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George's work includes successful business plan development, strategic account planning, new hire sales skills, inside to outside transition, negotiations, and advanced communication skills. He has helped companies such as Mead Johnson, Bristol Myers-Squibb,
Avaya, Enterasys, Cabletron, and Compaq. George's focus has been classroom delivery, broadcast learning and large group seminars to US and international salespeople, managers, consultants, engineers and executives. George has facilitated groups and executives in retreat settings for change management, conflict resolution, knowledge management and systems thinking.
George can be reached at glichte@unlockit.com.
Leadership and Change - A Conversation with Tom Peters
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In the continuing saga of brushing with greatness, I had the opportunity to talk with Tom Peters a couple of weeks back as I prepared training materials for his Linkage broadcast on Leadership and Change. Tom Peters is perhaps best known for the phenomenal success of
In Search of Excellence (1982, with Robert H. Waterman, Jr., recently named one of the 'Top Three Business Books of the Century'). His influence on business thinking is profound; in fact, The New Yorker states, 'In no small part, what American corporations have become is what Peters has encouraged them to be.' |
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Tom's latest book, Re-Imagine: Business Excellence in a Disruptive
Age, is sure to be a hit with Peters' fans. His provocations and 'in your face' approach cause all of us to take heed of the changes facing us - and to lead our teams, departments, and organizations boldly into the future. In his book he states:
We fall back, in these crazy and chaotic times, on the command-and-control model of leadership - a model that no longer accords with how dynamic leaders actually operate.
We seek shelter in the fantasy of a leader who has The Answers, who promises 'change' or 'success' or 'profits' in exchange for patient
'followership' (aka 'obedience'). But in an age when all value flows from creativity and initiative, we must imagine and embrace a model of leadership that is loose, open, and perpetually innovative.
We ask leaders to be 'good stewards' of the assets they inherit. But in an age when permanence is a dangerous delusion, we must instead ask leaders to challenge the legacies that they have inherited, to create entirely new value propositions - and then get out before they get stale.
Peters describes the successful organization of tomorrow as vastly different than the organization of today. Most organizations today, he suggests, are structured and led to win yesterday's battles and to address yesterday's challenges. They will not win tomorrow's battles nor will they address tomorrow's business challenges.
Yesterday's business challenges (or 'losing bets', as Tom calls them) include:
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Systematic Planning Rituals - 'Forget the 500-year [business] plan. You're lucky if you can write a five-week plan that makes any sense after five weeks.'
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The Quality Thing - 'We need something dramatically different from 'getting better' - from even getting 'a whole lot better' - at what we did for a couple of hundred years. Now we need to train ourselves to play an entirely new game.'
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The Sustainable Competitive Advantage - There is no sustainable competitive advantage. This is the age of hypercompetition and victory goes to the agile, the innovative, and the disruptive.
Peters concludes his book,
Re-Imagine, with 50 ideas for successful leaders. The first ten ideas are:
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Leaders create opportunities. 'Leaders do NOT transform people. Leaders create opportunities for people and then encourage them to apply their latent talents to grasp those opportunities.'
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Leaders say, 'I don't know.' 'The model of leader as 'all-knowing commander and order-giver extraordinaire' is fatally and fundamentally flawed.'
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Leaders are rarely the best performers. 'A symphony conductor is usually a good musician, but seldom a world-class performer. Leadership is a discrete, limited, special quality.'
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Leaders are talent developers (Type I Leadership). 'Great talent developers are the bedrock of organizations that perform over the long haul.'
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Leaders are visionaries (Type II Leadership). 'A leader,' according to Napoleon, 'is a dealer in hope.' Peters agrees.
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Leaders are 'profit mechanics' (Type III Leadership). Leaders grasp the nuances of a P&L or balance sheet. They understand the underpinnings of financial management.
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Leaders understand that 'it all depends.' Leadership takes on many forms and shapes; the RIGHT leadership approach depends on the situation.
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Leaders thrive on paradox. 'Relatively extreme, wild oscillation between too much control and too little control is probably the secret to long-term effectiveness.'
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Leaders love the mess. 'We must be assiduously on the lookout for those who get their jollies in the face of madness, where others waffle or fold.'
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Leaders do! 'If you don't know what the hell is going on, if you don't know the shape or even the location of the playing field, if you don't know the nature of the rule book or even if there is one, then, in the immortal words of my old man, 'Thomas, don't just stand there. Do something.''
If there's one thing that Peters wants us to learn as leaders, it's this tenth idea:
Leaders do! Leaders are players; they're mixing it up. Peters challenges us to strive for the same legacy that he wants for himself - to be known as 'a player', someone who chooses to make a difference. Someone not content with watching life from the sidelines or to 'support initiatives' ('initiatives are for wimps'). He wants us to wage full-scale assaults, to lead with conviction and passion.
Entelechy's High Performance Management training helps turn your managers into leaders. Create your own customized leadership training using our modules as the basis for your training. Check out
High Performance Management at http://unlockit.com/HPM.htm.
Terry Traut Speaks on
Evaluations: Measuring the Impact of Learning
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Terence
Traut, president and CEO of Entelechy, Inc., will present 'Evaluations: Measuring The Impact of Training' on June 10, 2004 to the Massachusetts chapter of
ASTD. |
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His presentation outlines four levels of evaluation and how each can be used effectively to gather important information about your participants, your training materials/design, and your training delivery. You'll learn to create tests and other assessments that actually measure what you want to measure! After attending this presentation, the internal trainer will be able to use evaluation to improve training and link training to on-the-job performance. HR professionals, OD experts, and other corporate and organization decision makers will be able to use their knowledge of evaluation when evaluating training programs and when interfacing with internal clients. External consultants and training contractors will be able to use evaluation to make a case for training or other performance intervention - and close the sale!
For more information on the presentation, check out http://www.massastd.com.
Terry will be drawing from Entelechy's newest eGuide, Evaluating Training.
For more information on (or to purchase) this indispensable training tool,
click on http://unlockit.com/eguides.htm
and scroll to Evaluating Training
eGuide.
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