even 4, 5, 6, 7 conversations down the line, it becomes, and here's the specific or chart. Do you hear the difference? Do you see the difference? And sometimes it's interesting people go, Emily. They just don't see me as a strategic leader. They don't take me seriously. And sometimes that's on them. That's external reasoning, but sometimes it's because you are answering the question with an org chart, you're answering the question in a small way. It's not wrong, it's not inaccurate per se, but it's not the full answer. And a lot of times, bosses and people are looking for, oh, she gets it. She gets the big picture. She gets what we're trying to do. Oh, he's able to make that jump. He's able to say, we're firefighting this stuff right now, but in 18 months we've gotta get here. And I have ideas about how to get there. He does that, he's gonna come up and be a high level leader at this company. There's a difference. So I think think through for yourself, think through in the next week, in the next month, where can you be answering some questions in a more fulsome way versus just the, here's the org chart. And, and the org chart is symbolic in the sense of the small answer. So if you think back, you, maybe you can think backward too, in the last week, in the last month. Or even last quarter, like, oh, you know what? That's what was happening last quarter when I gave'em this thing. And they were kind of like, okay, whatever. We'll take that and then we'll come up with the answer ourselves. I guess that's kind of what was happening there. I didn't give'em the full answer. What might have that full answer look like? Can I do a follow up now or is it maybe too late? If it's too late? Okay. Going forward when I get these opportunities again. When I get these questions or requests or prompts again, how can I answer in a more fulsome way? How can I tie that to the big picture? Alright, so that can be your takeaway in the next week, in the next month for you. Keep an eye out, look for opportunities to move from a tactical operational doer to a more high level strategic leader. And one way to do that is to answer in a more fulsome way and put the big picture in place. Alright, hopefully that was helpful and I'll catch you next week on leveraging leadership.