The Skills Your Organization Has Left Asleep

Opportunity is everywhere, but few have eyes to see it. Over three decades advising Fortune 500 teams, one pattern still surprises me: how much talent is underused and undervalued, and how much growth opportunity sits in plain sight, unseen and unseized.

The old ways of doing things are losing relevance faster than ever. Leaders must reinvent themselves and enable others to do the same. Yet for plenty of organizations, complacency is a virus with no cure, because leaders are blind to its root cause. They are satisfied with the way things are, even when their strategy is more substitution than evolution. That is a sign of leadership solving for the wrong things.

When leaders solve for the wrong issues, they can't build a strategy for change that supports evolution. They aren't close enough to the business to assess the skills, capabilities, resources and relationships reinvention requires. Confusion rises between leaders and employees. Silos harden.

Employees feel it most. Ask people how much of their time goes to the job they were actually hired to do, and in my organization's research the answer has consistently been far less than leaders assume. Shifting priorities, competitive pressure, compliance demands and training for the wrong skills all pull people away from their real contribution. The result is inefficiency, and tension with employees and customers alike.

So what skills awaken an entire organization to solve for the right issues and see the right opportunities? Three of them too often lie dormant.

1. Change Agency

Everyone needs to be a change agent, regardless of title or rank. Leaders and employees must expect more from each other: to think differently, challenge the status quo and act as pioneers. Everyone must activate their full potential, and help others activate theirs, before circumstances force their hand.

To keep this skill awake, think like an immigrant. As the son of an immigrant father, I have always believed that immigrants can't afford to assume anything. They study their surroundings, stay hungry and pursue opportunity with more rigor and energy than anyone else, because they have no safety net to fall back on. That mindset is a competitive advantage in any organization going through reinvention.

2. Opportunity Mastery

The word opportunity is used so often in business that it has become a commodity. Presented with a real opportunity, plenty of leaders fail to seize it because they lack the foundation to act on it rightly.

Opportunity mastery rests on four skills I have written about for years: see, sow, grow and share. Leaders who see but can't sow never get started. Those who sow but can't grow stall. Those who grow but never share build nothing that lasts.

A strong foundation starts with knowing the core strengths of your business, how to leverage them and how to solve for weaknesses.

3. Thought Leadership

Leaders no longer have all the answers, and the people they lead know it. Being a thought leader is how you stay relevant. Thought leadership means sharing what you are known for, the hallmark of your reputation, by being transparent about your best practices with your teams and clients. It means letting go of the past and introducing new ways of thinking that can reshape business models, markets and workplaces.

Information is now abundant and cheap. What stays scarce is original thought and the judgment to apply it. Thought leadership is about changing the game and helping others change it with you. Waiting for someone else to discover the next big thing in your business, when you could influence it yourself, is an irresponsibility.

Why These Skills Go Dormant

In 2015, before a keynote, I sat down with a group of frontline employees during the networking hour and asked why they had joined the organization. They handed me at least ten golden nuggets on how to grow the business. I began to ask myself, "I wonder if the executives actually know that this talent exists." So I pulled one of the senior executives aside and gave him three ground rules: introduce yourself and just listen, give them your card, and send a thank-you email the next morning. That night he told me, "I would've never, ever known talent that exists in our organization if you didn't make that introduction."

No one had asked. The most crucial skills in an organization often sleep because the culture doesn't recognize the need for them. If leaders don't value them, they won't invest in them. When leadership grows complacent, these skills stay dormant, the people who carry them stop offering them, and growth stops with them.

Find the Sleeping Skills on Your Team

• Who on my team acts as a change agent without the title, and am I supporting them?
• Which of the four opportunity skills, see, sow, grow or share, is weakest in my organization?
• What do we know that the market would benefit from us sharing?
• How much of my people's time goes to the work they were hired to do?

This is the moment for leaders to renew and reinvent themselves and their organizations by becoming change agents, thought leaders and masters of opportunity. The skills are already there. They are waiting to be awakened.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.