How ‘FIT’ is your company?

Annie Hayes

Sift

Editor

How ‘FIT’ is your company?

By Annie Hayes

You have to be relatively fit to run a marathon or compete at a high level in any sport regardless of your skills or capabilities. If not, the chances are you will fail. In business, a similar concept applies. The FITness of an organisation that is its competitiveness or effectiveness is determined by the FITness of its people.

FIT is an acronym for Framework for Internal Transformation – a new general psychology developed by Professor Ben Fletcher of the University of Hertfordshire from 20 years of research. This research shows that understanding and applying the FIT framework can have real benefits at the personal level and in the work context.

FIT is a mechanism to create change deliberately. FIT is also a mechanism for enabling people to reach their potential and to manage change and thus maximise performance. When underperformance is created by change, FIT is there as a potential antidote to it.

Research into the FIT approach has shown that people who adopt flexible behaviour underpinned by the five constancies or guiding principles, enjoy a whole range of personal benefits, not shared by those who do not.

Un FIT companies and individuals operate largely within their comfort zone. They take the least path of resistance, relying on past habitual behaviours that are not usually appropriate for today’s situations. This results in missed opportunities, low energy and inertia.

FIT companies or individuals on the other hand can happily operate outside their comfort zone when it matters and have a far greater range of behaviours to suit the need.

This results in more business, high energy and growth. A FIT company will always outperform an un FIT company overtime.

Going back to our sporting analogy, to get physically fit in any activity you need to train and practice within the context of the sport you are competing in.

Similarly in business, you learn and develop when working on real issues and, at the same time, you increase your inner fitness. It then becomes self perpetuating, the greater the fitness level the bigger the challenge you take and so on.

We have developed FITness programmes to enable companies to compete in today’s challenging business environment. The programmes are targeted at leaders and managers, and are based around the FIT framework, using a combination of action learning, coaching and business simulations. The aim is to increase business performance, at the same time as developing leadership capability.

We typically focus on individuals with the potential to be ‘internal leaders’, to help their organisation to ‘get in shape’ to face future challenges. This might not necessarily mean the most senior managers.

For example, we are currently working with a group of high flying project managers in an attempt to transform the operational effectiveness of their business unit. However, it can work equally well for sales, account managers, HR professionals and Directors.

Fitness is determined by profiling a number of thinking and behavioural characteristics at the outset of our programmes, then again at the end, to measure improvement and progress. We also benchmark the results against a similar organisation group and other participants.

In my opinion, the HR department should be the catalyst to take their organisation to the next level by improving the breadth and depth of their ‘internal leadership’ capability. We believe FITness programmes are a vehicle to achieve this.

Action learning operates under the assumption that people learn best by doing.

As its name implies, Action Learning has two components, action and learning, serving two purposes:

1) allowing leaders to develop skills, their inner FITness and
2) enabling executives to take action on real situations or issues facing the organisation. This format serves to teach leaders a process for identifying and addressing the gaps in their leadership skills using “live ammunition” rather than non relevant theory.

We use business simulations to enact a challenging business situation. This enables participants to flex their management and leadership muscles and be guided and coached through their experience. It provides a rehearsal ground to break long term habitual behaviour and practice doing something different in a safe and supportive environment. They can then reflect on the outcome before experimenting with the new skill in the work place.

The benefits of creating change through FITness programmes are potentially enormous, including developing ‘internal leaders’ that: