The SHiFT Trigger - James McIntosh Coaching

Success is seldom instantaneous:

Success or failure experienced today is the result of decisions and actions taken in the past.
Decisions and actions taken today determine future success or failure.

Future success results from seeing accurately today. That’s what the SHiFT℠ Trigger can do for you.

Day-to-day detail can become so boring that threats are misjudged and opportunities overlooked. The SHiFT℠ Trigger helps you to:

spot a Trojan horse situation in your organization or team, and
to identify where to focus your energy to make an immediate impact.

The SHiFT℠ Trigger helps ‘predict’ success or failure.

How can we make such a bold statement? Because the SHiFT℠ Trigger uncovers one of the biggest indicators of potential success or failure, namely your peoples’ perceptions:

People don’t behave according to strategies and instructions.
They act on their perceptions.

The SHiFT℠ Trigger deals with (team) perceptions of strategic understanding, commitment, execution and organizational learning – the key elements of the wheel of success.

What if you knew where your people
are on the wheel of success?

The outcome? You will have created a common understanding and secured a shared commitment for focused action – the basis for effective execution. In other words, ongoing success.

7 Reasons why you should use it

(According to our clients)

To facilitate a strategic off-site

To kick-start a strategic planning session or process.

To uncover how executives and managers are likely to re-act to strategic issues and changes.

To confirm that your timing is right to take a key strategic decision.

To improve corporate strategic decision-making.

To ensure that managers take responsibility for their decisions, actions and inactions.

To hear more than just good news.

5 Occasions when to use it

When you suspect there is a gap between where you want your organization to go (vision and strategy), and what your people focus on from day to day (operational activities).

When you are unsure whether your people really share a common understanding of, or are really committed to, required strategic changes.

When you feel that your people are not learning from each other. (Like in the story of the Trojan horse, you suspect that someone knows the right answer, but is not being heard.)

When you know you should be digging deeper than good results. In bad times, people are willing to look for reasons (if only to allocate blame, not to learn from mistakes). But when times are good, everyone relaxes and no one digs any deeper.

When you want to hear more than your own echoes. The curse of leadership is that followers prefer to tell the leader what they think he or she wants to hear. The experienced leader seeks ways to see and hear what is going on ‘below the surface’.