Sometimes we can have a light bulb moment.The idea for this session has come about from the story of how your instructor Hilary Briggs transformed herself in her mid-50s from a low-grade amateur triathlete (with the goal “finish and don’t be last…”), to podium in the Age Group World Championships, and current 2023 European Champion, within 7 years, and after going through a major Achilles injury as well.Her main personal learning from this was that when you really focus on something, it’s unbelievable what you can achieve. Hence “Improve beyond expectations”.With decades of business experience in large and small companies, she’s well aware that as a leader you are faced with a plethora of seemingly all top-priority issues. And normally with squeezed resources. You do your best to juggle all these to deliver the best outcomes you can. But what if you could get extraordinary improvements where it really mattered?The Value Disciplines Model, introduced in the early 1990s by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema helped leaders to focus on one of three core value disciplines: Operational excellence, Product leadership, and Customer intimacy. Their thinking is that you can’t be world-class at everything.It’s one way to start narrowing the field of where to focus.But we’re still left with the questions of how to select a specific project to work on, where to start, and how to build and maintain momentum especially when things get tough.Hilary worked with an expert in tacit knowledge (how people do what they do) to extract the process and mental strategies she used to drive her transformation in triathlons.Whilst the sporting arena has particular advantages to facilitate improvement activities (there are tangible measures of success and progress, there are clear rules and boundaries, and so on), the principles are transferrable to anything.The crucial areas we will focus on in relation to a potential improvement project you have are:How do you find out why you want to do this? What is it that makes this important? How do you find out what you need in order to start? Or the next step if you’re already underwayHow do you gather feedback from the activities? (including measures of progress) - in terms of learningWe’ll also cover the key “operating principles” – or mindset – that will help you set up for success. For instance, how to organize your environment, the concept of “excuse management” and changing perspectives (larger and smaller) to gain new insights. And the helpful values to have such as curiosity, openness as well as excellence.You may have all the necessary expertise at hand within you and your team even if you have to dig to find it. But maybe you need to seek out other people to help. What are the characteristics to look for?We’ll wrap up with action planning so you’ll come away with some specific things to do in the next hours and days to accelerate your progress and enable you to deliver the results you want. Areas CoveredContext – what are you trying to do? How to ensure you’ve got the right project?How to get started? Who do you need on your team?How to build and maintain momentum?Mindset: values and key operating principlesAction planningWho Should Attend Senior managers and VP’s grappling with prioritizing and leading improvements.Owner managers of small businessesAmbitious individuals who want to develop their skills to drive changeWhy Should You Attend You are an ambitious leader or senior manager and think your organization is doing OK. However, are you feeling:Frustrated because your key projects just aren’t making the progress you want?Overwhelmed with the sheer volume of “stuff to do”, and can sink into procrastination?Stuck, as you get pulled into dealing with urgent day-to-day activities at the expense of the longer-term really important issues? In addition, with a strategic perspective:You fear your competitors are making more rapid progress, and that you will lose market share.You have seen the impact of unexpected challenges in the last few years. There are bound to be others – will your organization be able to adapt fast enough?Customer needs and expectations are shifting – how on earth do you keep up? Attracting and retaining new talent is becoming more and more difficult. Does your company exude that “can do” culture that creates an exciting and satisfying place to work?Your existing employees are performing OK, but your recent employee satisfaction survey indicated some issues. You sense they’ve got higher expectations now and they could jump ship if they perceive there are more fulfilling opportunities elsewhere.And yet, whilst you recognize change is required and a good thing, you worry that your organization doesn’t have the resilience to handle what’s required.In short, is your organization doing as well as it needs to in today’s competitive world? If you’ve any doubts, sign up for this session to kick start and focus your improvement activities now.Topic BackgroundWe live in a competitive world. Recent disruptions emanating from COVID or wars have just highlighted it even more. And then there are technological changes such as AI.As Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got.” So if you or your organization want to get a better result, something needs to change.The internet is full of advice and no shortage of people banging on about “Work smarter not harder”, but how do you actually go about improving? Where should you focus your efforts? And what if you were able to achieve transformations well beyond what you could have imagined?