Navigate Next - a new leadership approach

There are countless leadership frameworks out there, and they are all about 80% the same and roughly as effective. We looked at many of these frameworks to pick one for our firm to adopt. During that process, we realized they were built by and for leaders of the past. They didn’t reflect the reality of today and the real challenges we are all facing. 

So we spent the last several months building a new leadership model focused on new-to-this-world challenges, built upon a proprietary dataset, and then testing it with over 50 leaders at enterprises across a number of different. 

Navigate Next is the result of that work. Fundamentally, we believe that legacy leadership models provide a necessary but not sufficient skill set and will leave you, your leaders and your organization flatfooted.

In the following, we look at the accepted wisdom of leadership frameworks, their undoing and the six skills that will help humans thrive in organizations of all kinds and build the future we all deserve.

Expect Change 

Accepted wisdom: Leaders need to “be ready for change,” adapt to a process of ongoing change and that “change management” is outdated because change is different nowadays. 

The undoing: Change is not different. Entropy is the 3rd law of thermodynamics. Change is a fundamental force of the universe. The level of stasis within organizations was an abnormality created by rigid hierarchies and relatively slow technological progress.  

Navigate Next: Tomorrow’s top leaders appreciate that change is like gravity; it is a constant in the modern business world, and they must effortlessly navigate its currents. Leaders should be encouraged to promote a culture of adaptability and resilience (because there is no alternative). We view evolution and reinvention, both individually and organizationally, as the only logical path to success. 

Coach with Intention

Accepted wisdom: Every organization needs a culture of coaching. Everyone is a coach. Everyone wants/needs coaching. Every conversation is a coaching opportunity. 

The undoing: Great coaches are very rare, and mediocre coaching is a net negative to an organization. To try to solve the problem of mediocre coaching, we provide inflexible and prescriptive coaching models that overrotate on long-term goal setting and development. A separate problem is that many people are not receptive to coaching, and thus are less engaged than they would be otherwise. 

Navigate Next: Leaders capable of being good coaches should emphasize quality vs. quantity of coaching. They should then assess who on their team is worth coaching. There are times when one must coach with a focus on building long-term capability & growth, times when they should “transactionally coach,” and times when they should be directive. Leaders that can intentionally leverage all 3 of these styles appropriately will maximize the impact their coaching has on their team.

Harmonize Data and Vision 

Accepted wisdom: Organizations are now creating data faster and at higher volumes than ever before–the challenge has been to be a leader who can distill the signal from the noise. Most people and organizations agree that more data-driven decision-making leads to better results in both short and long-term decision-making. 

The undoing: Our ability to analyze, visualize and make sense of data has grown exponentially and the mantra of data-driven decision-making will lead to lots of feelings of certainty when engaging in long-term business planning. However, data is most relevant to the past and its predictive value decays as you look to the future. 

Navigate Next: The best leaders of the future will be those who can oscillate between realms of hard data and imaginative vision, marrying the concrete with the abstract. They can balance the amount of data vs. vision they use in decision-making based on the immediacy of the decision itself. For instance, deciding on something with impact today, a leader should predominantly leverage data vs. making a decision for 2030, a leader should lean heavily on their visioning abilities. 

Outcome-Centric Execution

Accepted wisdom: “I don’t care how the work gets done, so long as it does,” “I set the direction and lead my team to achieve the results how they see fit.”

The undoing: The modern approach to work–always available to “collaborate”, non-stop video calls, pinging back and forth to accomplish anything leaves your people little time to actually get anything done and no time during the day to do deep work. The outcome is sub-par delivery created at an unsustainable pace. 

Navigate Next: This speaks to a shift in focus, moving away from time-bound work to result-oriented approaches. But to be outcome-centric means to create rules of the road for your team that lets them deliver outstanding results. This means leaders structure their teams to operate truly asynchronously, create space to do “offline work” without fearing they’ve missed an instant message/email, and intentionally create collaboration time when actually needed.  

Cultivate Humanity

Accepted wisdom: if you give people the tools and space to focus on their wellbeing, then they will. “Unlimited PTO” As a leader, my job is to take care of my team. 

The undoing: given the demands of the workplace, people often perceive a tradeoff between wellbeing and productivity. Leaders feel they are an exception to the rule and focus on output over humanity. Without leader support and role modeling, employees generally find it difficult to take care of themselves. 

Navigate Next: Leaders understand that there is no tradeoff between wellbeing and performance but rather a direct correlation. They role model the behaviors for their team and know that this is necessary for the team to feel safe. An uplifting and humane work culture creates a platform for self-reinforcing and sustainable success.

Learn with Discernment

Accepted wisdom: we need a culture of continuous learning. We’re all lifelong learners. It’s easier to learn than ever. 

The undoing: due to the ease of content creation, the quantity of learning content (whether that’s podcast, article, video, etc) has gone up and the average quality has gone down dramatically. Leaders face a deluge of potentially sub-par best practices and ideas daily and struggle to put the right ones into practice. 

Navigate Next: Leaders of the future will be those who approach learning seriously and strategically. They need to discern what to learn, who to learn from and how to put it into action. Leaders rapidly test learnings for themselves and broadly share the results of the experiment with colleagues. They foster a practice of saying “I learned this thing, I tried it here and now I’m telling you the results.” Thus creating a learning and experimentation loop that drives the organization swiftly into the future. 

What’s Next?

The Navigate Next framework gives your leaders and organizations the ability to traverse the challenges of the next 12-24 months.

Since we expect change, these skills will slowly be outmoded. The good news is, given that your leaders will be learning with discernment along the way, they will have innovated new tactics and adjusted their tactics accordingly.

What comes next for you, your leaders and your team, we can’t say, but we believe with the right approach our joint future is bright.