Jumping The Curve
I talk repeatedly with leaders and teams about how to cultivate a new way of thinking about and responding to change. To position growth and innovation in a new way I will share a model called the S-Curve, sometimes also called the Growth Curve.
The S-Curve represents the timeless process of birth, growth, decay, and death. The model also provides insight into how this process influences consumer products, software, textbooks, governments, and everything else in nature.
Most leaders, when they first view the S-Curve immediately understand it intellectually but lack a framework for converting their theoretical understanding into a practical and transformative tool for organizational transformation. That’s what I want to do here.
The key to using this model effectively is to recognize that employees at every level of an organization have a predisposition to remain at the point marked by “maximum yield / profit.” It is there that you’ll find self-limiting patterns of behavior, and if left unattended, guarantee the death of any organization.
Success becomes destructive when employees or teams arrive at the top of the S-Curve and become enamored with the rewards of being successful and see their success as something to be preserved. In subtle ways they unknowingly start to put energy into preserving their current success and have become anesthetized to change. They find it difficult if not impossible to turn their back on what’s made them successful.
Extraordinarily successful leaders have learned to view success differently. They question their assumptions about what’s next and intentionally and continuously talk about jumping to the next level of success. They believe success is a signal that the lifecycle of their project, product, or team is coming to an end and that a new cycle of birth and growth are necessary.
In order to counteract a team’s tendency to remain focused at the top of the S Curve while simultaneously embracing a continuous process of growth and innovation, we recommend deploying S-Curve Leadership Teams to achieve the following:
Maximize each member of a teams natural talents and skills
Position each member of the team effectively on the S-Curve based on an AEM-cube® profile
Accelerate innovation and growth regarding the organizations strategic Initiatives
Fully capture the teams enthusiasm, engagement, and creative thinking
The three S-Curve leadership teams are:
The Innovative Leadership Team
The Growth Leadership Team
The Efficiency Leadership Team
Innovative Leadership
This teams focus is on innovation and new idea generation. Their first job is to explore what’s possible without considering “how” to implement the idea. Members are to think about the “what’s and why’s” of new ways to provide greater value and to enhance the end user experience while providing a direct linkage to the strategic initiatives of Central IT.
Growth Leadership
The Growth Leadership Team process is identical to the Innovation Leadership Team process, except that the focus is on ideas already vetted and ready for implementation. This phase of the S-Curve is focused on accelerating the deployment and growth of ideas. This team executes ideas and manages the process until the process hits a maturation point, which then requires that the idea be handed off to the Efficiency Leadership Team.
Efficiency Leadership
The Efficiency Leadership Team process is identical to the Innovation and Growth Leadership Team process, except that the focus is on eliminating inefficiencies from all processes within the team or project. They are solely focused on elongating a processes time on the S-Curve and are the final link before a process or procedure is reinvented. This phase of the S-Curve is fully focused on the “how” of processes.
Where is your team on the S-Curve?
Where is your professional development on the S-Curve?
Where does your team need to be regarding your strategic initiatives?
