Weekly Impact Brief (2023.Oct.29)
Leaders must address racism, embrace transformation that improves culture and drives competitive edge; manage stress and time allocation to increase productivity.
Note: We are in private beta. There are rough edges; this Brief will evolve in the coming weeks before we launch more broadly. We value your feedback! To share your input, click here.
Read time: 3 min
Welcome
It’s great to have you here!
This Brief offers leaders quick, fact-driven insights on trending articles released in the last week around leadership, innovation, and more. These are curated from top sources, such as McKinsey, Harvard, and many others, looking at elements of the Impactful Framework.
In case you missed the last Impact Briefs, here are the links for the previous two:
Thought Starter
Last week, we covered the element of “Leadership”; this week, we cover “Understanding”. Comprehensive understanding in an organization is about cultivating clarity at deeper levels to build conviction to drive effective decision-making and innovation.
Highlights
London School of Economics and Political Science: Racism At Work Is Real And Leaders Must Address It
MIT Sloan Management Review: Upgrading Culture For Growth And Transformation
Insead Knowledge: Making Stress Work For Organisations
Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania: Timing Matters: Design The Day For Maximum Productivity
[Feature] McKinsey & Company: How To Gain And Sustain A Competitive Edge Through Transformation
Impact Pulse
Each week, we review 200+ articles from 50+ premier academic and consulting firm sources to highlight a few “essentials” below.
Racism At Work Is Real And Leaders Must Address It
Big Idea: Exclusionary practices stifle talent. Leaders and corporate policies must actively confront and address workplace racism to foster true inclusion.
Quick Quote(s): “Out of every ten employees from marginalised racial and ethnic groups… six or seven of them might have encountered racism during their career… the most common expressions of racism are workplace harassment (48%) and employment and professional inequities (32 per cent)... 41 per cent of these incidents are instigated by leaders, the majority of whom are white and male.”
“Leaders set the tone and culture of an organisation, but… co-workers (36 per cent) and customers and clients (36 per cent) engage in racist acts, too. Four out of five acts of racism are instigated by White people, and one out of five are instigated by another non-White person. Women and men are equally likely to be instigators of racism.”
Upgrading Culture For Growth And Transformation
Big Idea: Drive organizational transformation by prioritizing cultural change and focusing on psychological safety, perspective-taking, and linking skills to tangible outcomes. Use real-world examples and emphasize deep interventions over superficial ones.
Quick Quote(s): “If you want to change culture… help people change assumptions. [It’s] the link between perspective taking or psychological safety and successful outcomes. If you can create that and strengthen it, you can change the underlying assumptions and that will eventually change the behaviors. Active listening, that's one part of perspective-taking… but active listening often happens from my bubble."
"But if you want to become really good at perspective-taking and what we train through this process with the follow-ups is to get out of my own bubble and try to see the topic from another person's perspective, including their motivations, and their history, and why they think the way they think."
Making Stress Work For Organisations
Big Idea: Moderate stress can enhance performance and reduce decision bias, and stress levels decrease over time with increased training; companies should assess, measure, and train employees to find and manage optimal stress levels.
Quick Quote(s): “While high stress harms performance, medium levels of stress can in fact provide a boost… a moderate level of stress marshals more cognitive resources to the task at hand and improves performance… But when stress overwhelms our ability to cope, our performance suffers… As far as stress is concerned, the trick to powering through is to know where to draw the line… Adequate, realistic training… may help reduce stress and mitigate its impact more than other prep work."
Timing Matters: Design The Day For Maximum Productivity
Big Idea: Optimize productivity by aligning tasks with natural energy rhythms, categorizing tasks by intensity and impact, and strategically scheduling your day.
Quick Quote(s): "Neuroscience research shows that there are optimal times for doing certain types of work. Our “internal clock”... shapes our energy levels throughout the day, with predictable highs and lows… By determining when you are most resourceful, and therefore when you should complete your most demanding tasks, you can do your most important work at the right time of day… You can take yourself off autopilot and take back control of every hour of your day, doing the right work at the right time."
Featured Summary
Below are our featured insights for the week: a McKinsey review of foundational steps to follow in order to push sustainable transformation.
How To Gain And Sustain A Competitive Edge Through Transformation
Big Idea: Follow four foundational elements — Will, Skill, Rigor and Scope — to implement transformational approaches that combine mindset shifts and behavior changes to drive competitive advantage.
Quick Quote(s): “Respondents whose transformations implemented all four elements (will, skill, rigor, scope) report a much higher rate of outperforming peers than those whose transformations implemented just one… Yet the results suggest that few organizations are taking this comprehensive approach, with only 6 percent of respondents reporting transformations that implemented all four elements.
Parting Thoughts
Thank you for spending your precious time with us.
We are still in early “beta” mode for the coming weeks. If you find this Brief useful, please forward it now!
Please feel free to reach out with any thoughts or questions that today’s insights might have sparked.
Impactfully yours,
Ali Monadjem (LinkedIn profile)
For The Impactful Executive Team
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