By David Parks

One of the things I love about my job is that I get a unique window of insight into why leadership development does, or does not, occur in organizations. Like a corporate anthropologist, I seek insights into how some organizations achieve a world class reputation for leadership development whilst others struggle to launch a single workshop. When it comes to leadership development in your organization, how will you ensure you are placing your bets on the right strategy, talent and solutions?

Broadly speaking the phone rings for leadership development because clients are: a) Proactive – they want to proactively develop leaders that will propel their organization to a new level; b) Reactive - things have gotten so bad that leadership development is a last ditch attempt to get things back on track; or c) Tactical - there is a specific business, team, or operational need that leadership development can address.

Most of us are happy to put 2009 behind us with the hope that 2010 will be a much better year. Hope, however, is not a strategy. The best business leaders know that the downturn will end, and while they may be up to their eyeballs managing the present, they know they need to create a compelling picture of a better tomorrow for those they lead. Executive recruitment firm hrQ is seeing a shift in 2010 away from downsizing and re-org’ing. Katie Kaiser, Managing Director of hrQ in San Francisco, says “most conversations we are having with our clients are focused on talent upgrades, training and development, and employee retention. The tone is optimistic proactivity.”

It should be no surprise that the best companies for leadership development are hard wired with optimism and are highly proactive. They focus their leadership development efforts where they are going to get best results – the right people working on the right projects. The Human Capital Institute’s 2007 White Paper ‘Accelerating the Performance of High Potential Leaders’ claims that “the top 10% of high performing leadership talent accounts for nearly two times the profit over the middle 80%.” High performers get things done and deliver a business result. In a down economy it is the force of leadership energy from high performers that is going be a major catalyst to get out of the rut. If I were a betting man, or a Leadership Development Director, this is where I would proactively invest my leadership development dollars: your key talent, working on high leverage projects.

When most companies were dialing back leadership development, trailblazers like GE and Cisco maintained or increased their emphasis on the high potential / high performer population. GE ranked # 1 on Fortune Magazine’s ‘World’s Most Admired Companies’ list six times in the last ten years. CEO Jeff Immelt says “when times are easy, leadership can be taken for granted. When the world is turbulent, you appreciate great people.” Immelt personally leads part of the Executive Development Course (EDC) at GE and tasks teams of participants to travel the world benchmarking and working on high leverage business initiatives. For example, a team went to Africa to aggressively open up new market opportunities (see video case study). Other EDC teams conducted benchmark tours to well-known organizations such as Stanford, Disney and NASA.

Cisco’s Center for Collaborative Leadership, led by Annmarie Neal, VP, is blowing conventional leadership development out of the water. The flagship development vehicle is their Action Learning Forum (ALF). In each ALF, sixty senior leaders participate in a 50% executive development and 50% action learning forum. Over the 16 week course of the forum, teams are vying for internal project funding, with one project receiving funding. Since launching in 2006, each ALF project has generated over $1B in value to Cisco. Neal says that the goal is to deliver $25B in value added over the next five years. Again, if I were a betting man, or a Leadership Development Director, this is where I would place my bet.

Some of the key common threads between GE and Cisco approaches include:
- leadership development is positioned as a competitive enabler
- they develop their leadership brand as a great place to be for leaders
- there is a very clear business outcome / value add expectation
- they invest the time and the money
- the business projects are ‘disruptive’ and aim to fundamentally alter or create markets.

GE and Cisco are great examples of ‘best in class’ leadership development, and we can certainly learn from them. My ‘corporate anthropology’ research visits with both of these organizations in 2009 gave me inspiration and fuel to aim for great things.

The disappointing thing reflecting on last year is that so many organizations stopped leadership development in its tracks due to the economic conditions. The transition from 2009 to 2010 in itself is a catalyst. It allows us to look back at what we might do differently and harness the energy for change. The first five weeks of 2010 show a lot of pent up demand for leadership development. It is not just that initiatives were put on hold for financial reasons in 2009, organizations know that leadership is the key to economic recovery and they are putting energy and action behind it. Boyd Clarke, the former CEO of Bluepoint, used to say “Leaders light fires and make maps.” Now is the time to put Boyd’s words into action and ignite the passion that will accelerate us out of the downturn doldrums. What fires will you light in 2010?

David Parks is Vice President of Business Development at Bluepoint. He can be reached via email at davidparks@bluepointleadership.com or by phone at 415-383-7500.

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