Leadership
and Executive Development
A fundamental truth about the high performing organization
is that high performers come for the culture...but stay for
the manager. Top performers demand systems, work assignments
and managers who focus on, encourage, support, and reward
high performance.
For leadership/executive planning and development to be successful,
it must:
- Link planning and
development to business drivers
- Establish accountability
for behavior change
- Encourage decision
making that leads to value creation
- Provide for coaching
with specific goals and action plans
- Shape behavior through
effective reward and recognition
- Promote High Performing
team behavior
We can help design and implement human resources
strategies, succession planning processes, perform 360 feedback
and coaching, create individual development plans, conduct
executive and leadership assessment, design action-oriented
leadership programs, develop selection and retention strategies,
create competency architectures and performance partnership
systems. By using our assessment tools and technology solutions
we can help you identify your leadership strengths and needs,
link development efforts to business strategies and capabilities,
and build talent at all levels of the enterprise.
- Leading High Performing
Teams - Two realities have helped shape organization
life today. First, that all organizations are faced with
a primary challenge: to produce consistently superior performance;
second, superior teamwork and superior work teams have been
demonstrated to be a consistent strategy for producing superior
performance in providing services and products.
Teamwork is what leverages the potential of an organization
into superior results. Teamwork is the vehicle for integrating
information, technology, competence, and resources. But
teamwork is not easy, and it is not simple. For, without
a clear, functional model to guide us, the task becomes
so confused and contaminated with unsupported opinion and
bias that it may be impossible.
There are all types of teams, and each type serves a particular
purpose. What is important is not what the team is called.
It is more important to know what the team's purpose is,
what is expected of the team, what is its work, who are
its customers, and how long will it be in existence.
While all teams do not have the same level of interdependence,
high performing teams share some common characteristics:
- Agreement on
purpose and mission
- Clear roles and
responsibilities
- Focused discussion
skills
- High consensus
decision-making
- Strong communication
skills
- Creative conflict
resolution skills
- Ability to learn
together
- Ability to self
evaluate
Our approach is to provide leaders and other key people
with a practical model and tools that they will require
building superior teamwork and developing superior work
teams. We use a 5-Step process for this:
| |
1. Planning |
| |
2. Focus |
| |
3. Skill Development |
| |
4. Integration |
| |
5. Continuous Improvement |
- Leadership Planning
and Development - We can help assess your leadership
strengths and needs and link development efforts to your
business strategies and capabilities. We accomplish this
by means of a range of assessment tools. Chief among these
are 360 surveys that measure management and leadership practices.
In particular, we use surveys developed by Dr. Clark L.
Wilson, widely regarded as the father of scientific multi-rater
assessment, and based on Task Cycle Theory, an approach
firmly grounded in established theories of learning, cognition,
and motivation. This approach values what is most important
in organizational roles, and participants can prioritize
their development plans with confidence.
One of our other assessment tools is the Kirton Adaption-Innovation
Inventory (KAI). The KAI is based on Dr. Michael Kirton's
Adaption-Innovation Theory, which is founded on the assumption
that all people solve problems and are creative. The style
differences, however, lie on a normally distributed continuum,
ranging from high adaption to high innovation. The key to
the distinction is that the more adaptive prefer their problems
to be associated with more structure and the more innovative
are comfortable solving problems with less structure. A-I
Theory is heavily researched and the KAI is a highly crafted,
sound scientific measure and can be used in multinational
groups - the results are unaffected by culture.
We use these tools along with many others to help promote
effective leadership development and to design leadership
and executive development efforts.
- Management Resource/Succession
Planning - Improve your effectiveness at succession
planning and administration. Management Resource Planning
formalizes, strengthens, and lends priority to the planning
of succession and development alternatives for current and
future executives of a company. This review process is the
primary vehicle for the planning of executive and leadership
continuity and development. Our approach to succession planning
is practical and systematic.
The key issues we work to resolve are:
PRESENT STATE - What is the present state of leadership
in the organization? Is there adequate coverage for each
of the key positions?
FUTURE STATE - How will the organization change and what
are the implications for future positions? What skill gaps
exist that will impact the future state of the business?
RETENTION ISSUES - What retention issues does the business
face? How is the organization dealing with them?
DIVERSITY - What is the availability of minority and female
candidates in the organization? What processes are being
used to develop them?
ACTION PLAN - What specific results will the organization
try to achieve during the coming year to improve the strength
of the management resource talent pool?
Our Key Processes are:
- Review business strategy and implications for position
requirements and potential additions, vacancies, etc.
- Review key position
requirements
- Develop employee
profiles
- Plan for Succession
- Management
resource review Follow-up succession commitments and
action
- Executive Transitions
- The introduction of a new manager can create "down-time"
in productivity while he/she is learning the job. Add to
this situation one where the new manager incorrectly assesses
the situation and that manager can unknowingly get the organization
moving in the wrong direction or make no progress at all.
From the time a change in managers is announced, a series
of events typically occurs. For the departing manager, emphasis
shifts away from relationships and toward tasks that must
be performed before leaving. As a result, communication
may be strained, important decisions made quickly or even
delayed until the new manager assumes their position.
To facilitate the process by which a new manager coordinates
his/her efforts and develops effective work practices quickly,
a transition process can be held for the new manager. Such
a process gives all parties an opportunity to clarify roles
and responsibilities and get to know each other.
The transition process is designed to enable new managers
and their direct reports to exchange information and establish
relationships early, and assist all concerned to understand
their objectives as a work group. Further, it is designed
to accelerate the process by which the new manager and his/her
direct reports coordinate their efforts and develop effective
business practices.
A transition process is especially appropriate when:
- The incoming
manager is unknown
- Breaks in organization
continuity are unacceptable
- There is little
time for sorting and identifying problems
- The incoming
manager has a reputation
- The departing
manager has a hard act to follow
- There are
significant style differences between the departing
manager and the new manager
|
