The Four Cornerstones of My Business
Getting people to move forcefully in the right direction for the organization is the greatest challenge facing business today. Leadership Pathways can help you align your most important resource — your people — so that your company moves faster and more successfully toward accomplishing your goal of true industry leadership.
This path is rarely easy, nor is it always immediately gratifying. Yet, for our clients and for ourselves, as the horizon of vision widens, the path of leadership is the only choice.
Integrated and Systemic:
I see organizations as systems — as a confluence of complex forces that together conspire to create the organizational dynamic. Therefore, any work I do with you, to be effective, is sensitive to and often involves much of the following:
Your company’s aspirations
The personality of your leaders
Your company’s culture
Your company’s structure
The history of your company
Your industry and sector
Your products
Your Human Resource policies and systems
The communities in which your company operates
Your corporate strategies (both stated and implied)
I do not have "one" answer or "the" answer. I seek to co-create with you the unique conditions under which your organization will grow and sustain that growth over time. Nor do I take a cookie cutter approach. I use processes and assessment tools to discover your organization's unique needs and to help you learn how best to meet them. The organization development work I do with you is then based on this discovery and learning.
The goal of my consulting services is to identify, create, or affect the forces that will produce your organization's greatest potential. The goal of my custom-designed training is to produce the attitudes and skills necessary for enhanced individual competence. Most efforts to affect change require both heightened organizational effectiveness and greater individual competence.
Relationship Integrity:
Leadership Pathways is distinguished by honesty and integrity.
Many consultants are reticent to say things that might upset their clients. As a result, they shade the truth for their own comfort.
I aim to discover the deep issues that prevent or promote your organization's effectiveness. I am willing to forfeit a client relationship in the service of having a positive and enduring impact on his or her organization. As a result, my clients trust that I will be honest with them.
At the same time, I sensitively state the truths we uncover so that, when exploring difficult issues, my clients realize my intent is to support their ability to take effective action.
My added value to our clients emanates from who I am as an individual. My clients tell me they value my ability to listen and connect. I tell the truth with compassion and empathy. I operate from a perspective that supports my clients' greater perspective of themselves and their organizations.
Excellence as Practice:
I do leading edge but not "trendy" work. I continually stretch the boundaries of consulting. My collaboration with my clients produces a "learning laboratory" environment in which I pioneer new ideas, structures and shared leadership models. I develop, publish and use innovative products, materials and measurement instruments; and make my state-of-the-art tools available to the organizational development community as a whole.
I practice excellence in my relationships. The relationships with my clients are where the work is focused, and where the results are achieved. Through it all, I am relentlessly committed to one thing: extraordinary success.
Cultural Alignment for Competitive Advantage:
Few business leaders today truly understand what it takes to create a powerful, committed culture that works for the benefit of the bottom line. For example, some leaders attempt to include everyone in the creation of the company vision, with the assumption that such involvement will produce the ever-desired cultural "buy-in." While such support may be achieved, the visions that are created through this process usually don’t differentiate the company or create an environment for true marketplace success. Because so many people are involved in the vision creation, the company creates a vision with which "everyone" feels comfortable. As a result, the vision gets reduced to the lowest common denominator.
The way Leadership Pathways ensures your company vision actually does create an environment for success, is to first ask you to determine or clarify your strategic direction. Your business strategy, by definition, must differentiate you from other businesses in your markets. Once I have worked with you to refine your strategic direction, I use this information to help you articulate the culture that will best produce your strategic advantage. As a result, your business strategy and cultural strategy are fully integrated.
Finally, I focus on aligning your human resources and information systems with your newly integrated culture and business strategy. Then and only then does the culture of your company become a true and enduring competitive advantage.
Schedule a FREE consultation appointment with me so I can determine how I can help you solve meaningful challenges and achieve your aspirations!