Pathway®
The path to the results you want
Get the results you want. Keep it simple. Make it last.
What is Pathway®?
Pathway: the path, or the journey
We hold that this path, the one that leads to a successful, lasting enterprise, has to be climbed. We picture it as a mountain to ascend in order to reach the most desired result.
As you climb this hill, you discover a structured methodology for planning and building effective organizations capable of sustaining themselves. It is a leadership model that can be applied at any level of an organization. It uses the most modern and proven management tools. These principles exist to guide the strategic leader in the task of seeing the organization achieve its strategic objectives, which is what earns an enterprise its permanence.
Why systems thinking
Tame the complexity of your leadership team
People responsible for the overall results of an organization are often confronted with the complexity of the system. Linear thinking worked well when you were responsible for a sub‑system; now that you are responsible for the overall results, the linear ways of working that contributed to past success threaten to become the seeds of failure.
If you, individually or as a team, are responsible for leading your organization to its overall results, Pathway can help. This model combines the key elements of the system that produce organizational results, in a way you can actively keep in mind, and it expands the general systems model just a little.
Why is systems thinking hard?
- It absorbs a great deal of data and then synthesizes it; at some point the brain hits overload.
- It is often expressed in series of equations that most people do not understand.
- The early thinkers, brilliant theorists, rarely explained their ideas to ordinary mortals.
- It is non‑linear, while most people think in a “straight‑line” way.
- We like simple, single explanations; yet system results come from the interaction of multiple causes.
Inputs
Inputs
Transformation
Transformation
Outputs
Outputs
The Pathway® system
Seven elements that interact as a system
Needs are the inputs. Purpose, strategy, people and processes are the throughput elements that interact, through the system characteristic called feedback, and create the outputs known as results: the satisfaction of the needs of customers and other stakeholders. Consider each element indispensable to the success of your project or your enterprise.
Needs
Purpose
Personal · Organizational
Strategy
Processes
People
Personal · Organizational
Results
Feedback
Results flow back into the system: feedback links every component to the others.
Pathway® fuses rational, analytical thinking (the west‑east axis: strategy and processes) with relational, synthetic thinking (the north‑south axis: purpose and people) into one complete system.
Needs
No organization has an intrinsic right to exist. The purpose of any enterprise is to meet the needs of all the stakeholders in the system: customers, employees, suppliers, investors, distributors, regulators, the strategic team, communities. Stakeholder needs often seem to conflict; yet the most effective organizations are those that best honour all the legitimate needs of all their stakeholders. Those needs are the inputs that drive the system that is the enterprise.
Purpose
Purpose answers the question “why?”. Often called mission or vision, it identifies the set of stakeholder needs the enterprise takes on to satisfy and defines the domain in which the organization has chosen to become the leader. It expresses ideals and offers the “best self” that people can commit to.
Strategy
Strategy clarifies the “what”: what the organization will actually do. If purpose exists to capture hearts and minds, strategy exists to win market share. It specifies the enterprise’s core competence, the market segments it will pursue and the competitors trying to satisfy the same needs, and it ties strategy to the other Pathway components through measurable objectives and an integrated incentive system.
People
People are the “who” of the organization. Far more than a collection of skills, they embody character and are the source of creativity, innovation, adaptation, trust and goodwill. Their willingness to commit to the purpose, implement the strategic plan and integrate the processes is the indispensable condition of results. Leaders cannot simply talk about the importance of people; they must act in a way that demonstrates it.
Processes
Processes say “how” the organization will achieve its objectives. Every enterprise has core processes, which create the products and services that meet customer needs, and support processes, which keep the core processes running. Neither is more important than the other; they are only different. Organizations achieve integration around their processes: they pull all resources together and make them work as a system.
Results
Stakeholders define results as the degree to which their legitimate needs are met. Results flow from the interaction of purpose, strategy, people and processes. Some leaders favour the “east‑west” axis of strategy and processes; others, the “north‑south” axis of purpose and people. We hold that each component is indispensable and carries roughly equal weight in producing the desired results.
Feedback
Feedback is how the components of the system interact with one another. It makes desirable results such as growth and goal achievement possible. This meaning differs from the common perception of feedback as mere information on “how we are doing”: it is essential to have information about the interaction between the key levers of your system.
Trailhead™
The Trailhead™ Report: know where you are, and why
An initial feedback tool is the Trailhead™ Report (the start of the path). Your view, as leaders, of why you get your results is compared with the perspectives of customers, employees, suppliers, distributors and investors. You learn not only where you are on your journey, but also why you are getting your current results. The key systemic drivers of your business are clearly highlighted, with measures of trust, leadership effectiveness, systems alignment and competitive strength.
So what?
A way of thinking and a toolbelt to take with you
Pathway helps people with technical skills get the results they want from their complex organizations. Founded on true principles, it tames the natural complexity of being responsible for the whole organization, so that you can understand and influence the dynamic interactions that produce your results. It helps you clarify why you are in business, what you must accomplish and how to do it. And it leads to commitment and partnership among your employees, suppliers, investors and even your customers.
We began by pointing out that it takes a whole tree to harvest one apple. But once you have the tree, you do not get only one apple: some of the trees planted by Johnny Appleseed in the early nineteenth century still bear fruit in the twenty‑first. Pathway will help you create that kind of lasting result.
Pathway® and certification
Certification is the final rung of the Strategic Leader ladder. The 21CBG Pathway Certification emblem appears on our publications.
The three keys
The 3 keys that lead to the results you want
Master systems thinking
Understand your organization as a complete system rather than a sequence of single causes.
Create and follow the map
Create and follow the map that leads from where you are right now to where you want to arrive.
Learn and apply correct principles
Base action on true, timeless principles common to all organizations.
The Pathway® model and the texts describing it come from the work of Pathway Consulting (© Pathway Consulting, 2003, 2011, 2013).