San Jose, CA on 23rd Sep 2013 – we could finally launch the Accelerating Leadership Development program (ALD) and are now busy creating our portfolio of concepts and knowledge for internal mentors and executive coaches working with change projects and leadership development.
A main objective is to attack the statistics that even today show that only 20% of change projects deliver the expectations. In our experience failures are seldom bad luck, but too often a combination of unrealistic planning and bad psychology. One core remedy is to use senior managers as internal mentors, provided they are respected (and respectful) bearers of organisational culture. However, mentoring is not just seniority and wisdom – it is a leadership attitude and requires some tools and techniques. Best practices increase the probability of successful changes and talent development.
Emeritus Professor Alex Roberts has taught his Strategic Focus model for many years in the executive MBA and DBA programs at Edinburgh Business School. Our joint focus is to make strategies work, which you can think of as a coin with a money side and a psychology side. Looking at one side you should never assume that you know the other. My 7 Domains model therefore mirrors his Strategic Focus model and is based upon my experience from consulting, management and psychology; including eleven years in General Electric, ten years as partner in the International Executive Search Federation (IESF), and my lectures and workshops at the Norwegian Board Academy since 2007.
Strategic leadership requires that you understand both business and psychology, in that order. Research has shown that psychologically aware leaders have a sense for what is realistic, who must be involved, and how things can be done. A network of experienced executive coaches can build bridges between contributors: business managers usually know too little psychology, psychologists and HR usually lack in senior management experience; and management consultants usually rely too heavily on analysis and systems. Using cultural psychology we can help you build great teams that make you succeed with cultural change and leadership development. You will soon see a network of executive coaches who are qualified to partner with senior managers to help develop the next generation managers and strategy leaders.
Internal mentoring may in fact be the only way to provide culturally stable and less expensive organisational projects. No amount of training can change a business, only practice does. In fact, psychologically aware management teams are better able to predict the impact of decisions and promote talent development. Businesses are cultures (across cultures) and we help you break things down to smaller changes with appropriate timing and content. In the Great Wall Seminars we will discuss approaches to strategic project management – this alone avoids some of the most common mistakes in organisational change.
Local executive coaches mean that you can buy as much help as you need, when you need it, at local prices – it brings down the cost of leadership development to a fraction of what it would be with external program such as leadership training or consulting! Best of all – we know that this works.
If you are an experienced executive coach, we would love to hear from you. We have been very grateful for all positive feedback and guidance since we started in Alex’ apartment overlooking Edinburgh Castle two years ago. The interest from around the world should convert into enrolments for our programs, which we truly believe will be a win-win for everybody. For more go to www.executive-coaches.net and join one of the mailing lists.