I’m not sure whether it’s the knowledge that winter is around the corner or the slight sadness that accompanies the falling of the leaves but I always find autumn a reflective and slightly melancholy time of year. There’s so much to do to finish up the year and yet there never seems to be enough time to do it. After the relative calm and holiday atmosphere of August, I seem to find myself using September to plan possible work programmes for the remainder of the year and generally reconnecting with people, ideally over a coffee so we can chat unencumbered by the office environment.

This was the situation I found myself in this morning as I bumped into someone I last worked with over a year ago. He works as a senior manager for a Public Sector organisation and manages to keep a humorous detached irony intact about some of the desperately difficult and challenging decisions he finds himself in the middle of. It is always a pleasure to talk to him and work with him.

After catching up on the usual news about acquaintances and events, I can sense a shift in the conversation and that there is something else he wishes to explore. He talks about the morning I facilitated with him and his management team 18 months ago. He says that it remains the only strategic conversation the team have had despite having had to make some radical decisions about the size and focus of the organisation since that time. It worries him that their single point of focus was that one conversation held over a year ago and yet he acknowledges that the direction we identified then has helped then to make and progress difficult decisions.

Lack of time is always a major issue for senior managers as disruptions to the everyday flow of the business seem to fly in from all angles. Human beings are also great ‘avoiders’ and so strategic conversations about difficult decisions seem to slip to the back of the ‘to-do’ list. I decided two years ago to step into hosting these strategic conversations and often they last around three to six hours – not long really when you consider the impact of the subject matter we’re often discussing.

These conversations are a great opportunity to offer highly intentioned and resourceful teams a long lasting ‘window’ into high performance. The work we do in half a day can support the resilience and agility of an organisation in ways that are entirely disproportionate to the time invested in the conversation. It’s the old adage ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts’ and really any time invested in strategic decisions is better than none at all. The challenge for managers is keeping that bigger picture at the forefront of people’s minds as they make those daily decisions.