For an organization to have sustainable and scalable success, it must learn to create consistent, repeatable and reliable performance. Designing a successful organization goes beyond org charts and job titles, recognizing who is responsible for specific conversations that co-create performance excellence as a Team!

As the CEO of your organization, you model creating a set of necessary conditions for performance excellence to be achieved. To be effective, by design and with intention, you need to lead and model these Five (5) Core Conversations for each member of the C-Suite:

Conversation	Purpose	Owner
1.    Strategy	Organizational Future	CEO
2.    Culture	Organizational Sustainability through Well-Being & Engagement of our People	CPO
3.    Performance	Organizational Effectiveness deliver on our current promises to clients and shareholders	COO
4.    Innovation	Organizational Value by introducing new ideas, products, services or methods to support financial sustainability	CIO
5.    Financial	Organizational Sustainability through Financial Stewardship to support scalability and growth	CFO

Inquiries, Insights and Considerations to expand effectiveness for each conversation:

 

The Strategy Conversation

Inquiry: What does it mean to be responsible for the Strategy Conversation of the Organization?

Insight: It means having a healthy relationship with growth and change. Creating future through a relationship to growth and change can evolve alongside a personal shift in Self-identity.

Considerations when you own this conversation:

1. When a leader is generating future with others, change is occurring, creating transition from current ways or old ways to new ways of being and doing business. When leaders are experiencing change or transitions they may experience:

• Losses/Letting Go a.k.a. Identity Crisis
• Gains/Letting Come a.k.a. Identity Creation/Reinvention
• Wins a.k.a. Identity Affirmation

To move through this effectively, ask:

1. Where you are placing your focus i.e., on the Identity Crisis (Letting Go) or on the Identity Creation (Letting Come).
2. What future are we currently creating?
   • Default Future – reacting to the market
   • Predictable Future – safe, secure and known
   • Bold Future – it is a future that is full of possibilities, unknowns & uncertainties.
3. What criteria informs us of future patterns and trends that will impact our business?
4. How strong is the Executive Leadership Team’s competency with strategic thinking?
5. How effective is our organization’s Strategic Planning Process?

 

The Culture Conversation

Inquiry: What does it mean to be responsible for the Culture Conversation of the Organization?

Insight: It means having a healthy relationship with interdependence and interconnected systems, processes and behaviours contingent on the human condition. Influencing, guiding, nurturing and learning are key aspects of cultivating a healthy culture.

Considerations when you own this conversation:

1. What are the organization’s norms that are cultivating staff well-being and engagement?
2. How are we measuring well-being and engagement of our people?
3. What practices and structures are in place to cultivate a dynamic and healthy culture?
4. What practices and structures are in place to cultivate a “Culture of Accountability?”
5. What conversations are most prevalent in your organization?

Committed conversations – move things forward, make things happen and produce breakdowns and breakthroughs.  Indicates high trust.

Uncommitted conversations – complaints, gossip, idle talk.  These conversations slow things down, impede action and reveal a lack of trust.

6. Are the Power Dynamics in our organization cultivating power with others (collaboration) or power over others (competition).

 

The Performance Conversation

Inquiry: What does it mean to be responsible for the Performance Conversation of the Organization?

Insight: It means having a healthy relationship to failure, creating an objective vs. personal view of current state, future state and gaps that invokes commitment in others.

Considerations when you own this conversation:

1. How effective is our culture of accountability to support the whole organization being effective at executing on our Strategic Priorities?
2. What metrics is our organization using to measure the state of your organization’s performance
3. Where in the organization are we not delivering consistent, repeatable and reliable outcomes to our current business plan?

 

The Innovation Conversation

Inquiry: What does it mean to be responsible for the Innovation Conversation of the Organization?

Insight: It means having a healthy relationship to feedback, appropriately assessing current and future value and cultivating possibility thinking to move people and systems forward.

Considerations when you own this conversation:

1. What processes, structures and practices are in place to cultivate new ideas and to implement new ideas?
2. What processes, structure and practices are in place to cultivate the Innovative Mindset?
3. How clear is our Listening Strategy to allow us to capture client feedback?
4. How is our organization tackling the issue of understanding clients’ unmet needs?
5. How is Curiosity cultivated in our organization to unlock and to discovery new ideas?
6. How open is our organization at talking about our Breakdowns to support generating future possibilities?

 

The Financial Health Conversation

Inquiry: What does it mean to be responsible for the Financial Health Conversation of the organization?

Insight: It means having a healthy relationship to reality and data, bridging the objective with the subjective, allowing for an effective dynamic between strategy, performance, innovation and culture.

Considerations when you own this conversation:

1. How competent are our managers at owning their monthly P&L statement?
2. How competent are our managers at forecasting their business needs?
3. How competent are our managers at evaluating risk and its impact on our business?
4. How useful are our financial reports to support the ELT at running our business effectively?
5. How collaborative are our financial reports supporting the strategic conversation to support our Strategic Growth Plan.