James D. Murphy

Teams and organizations are constantly plagued by project execution errors and failures. These failures create an execution gap - a gap between what an individual and/or team plans to do and what they actually do instead; however, there are strategic planning techniques that a team can utilize to improve project execution. One of these techniques is the Execution Gap Meeting, or X-Gap.

Do you know how to provide collaborative leadership in a disciplined fashion? And how does one define disciplined collaboration? Collaboration - and successful collaborative leadership - does not derive from "where" or through "which" media people interact. Instead, it is about "how" people interact. And that "how" must be disciplined.

Core competencies are one or a combination of a few unique or rare abilities; however, a description of core competencies is not simply a laundry list of various organizational attributes. Naming your core competencies can be very difficult because we, as business leaders or managers, often mistake our daily tasks as our organizational imperative.

Organizational gravity keeps an organization grounded and focused, contributing to a passion for continuous improvement at a tactical level. However, these improvements seem to arrive at the expense of innovation and adaptability. So what steps can an organization take to defy organizational gravity?

In today's management environment, new forms of corporate leadership development programs have emerged. One of the most popular development tools is executive coaching, as corporate leadership development programs frequently utilize these services. However, the fundamentals of executive coaching have actually been around for many years in the form of debriefing.

In mission planning, the practice of utilizing a Red Team is necessary. A Red Team is a simple means to overcome the overconfidence bias and the theory of "groupthink," the need for groups to seek conformity and unanimity in planning and decision making. Tactical planning processes must be subjected to a Red Team to minimize errors and to foresee future problems.

In our companies and organizations, effective planning is a social activity. Deciding on a strategic planning process as a group, rather than as an individual, adds even greater complexity to an already complex task. Collaborative and effective planning techniques require a combination of 13 essential elements to be successful.

In Part I of this series, the concept that everything exists within a system from the perspective of complexity was introduced. In Part II, a three-tiered framework of effects-based thinking (EBT) and planning critical to understanding change in organizations, markets and communities was discussed. In this final installment, discover how effects are planned within complex systems and how adaptive leadership propels those effects.

In 'Effects-Based Thinking - Part I', the definition of effects-based thinking, or EBT, was established as an approach to strategic planning, which contributes to long-lasting organizational impacts. Expanding on this concept, we can view the differences between strategic planning with EBT and simply tracking progress with metrics. With EBT, we're able to construct, align and adapt our measurements to ensure success within the organization.

In strategic planning and decision making, effects-based thinking (EBT) is a vital tactic to assess the effects of specific actions, not in a narrowly defined and time-limited way, but through a perspective that is sensitive to broad-ranging and lasting impacts. In our fast-paced personal and work lives, we tend to think more about today's issues rather than tomorrow's - but effects-based thinking is the opposite of short-sightedness.