The Principle Of The Frog For Developing Organization Learning And Leadership

Written by Jedidiah Alex Koh, MCC

“How do I engage more of my external stakeholder’s buy-in and develop greater ownership?”

“How do I help myself and my team focus on what matters?”

Embedded within these questions is a leader’s ability to learn and develop resilience.

Leaders are bombarded with an array of tasks that often distract them from focusing on what truly matters. It is easy to tell them to just focus on what matters, but the reality is small things and a changing environmental landscape can draw your attention away. If these small things are not addressed expeditiously, they may snowball into a larger problem. Faced with this, how can leaders truly focus on what matters and achieve greater performance outcomes?

The critical key is strategic systems learning, or SSL.

Having spoken at many conferences, trained senior leaders and coached top executive teams, I have noticed a common pattern: the degree of learning as an organization. Many great leaders are good learners; however, most of what they learn only stays with them and doesn’t permeate across the organization. So as a whole, the organization doesn’t seem to progress in tandem with its potential.

Far too often, organizations only focus on top-performing individuals and neglect the development of the middle- and lower-performing tiers. The common justification is that focusing and investing in the strengths of the company will lead to greater returns. That justification in itself is a paradox fallacy. Just focusing on the strengths can lead to temporal performance growth at the expense of long-term performance sustainability.

What this means is that organizations cannot afford just to look at one leader or a group of top leaders; they have to start thinking as a system. They have to start seeing themselves not as many individuals making up one team but as one body with one mind and one heart to move toward the organization’s strategic objectives.

SSL is the embodiment of how organizations are building structures, policies, culture and communication that translates the idea of a whole system—or whole organization—approach to address performance and results. This includes partnering with internal and external stakeholders who are critical to the overall functioning of the organization’s outputs. Systems learning is all about learning as an entire organization—putting in place structures and policies to promote and cultivate a culture of learning, sharing, collaboration and partnership. This can prevent individual silos from hogging "secret knowledge" that is useful for the whole organization’s growth.

As a C-suite coach, I developed the principle of the frog to help leaders cultivate this SSL perspective to grow their team and create sustainable performance and results. The principle of the frog has many facets that leaders can learn from. Just by observing and studying the way frogs move, we begin to gain invaluable strategic perspectives that can help expand our awareness and become more precise.

The Principle of the Frog:
Leveraging natural metaphors to bring about strategic insights for executive leadership coaching.

Principle 1: The Frog And The Well

Many have heard the story of the frog in the well. However, what you may not realize is that because you could see more, you were able to see the well and the frog and its surroundings. This vantage point gives you greater awareness. The frog in the well could only see as far as his environment allowed. No training or telling will help the frog see farther than its bounded reality.

As a leader, help your teams change their learning environment to help them see beyond the walls of their well. We often scold the individual for not seeing more; however, it's not a fair position. As an observer, you have a better vantage point than the frog. So you have to learn to help the frog change its environment and find new awareness. How are you realizing the impact of your bounded reality today? Do you know which well you are in? How do you gain better vantage points to expand your awareness?

Principle 2: The Strategic Pause

The frog, when wanting to catch its prey, lies very silent. It adjusts its focal point, anticipates the trajectory of its prey, positions itself at an advantageous angle and strikes. This process is known as the strategic pause.

As a leader, you are likely faced with many decisions to make and may often rely on your own set of cognitive heuristics to make decisions quickly. But the speed of these decisions can sometimes backfire. Though the decisions seem safe, the reality is that they could have unforeseen long-term repercussions. Think about how some leaders make the mistake of applying the same decision-making matrix for almost all similar situations.

Coaches can encourage leaders to use the strategic pause and to make some time for themselves to ruminate and think through the fundamental decision-making process. Consider the decision’s focal point—its impetus, outcomes and measures. Anticipate the trajectory of the challenge ahead, develop foresight and prepare for contingencies. Practice the habit of precision and accuracy.

Principle 3: The Leap

Frogs don’t just jump, they leap. When there is a barrier in front of you, you may tend to want to figure how to remove the barrier or get around it. Sometimes the best way is to forget about the barrier in front and leapfrog instead. The concept of leapfrog is moving over barriers and blockages and just moving forward.

Sometimes, spending too much time deciphering what the problem is might result in wastage. A better way could be to ask yourself, "How could I leap forward? If this barrier was gone, what could I do next?"

These three principles of the frog can enable learning from a strategic systems perspective and develop resilience for the future of work.