BTOES19 EXCLUSIVE Thought Leader Piece: Creating a Winning Culture by Leading with Fundamentals

Steve Waszak: Creating a Winning Culture by Leading with Fundamentals

Courtesy of Greene Group Industries, Steve Waszak has written an article introducing his presentation: 'Creating a Winning Culture by Leading with Fundamentals'. Click here to see all BTOES19 Speakers.

Magical and awesome things can happen throughout your organization, all the time. Sure, there are the big wins that everyone sees and celebrates. But in a winning culture, the real magic is happening in small, often unnoticed, bits throughout the day at every level of the organization.

Leading with Fundamentals facilitates the transformation to a winning culture. In a business climate where competition is real, people and teams want to win and to be recognized as the best.

Those who say they do not care, really do care. They just need to see the path to success, or better yet, be aware, informed and feel empowered to imagine one and share the vision. Implemented as a leadership approach, Leading with Fundamentals helps every person and team in your organization to see potential paths to success, to understand where they fit in, and to understand how they contribute. It promotes empowerment to identify opportunities for improvement and encourages collaboration to capitalize on the opportunities. You will have leaders and innovators at every level of the organization, aligned with your strategy and executing with high levels of performance.

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Addressing the need to quickly pivot and evolve

Today’s business realm is complex and dynamic. The competitive environment demands speed on all fronts. Your organization needs to have an edge that delivers high value consistently and scales fast. The strategy and execution that drive your competitive advantage need to be able to quickly pivot and evolve to meet the changing needs of your markets. In a winning culture, this ability to quickly pivot and evolve exists at every level of the organization and typically requires no intervention from management to occur.

Continuous organizational growth and maturation

Leading with Fundamentals is a three step approach that fosters a culture of consistency, speed, scalability, and willingness to change. The end goal of this approach is to develop an organization that organically pivots and evolves every day. We are not talking simple continuous improvement, we are talking continuous organizational growth and maturation at every level of the organization.

Step 1 – Understand the three states of business

The first step of Leading with Fundamentals is to make sure every person in the organization understands the three (3) states of business relative to competitive advantage. One state is desirable, the other two are less than desirable. Just having this clarity will create dialogue across all levels that builds the organization’s competitive advantage. These three states will be covered in the presentation.

Step 2 – Awareness and understanding of basic fundamentals

The second step is to create awareness and educate people regarding the basic fundamentals of any organization. It is amazing how many people, at all levels, come to work with such a limited awareness and understanding of what the company needs to endure and grow. This creates a lot of work for those who are aware and do understand, taking their time away from activities that further accelerate business growth. Basic fundamentals beyond vision, mission, and values will be covered in the presentation.

Step 3 – Magical and awesome things start to happen

The third step of Leading with Fundamentals, and the most important, is selecting three key fundamentals that every person and team in your organization should understand and be aware of as they add their value to the organization’s output. These three fundamentals should be the embodiment of your current strategy and they should be the foundation of execution in the organization. It is difficult to narrow it down to three, but it needs to be three. Four is too many, two is not enough. If not chosen well, the result will be the opposite of what you want to see (i.e. poor cost performance, bad behaviors, silos popping up or existing ones becoming more fortified, etc.). If chosen well, magical and awesome things start happening all the time. Throughout the presentation, real life experiences and observations will be shared. The characteristics of a winning culture, a culture that thinks it is winning (but is not), and a culture that is struggling to keep up will be covered. The wrap up will include an open discussion to explore possibilities for the three key fundamentals mentioned in Step 3.

Creating a Winning Culture by Leading with Fundamentals is an introduction to an approach based on 30 plus years of international experience with global companies, startups and small businesses, in leadership, consulting, and observational roles.

Click here to see the full BTOES19 Agenda.

About Greene Group Industries

With a 100-year history of providing quality metal parts, the Greene Group is a recognized industry leader in a wide range of metal fabrication processes. In addition to stamping and forming, the Greene Group’s capabilities also include CNC machining, Wire EDM and Metal Injection Molding (MIM). A state-of-the-art manufacturing, sales and support network allows the Greene Group to take an initial product concept, rapidly provide a prototype, then develop a short-run production process – all in record time!

The Greene Group’s unique combination of industry knowledge, experience and buying power make it possible to continually provide competitive, high volume manufacturing services to its customers. By determining the ideal manufacturing method for each product application and volume, the Greene Group’s team of manufacturing professionals ensures consistency, prompt delivery, and dramatic cost savings.

About the Author

Steve Waszak: Creating a Winning Culture by Leading with Fundamentals

Steve Waszak, each day, looks forward to meeting new people, new challenges, learning, and opportunities to bring business performance, competitiveness and growth to new levels.

Steve is the Vice President of Operational Excellence for Greene Group Industries, a privately-held major supplier to leading industrial manufacturers, with locations across the USA in California, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Reporting to the President, Steve works across the company’s business units and functional areas driving organizational alignment and fostering a customer focused culture to support the goal of continuously improving competitive advantage. Click here to see all BTOES19 Speakers.

Prior to the Greene Group, Steve spent 20 plus years working internationally, gaining experience and expertise across industries and disciplines. He has worked seven years in management consulting, seven years in operational leadership roles, five years running a high-tech start-up, and served four years in the United States Air Force, where he was awarded the Air Force Achievement Medal.

A firm believer in understanding fundamentals, Steve strives to make sure that all team members understand what constitutes the foundation of their organization’s competitive advantage and how each person’s role strengthens that foundation. He is focused on providing the leadership, strategies, and development needed to help enable individuals to more productively contribute to the organization’s success.

I will be presenting on this topic at the Business Transformation & Operational Excellence World Summit (BTOES19)

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