Are you an Alchemist, Octopus, or Transporter? Last week I posted a rather light-hearted introduction to the first matched pair attributes in the TAPE Framework for creative strategic business growth starting with the letter “T.” T represents the chemistry that happens for you and your business when you are both Transmutable and Tentacled. In last week’s article, I used the allegory of the Alchemist (transmutable) and the Octopus (tentacled) to drive home that if you want to drive exponential and rapid growth, you will need to harness both attributes in your leadership, staff, and company.
Here's the business case. The TAPE framework plots growth ranging from fast acceleration to steady sustained growth. The framework also plots action-oriented attributes versus connection attributes. Being transmutable enables a leader or a business to change. Being tentacled gives a leader or a business the connections to overcome cognitive bias, leverage partnerships, and expand opportunities. The power is when both these attributes are used together. When the change agent meets the connector, both your leadership and your business can do more than change or connect. When you are both transmutable and tentacled, you have harnessed the ability to transport or be a transporter. That’s much more powerful than being able to change from one state to another, or to gather a diverse set of perspectives. To transport your business to new possibilities, you need to change and adapt quickly and leverage your connections to help you grow fast and efficiently. The more tentacled your connections, the more opportunities you have. The better you are at changing and adapting, the better you can use your business intelligence to find common ground with your connections to develop a fast and meteoric growth plan.
Let’s apply this to leadership. In today’s environment, many leaders are being quickly promoted or recruited to lead larger-scaled organizations with aggressive growth targets. In these cases, the learning curve and ramp up for the most adept leader can be steep. Using the “T” in the TAPE Framework, leaders can quickly manage a high-demand, high-expectation leadership environment. Leaders that invest in change management skills for themselves and their teams become more transmutable. Leaders that expand their connections within and outside of their expertise gain advantage from a diversity of ideas, leverage insights from other sectors, and increase possible partnerships and affiliations. Leaders that use both skillsets together can transport their leadership actions into results, quickly. Becoming a Transporter speeds up the pace of growth and can help in scaling up quickly so you aren’t left in an opportunity deficit.
Transmutable skillsets include:
Change management
Adaptability
Ideation/Prototyping
Project Fast-tracking
Tentacled skillsets include:
Networking
Communicating
Leveraging/Negotiating
Creating a Culture of Curiosity
As a Transporter, you, your teams, and your organization have the both Transmutable and Tentacled skillsets to manage fast-paced growth and take advantage of opportunities that not only align with your vision but expand your potential.
If you're a growth-minded leader or work for a growth-minded organization, you are invited to participate in the TAPE Framework Survey. Your feedback will continue to create an aggregated data set that looks at the intersection between creativity and growth, while capturing the perspectives of the individual leader and the organization/business they work for. There are two surveys: one for you and one for your organization. I encourage you to do both. It's 10 questions, 3 minutes, to discover a better way. Next week, we will break down the “A” in the TAPE Framework.
Break the Tape Leadership helps leaders unleash creativity and potential in themselves and the organizations they lead to generate meaningful momentum.
©2022 Break the Tape LLC
Comments