Culture Transformation for Thriving in Permanent White Water

I was just talking with a CEO Client about the development work we’ve been doing with his team. This led to a discussion about the state of our businesses. His company is doing fairly well during these uncertain times. He asked about our business. I told him that we saw many organizations cut back sharply on leadership and culture development during the economic shock of late 2008 and into 2009.

Over the past two years we’ve seen a steadily growing resurgence of interest in leadership and culture development. In the past six months this has accelerated. Like this CEO, many senior executives are realizing we’re in a state of “permanent white water.” In the midst of the financial crisis back in 2009, Harvard Business Review published a special issue on “Managing in the New World.” One article was especially prescient. Entitled “Leadership in a (Permanent) Crisis” the authors posited that “things won’t be returning to normal and a different set mode of leadership will be required … sets the stage for a sustained or permanent crisis of serious and unfamiliar challenges.”

They went on to argue that leaders must build cultures that “foster adaption, embrace disequilibrium, and generate leadership across all levels of the organization to adapt to changing times.” Two years later, more senior executives finally seem to be taking this message to heart. As a result, demand for our keynotes, workshops, and offsite executive retreats on leadership and culture development is very strong.

As a follow-up to this month’s Leading a Peak Performance Culture webcast I am now going through our toolkit of leadership and culture development resources and materials. I am also shifting through the many variations of highly customized training and consulting approaches we’ve taken with many Clients. This is to pull together an interactive webinar on November 29 to overview The CLEMMER Group’s practical leadership and culture development services.

I am building the overview around the five Key Implementation Steps outlined in the Leading a Peak Performance Culture webcast:

1. Assess current systems, practices, culture, and readiness for change.
2. Executive Retreat:

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  • Review/assess, learn, envision, and prioritize leadership behaviors, and systems/processes.
  • (Re)set Strategic Imperatives, steering/project teams, and implementation framework.

1. Realign/integrate/prune current projects, processes, systems, and development initiatives.
2. Plan implementation strategies and timelines.
3. Monitor, follow up, and adjust implementation plans.

For over 30 years, Jim Clemmer’s practical leadership approaches have been inspiring action and achieving results. He has delivered thousands of keynote presentations, workshops, and management team retreats to hundreds of organizations around the globe moving his audiences from inspiration to application. He’s listed in the World’s Top 30 Most Influential Leadership Gurus based on research with 22,000 global business people, consultants, academics and MBAs. His website is www.JimClemmer.com.