#132 - How to recharge the connection between leadership and teams

Joubin Rahimi

Great to have you back for a new episode of insights! My name is Joubin Rahimi and today joining: Kevin Behrens. Hello Kevin.

Kevin Behrens

Hi, great that I get to be part of this. This is huge.

Joubin Rahimi

You're also one of the Fellows. You're even wearing the polo shirt for it. You're one of the Strategy Fellows with us, within TIMETOACT GROUP, but within catworkx you're Lead Architect.

Kevin Behrens

Right.

Joubin Rahimi

Let me ask you two, three things: What is a lead architect and what's your role?

Kevin Behrens

Exactly, I'm our lead architect for enterprise strategy and planning. That means the focus is mainly on both the methodological process side and tooling support with Atlassian tools. Ultimately, it's about how I actually get from my strategy to an executable implementation.

Joubin Rahimi

And in the pre-chat, Kevin and I naturally talked a bit about the topic, and you said you're good with tech, but much better with people.

Kevin Behrens

Exactly, I can... That's usually the interface. So people are actually the central topic. How do I implement topics? That has to be done by people. People also work with the tools, people work together, people achieve results. That's actually the central topic, really the people.

Joubin Rahimi

And since you're constantly with clients right now, what things do you notice that keep coming up, where you say that seems to be the current topic?

Kevin Behrens

That's actually the case right now, when I'm active at management level, we have a lot of remote work. That means a lot of work is done with tools. People sit less close together and can't talk about topics directly. That means tool-side support is often in the foreground.

Joubin Rahimi

So the coffee chats and so on by the coffee machine.

Kevin Behrens

Exactly, you very rarely have this informal exchange nowadays. Mostly it's very tool-supported by now. And what I then see, of course, is this disconnect between management or leadership and the actual implementation, all the people who also produce the value.

Joubin Rahimi

And where do you see the difference, or where's the divergence?

Kevin Behrens

That's actually the issue, that management leadership on one side says: "Okay, what's our strategy really? Where do we see ourselves as a company, with our services, with our products, in 5 to 10 years?", and then ultimately break the strategy down, often described as strategic fields of action, and then say: What are the goals behind that? What are the measures? How could we get there? And then I also have my teams who are in day-to-day business, in development, and there's simply a disconnect. The teams often don't know: What are the real strategic goals? Am I working on the right topics right now? And of course also the feedback loop, so management sees again: Am I getting the right results reflected back? Are we working with the teams on the highest-priority topics? Are we making the right progress? With goals there are always two measurements. Let me compare it to a marathon. If I decide to run a marathon, the activities, the measures, the training I've set myself, once I've completed that, I've achieved 100% of the work. That's also brought me closer to my goal. So have I also achieved the training goals with that?

Joubin Rahimi

Now let me ask, rather bluntly. This could be an awkward question for you or for the clients. What's actually the management team's job? Have they not got a handle on it?

Kevin Behrens

I’d say it’s less about whether they have their job under control, and more that there’s genuinely this interpersonal element: how do I break something down? They operate on quite different levels, and that’s often the case for us too – when we explain something in technical terms, it’s always a question of: who’s sitting across from me? Who’s the recipient? Do they understand what I’m saying? Am I speaking the right language? Am I using the right topics? And that’s often an issue too: how do I phrase it correctly so that people come along with me, so they understand what the goal is.

Joubin Rahimi

And firstly through the change in communication, no longer in the office but remote, is that already an issue, that it works much worse then?

Kevin Behrens

Exactly. In the past, it was often the case that people talked about it: hey, these are the goals now, at the coffee machine. Yes, we've made some progress. These are the successes. Nowadays that's often not shared in informal conversations any more, unless meetings are explicitly set up for that purpose. But otherwise, in everyday work, you pick up on very little of it. When people are busy, they're aware of little beyond what they're currently working on: what am I actually doing towards that goal right now? How do I contribute to it?

Joubin Rahimi

I've got two options, we can play either. One is you just give us three tips, so listeners can hear three tips on what really helped or which impulses helped well in the client situation. Or – you can choose – or you pick out some situation that was a real screw-up and say: how did it get better overall? You always learn well from both. And so we don't blow past 15 minutes, you can pick one. But I know Kevin can do both.

Kevin Behrens

I am just considering what the better option is. No, what a typical example is, I need to take some context out now, let me try to present it a bit more abstractly: In this area I want to become the biggest, the best, where from a management perspective it is of course quite clear what is required, what the goal is, where Werner then talked to people about it.

Joubin Rahimi

More revenue, higher AOV, exactly.

Kevin Behrens

What does that mean? Does that mean more revenue? Now it means hiring the most professional solutions, the most professional people. And then you actually notice how much room for interpretation there is. And that's already the first tip, simply to check with people who are as far removed as possible what they understand by that, and then, with the results, with the feedback, to make that concrete, and also to break down goals and measures from the strategic level down to the individual areas. Less silos, more cross-functional. Revenue would be one example, but of course what you can also do, typical example, let's say we take some website platform, with my ear, with this video, with my content I want to reach 20% more CIOs in future, or 20% more young people from start-ups. I can evaluate that, and then I can check, with the right metrics of course, have I achieved that? And that's ultimately how you break down a goal like that. I want the right thing, from a very rough goal. I want to reach a critical mass or my desired audience. What does that mean?

Joubin Rahimi

Do you also use OKRs in this context? Or do you see it with companies that they use OKRs? It's not only done in small area after all.

Kevin Behrens

Exactly, so from my point of view, strategy, especially when trying to digitalise it, essentially breaks down into three dimensions here. First there are the strategic fields of action. That's often where the categorisation comes from. AI is one such topic. AI would be a strategic field of action. We want to deploy AI in our organisation, and then, ultimately, within the strategic field of action, look at what the goals are. We want, for example, to automate or optimise 20% of our processes with AI. And what are the measures? We need to carry out a proof of concept. We want to deploy AI in the cloud with XY. What are the actual activities behind that? And then group that. And then I can allocate budgets to these fields of action, often too, and see how is the budget being used? Which skills? Which people do I even need for that? And can allocate that precisely, and can then ultimately check: am I working on the right prioritised fields of action? And what are the goals and measures, and how is progress going?

Joubin Rahimi

And the question I'm asking now isn't meant to be framed at all. Is it good to say AI is a field of action because it's a technology? Or shouldn't one rather say I want something in the business context and then consider doing it with AI? Right. I don't know what the answer is. That's really the crux of it.

Kevin Behrens

It's always a question of: from which perspective do I see this? Do I see it more from a technological perspective? Do I see it from a business perspective? AI is of course such an overarching topic where many still don't know: where do I plug this in? But it's really just like IT, it's embedded everywhere, and I'm actually more a fan of looking at it from a functional perspective. So in which areas? We often have this typical topic, many will know it, a strategic field of action called "Operational Excellence". Great fancy word, but what's actually behind it? Improving and optimising your operational business. And why wouldn't using AI ultimately be, you could say, a sub-field of action underneath that?

Joubin Rahimi

And I think that's a great way to close, because we keep having this discussion. Thanks for the insights, because I think if you say AI, then who do you invite? You have to invite everyone. If you say Operational Excellence, then you know who to invite. Exactly. As you can see, I'm learning something right here on the spot and I hope you are too, in front of the screen and radio receivers, as the licence fee people would surely say. Kevin, thanks for the insights.

Kevin Behrens

Thank you for letting me be part of it.

Joubin Rahimi

Very welcome. Questions, comments, post below, message Kevin or me directly. We here for you, glad to give input. Thanks, thank you too.

Kevin Behrens

Thank you.