To diversify or not to diversify- that is a question which leaders of organizations confront at some point(s) in their career. While the idea of diversification has an obvious attraction- the concept of ‘the more, the better’- the truth is that diversification is not always the good idea that you may think it is.
There are multiple factors to consider before a decision to diversify should be made.
Diversification often has unpredictable ripple effects in the organization
Know-how
This may sound like an obvious thing to consider for diversification. But there is a significant difference between having the know-how and thinking that you have it.
There’s a fair chance that you may have the theoretical knowledge about the arena that you wish to spread to. But it may be premature to consider that knowledge as the required know-how to help you succeed in this new field that you are contemplating to enter.
What’s to do then is to acquire the know-how either by hands-on experience. Or by getting on-board someone with the required experience in the relevant field.
The resources
Diversification, by default means that you are going to allocate resources to a field that you haven’t been involved in before. More often that not, this allocation actually means re-allocation.
That is, you take some resources from one of your current functional areas and allocate them to the new arena. By resources, it’s meant here both manpower and other material assets that may be required for the diversification to be practical.
Now, there are two things to consider in such a scenario:
1)Whether there are enough resources to spare in such a way that it wouldn’t affect the smooth operations of the organization’s current functional areas.
2)Whether the human resources are skilled enough to take up the new roles which the diversification would entail.
For the latter, an evaluation of not just the employees’ current skill-levels, but also their aspirations is important. The process of discovering the Compelling Shared Vision is useful in this regard.
Compelling Shared Vision is the common objective towards which the members of a team should move towards. Not to be confused with goals and targets that are given for teams, the Compelling Shared Vision is discovered from amongst themselves and isn’t imposed from the outside.
During the process, the team members are encouraged to share their biggest aspirations, challenges that they overcame in the past along with the way they overcame them and their view of the future etc. with fellow-members of the team.
This gives you a clear picture of their greatest skills and also their aspirations. You could see if their aspirations arte malleable enough to accommodate the learning of new skills which diversification would entail.
The Importance of Compelling Shared Vision and True Personal Vision
The discovery of Compelling Shared Vision is to happen in a controlled, secure and friendly environment under the guidance of leadership coaches. Temenos Vision Lab or TVL is a unique session developed by Temenos+Agility which helps teams realize their Compelling Shared Vision and individuals their True Personal Vision.
True Personal Vision, in turn is the vision that could be found in your own self and nowhere else in the universe. It’s the Vision that you are meant to manifest in the real world, and its discovery gives you a clear destination to guide your organization towards.
The beauty of True Personal Vision is that once you realize it, you know the trajectory you are taking and the amassing of skills and knowledge required to manifest the vision in real world happens as a matter of course.
This takes care of the issue of having the right know-how that was mentioned earlier in this post. Either you may end up acquiring the know-how since it’s in line with your True Personal Vision, or if the diversification path isn’t in keeping with your vision, you would know that you probably need to get onboard someone who has the required know-how. Or maybe, you would rethink the direction of the intended diversification, after all.
Either way, a leap into diversification without properly thinking about consequences is avoided with True Personal Vision. And Temenos Vision Lab is a one-of-a-kind session to discover this most precious of all visions.
Using proprietary tools, TVL is conducted by some of the best leadership coaches in business with extensive experience in conducting transformative sessions.
