Spotlight on Gigi, executive sponsor of an enterprise cloud migration
Gigi, a senior executive at a Fortune 500 company, is responsible for delivering a $100 million enterprise-wide cloud migration. She also must keep her own business unit running and is thus juggling many competing priorities.
Gigi loves focusing on strategic ideas and coming up with inventive solutions to issues. She’s also energized by coaching others and forging relationships. She knows that ultimately work is achieved through people. She also knows she doesn’t love things like planning and following processes. Her self-awareness has helped her advance in her career.
The problem is everyone is nervous that this initiative may be thornier than anyone thought – things are not going as planned, dates are slipping, and costs are rising. Gigi is under tremendous pressure to have this succeed while meeting her targets for her large organization. She’s not confident the board and executive team are aligned on this migration in the first place, she’s trying to manage the frustration of people working on this, and she’s worried her initiative (and she by default) will fail to deliver benefits on time and budget.
Gigi’s strengths can help her navigate and her initiative succeed
Gigi is what we call a “Strategic Connector” and she’s naturally wired enjoy things like thinking strategically, brainstorming solutions, and building strong personal relationships. It also means she is less likely to want to do things like implementing procedures, standardizing processes, and planning.
Her awareness of where she gets energy can help her guide and motivate her cloud migration team, as well as her large business unit. Using her natural strategy and interpersonal connection preferences, she can coach and empower people to grow. At the same time, she knows where she tends to feel drained – i.e. the processes and planning – and knows the people who love do to that kind of work. The balance of leaning into her own preferences while teaming and delegating on things that she doesn’t get energy from helps her and her teams be more successful.
As a result of visibility into personal work preferences, Gigi and her teams have an advantage and are able to execute faster and more effectively.
How Gigi discovered these advantages
Instead of guessing where she and her team get energy, Gigi reached out to Consequent for help her both learn about her team and course correct the Cloud Migration strategic initiative. In a relatively short period of time, Gigi and her team took Consequent’s survey (which is called Strati-Pro) and gained personal and team insights to help them work more effectively and with greater satisfaction. Gigi discovered that Strategic Connectors represent almost 30% of the thousands of people who have taken the Strati-Pro survey (and that many executives are Strategic Connectors). She also found out that Strategic Connectors often need help with things like detailed planning and the implementation details of strategic initiatives.
They also co-created a Strati-Pro implementation plan, with expert facilitation by Consequent. The Cloud Migration initiative recovered and came in on time and under budget. As an added benefit, Gigi and her teams now have a repeatable framework for strategic execution and are getting things done faster, for less money.
If you’d like to find out where you and your team get energy by taking the Strati-Pro survey and holding a Strati-Pro session to ensure your strategic initiative is on track to succeed, Consequent can help. Go from strategic initaitives that take too long and cost too much to ones that come in on time, under budget, every time. Please reach out to me at akisling@cnsqnt.com and let’s a have a quick call to see if we may be a fit.
