What gave rise to this work was the sense that while financial results (which provide an historical insight) may be easy to measure, leadership (which is a critical predictor of future success) is less easy, and so these findings provide Executive Broards and 'C Level' Executives themselves with a framework to assess and evaluate themselves against.
Reviewing the 6 categories identified as key areas of 21st Century leadership its striking how many relate to the capabilities that FranklinCovey focuses on. More striking still was how they parallel with the elements we recently included in an assessment and development programme for a large group of Emerging Leaders
- Zone 1: Reflection (Finding Strength Within) - The programme referred to above also started with an emphasis on Reflection - which we termed 'Self Knowledge', and as well as offering some structures and ideas to leaders about how they could develop this self awareness, as important is helping them realise they need to prioritise the time to do so.
- Zone 2: Diversity (Finding Value in Human Differences) - 'Managing Diversity' was a stand alone element in this programme also, and we worked with the leadership group to move away from a modern day interpretation of Diversity as 'quotas' relating to gender, race, creed..., so that instead they came came to believe in the value of (and developed the skills to leverage) diversity of perspective, experience and ideas as a key element to achieving new and different results
- Zone 3: Ingenuity (Accelerating Innovation) - The work we did on 'Innovation Management' drew thinking from organisations recognised as world class innovators (Google, WL Gore and IDEO) and took some of their ideas of 'what' was requred to innovate and provided FranklinCovey's experience on 'how' these could become common across organisations
- Zone 4: People (Connecting on a Human Level) - Unleashing people's talent was a uniting theme throughout this programme, and received special prominance in the sessions we developed on 'Developing Direct Reports' and 'Motivating Others'. Here our focus was on getting leaders to adopt a 'knowledge worker' paradigm to overcome some of the 'industrial age' practices that are still prevelant, redefining leadership so that everyone in an organisation can feel its their job to recognise and affirm talent and engaging with the 'whole person' and the motivations that people feel beyond the traditional rewards of pay so that everyone feels engaged to maximise the energy they apply to their roles.
- Zone 5: Society (Working for the Common Good) - We devoted an entire module to the theme of 'Managing Vision and Purpose', the major part of which is considering the broader sense of contribution an organisation intends to make so that it is possible to articulate this clearly for all stakeholders, thereby engaging stakeholders with a sense of medium and long term purpose that motivates and inspires.
- Zone 6: Business (Planning and Execution) - The topic of Execution was the dominant element in the time we spent on 'Building Effective Teams'. While many organisations may agree with the idea of 'Execution Makes the Difference', our experience is that few Executives have studied it in great detail or bring an approach that allows them to create an Execution Culture. Against this background, we featured research on the enablers and barriers to Execution (drawn from work with over 10,000 work groups) and also shared insights on FranklinCovey's '4 Disciplines of Execution' process which creates an approach that this scalable and repeatable from the top of an organisation right down to the front line.
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