As a business leader, it's important to assess whether your organization is truly engaged in the present. Simply stated, how grounded is your organization in the now, whereby you can respond rapidly to changes to maximize your earnings and operating cash flow potential.   

Many medium and large corporations adopt some form of periodic strategic planning and performance measurement process. This process is designed to clearly articulate the desired periodic end state and establish performance metrics leading up to that state. It is built upon a set of strategic objectives that encompass past experiences, account for future possibilities, and outline core initiatives for execution. The performance aspect involves employing measurement tools with predefined targets and stretch values to assess the corporation's performance, cascading down to divisions or departments. Rewards for both the organization and its employees are often tied to these metrics. Often, these steps are followed by strategy communication and organizational bandwidth tests. The greatest flaw in this approach is that it anticipates the future by looking through a pipe to envision an end state.

In a nutshell, organizations measure success and reward themselves based on how well they forecast future ambition and whether they get there in the future.    

But this important process completely misses preparing the organization for the ‘Now’. Meaning, is the managerial class and its execution layer sufficiently empowered, resourced and rewarded to take advantage of rapidly changing market conditions in the present moment. After all, a corporation, aka legal person, lives and acts only in the now but with a focus on its future ambitions.

This leads me to an important question, which is: where then is the focus on utilizing corporate resource on maximizing the present moment? Actions taken in the now needs to be important weight in the strategic planning and performance process. Clearly, defining the end state of a planning process is critical, as is reaching the end state, but so is maximizing the execution journey enroute to this end state.

Acting in the now requires an acceptance of what is. Meaning, a corporate body, and its managerial class must consistently understand its own intrinsic capability set, and must use its tactile senses to have a clear picture or pulse on what market factors affect its products and services right now. By doing so, it can start to take the first step in its journey to reducing reactive behavior, and pivoting to a responsive mindset.

A responsive mindset requires a true willingness to be dynamic, and to adapt. Being adaptive requires empowerment whereby an organization can change, remove or improve its products or services rapidly in response to market forces. A pivotal question arises: what mechanisms exist within the organization to foster adaptability, and what is the velocity at which these adjustments can be executed? Substantial literature addresses the transformation from hierarchical structures to networks, the shift from control to empowerment, the equilibrium between planning and experimentation, and the evolution from privacy to transparency, all contributing to a responsive mindset.

Despite these transformative solutions, a key hindrance to being dynamic is an uncontrolled organizational mindset. More often a corporation will allow its mindset to control it. Left uncontrolled, an individual’s mind tends to lean negative, by focusing on the past or worrying about the future, creating paralysis. Similar patterns manifest within corporations, resulting in a collective atmosphere of apprehension. A communal atmosphere of 'what if,' 'could have,' and 'should have,' or the aggressive application of risk management tools such as audits, enterprise risk assessments, and compliance, can foster a state of paralysis rooted in fear. It is imperative for the decision-making echelon within corporations to regain control and acquire the capacity to objectively assess situations, thereby striking a harmonious balance between calculated risk-taking and responsive actions. That's where decisive leadership comes in – guiding their teams to take calculated risks and embrace change.

As a collective of individuals, an organization possesses an array of skills and networks. The crucial question at any given juncture is: are these resources being optimally leveraged to address present challenges and opportunities? Visualize an organization where each member, beyond their designated tasks, contributes something extra every day. These additional efforts, whether they follow a flow-based or event-based trajectory, cumulatively contribute to enhancing sales, reducing operational costs, and ultimately bolstering operating cash flow. Encouraging and enabling such contributions fosters a culture of continuous improvement. Importantly, these micro contributions collectively start to add up to create explosive growth.

However, assessing and quantifying these supplementary contributions can be intricate. Often, they do not align with the overarching plan or strategic directives. In the absence of a defined framework to capture these, the managerial class will take a subjective view of measuring these which can lead to frustration amongst the contributors or can discourage them to act in the now.

Incorporating Immediate and Responsive Impact Measurement (IRMI) as a key performance indicator (KPI) into the performance evaluation process can address this challenge. This metric, assigned appropriate weightage, is devised to encapsulate the combined impact of these incremental contributions spanning the entire organization. Moreover, it also pushes organizational staff to think about proactively taking actions in the now that create contributions on its journey to the end state.

The insights gleaned from these impromptu achievements can subsequently be fed back into the periodic strategic planning process. This iterative process allows for the refinement of strategies, plans, and initiatives, ensuring a harmonious amalgamation of long-term objectives and real-time adaptations. This synergy enables an organization not only to focus on the future but also to harness the latent potential of the present.

How would you measure your company's actions in the now?