Trends in Leadership

The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in the U.S. has identified five leading trends for senior executives, based on 247 leaders who participated in their "Leadership at the Peak" program from July 2006 to April 2007:

The Rise of Complex Challenges - driven by internal changes to the organization, market dynamics, a shortage of talent and globalization.

The Innovation Revolution - innovation efforts achieved through new ideation processes, task forces, cross functional innovation teams, off-site innovation programs and stage-gate processes, accompanied by a focus on talent/talent development, reward/recognition programs and research/external best practices.

The Art of Virtual Leadership - communication as a central skill to bridge cross-cultural, geographical and functional boundaries, but with the skills for virtual leadership differing from those used for face-to-face leadership.

Collaboration Nation - over 97 percent of executives surveyed believe that leaders in their organization must collaborate to succeed, but only 47 percent of believed leaders in their organization are highly skilled in collaboration.

The World of Interruption - dealing with fragmented work time, with a typical worker interrupted every 11 minutes, and taking an average of 25 minutes to return to the original task. Senior executives report being interrupted every 30 to 40 minutes.

The results are reported in the August 2007 issue of the CCL Leading Effectively e-Newsletter, and are drawn from a broader white paper titled 10 Trends: A Study of Senior Executives' Views on the Future, authored by Corey Criswell and Andre Martin.

Of significance, the wider study goes on to highlight the importance of several additional trends, including an increased emphasis of authenticity of leadership, being able to plan for leadership succession, and ensuring that current leaders maintain their personal wellness to maximize leadership longevity.

Organizational wellness & dysfunction – watching for the signs

Too often, organizational leaders equate “wellness” with physical health-oriented programs, such as giving staff subsidized memberships to the local gym, or adding health support programs to the benefits plan.

But true organizational wellness is much broader in scope, and the best organizational leaders seek to identify and address root causes rather than symptoms. If stress-related absences are on the increase, internal conflicts between people and teams is mounting, and there is declining productivity and morale, this can be a strong sign that there are deeper issues of dysfunction inside the organization. These issues directly impact the organization’s relative wellness and its capacity for peak performance, both of which warrant the attention of senior leadership and the board.

The International Institute of Management (IIM) has published an online white paper titled Organizational Politics: Symptoms of Dysfunctional Organizations by Med Yones that outlines a range of warning signs to be looking for if you are an organizational leader or board member. These include:

• Management that stifles discussion and disagreement
• Inefficient allocations of resources and unequal workloads internally
• Poor linkages between strategic plans and actual performance
• Constant crisis mode
• Excessive fragmentation, turf wars, and empire building, with poor internal collaboration
• Low overall productivity, high stress levels, and backstabbing

Since senior management is often an integral part of the problem – either as a direct contributor, or in terms of not being seen by front-line staff to be taking interest in or acting to correct the problems – it is more difficult to return to a positive state if things get too far. Accordingly, a better solution is to continually monitor the organization for signs of its relative wellness and act promptly when negative symptoms appear.

Potential actions for senior leadership and board members include:

• Recognizing that organizational wellness is a priority and that it directly impacts long-term performance
• Using scorecards and/or objective external assessment to get a good picture of current organizational wellness, and making ongoing use of scorecards and direct feedback a priority
• Emphasizing collaboration as an organization-wide initiative, with senior leadership and board members clearly “walking the talk” (this includes the board providing adequate support to senior leadership for necessary changes)
• Providing necessary training and coaching across the organization on collaboration approaches, and backing this up with incentives for positive behaviour
• Not tolerating unacceptable behaviour (i.e., continual non-collaboration), including replacing uncooperative staff if mediation over valid differences of view doesn’t solve the issue

Similarly, the Booz | Allen | Hamilton consulting group has developed an online self-assessment tool called the Org DNA Profiler® that helps you to understand your organization’s cultural style compared to one of several “DNA types” that their consultants have developed. Is it Passive-Aggressive, Fits-and-Starts, Outgrown, Overmanaged, Just-in-Time, Military Precision, or Resilient? And what does it mean to fall into any of these categories?

Although not a detailed assessment of your organization’s relative cultural wellness, the value of the tool lies in its ability to start a conversation on how people see the organization. From there, it is possible to start addressing the root causes that are leading to the different interpretations of how the organization operates, and how to take steps to improve its relative wellness. **Note that the assessment tool has modified versions for for-profit and government or non-profit organizations.

The assessment tool builds on a series of articles about the concept of organizational DNA, including “The 7 Types of Organizational DNA” by Gary Neilson, Bruce A. Pasternack, and Decio Mendes in the Summer 2004 issue of Strategy+Business magazine (free registration required to view articles).

Health Literacy: Improving the Consumer

Do you know how to manage your own health care?

As an aspect of broader personal wellness, being able to take charge of your own health and wellness seems an obvious step. But research in the U.S. shows that a major obstacle to this is health literacy - particularly among groups potentially at risk. In fact, the study contends that health literacy is the biggest single predictor of overall health status, exerting more influence than factors like age, income, employment status, education level, or race and ethnicity.


A new initiative by the Partnership for Clear Health Communication (tm) is focused on helping consumers of health services improve their understanding of health options. The AskMe3 (tm) program is intended to provide health care consumers, health care providers, and organizations with a simple way to improve individual health literacy.

The answer, in their view, is equipping consumers to ask three simple questions:

The intended result is a simplified method of ensuring that consumers of health care services are able to get clear answers to their health concerns, and that they understand how to act appropriately on the health care advice provided.

The initiative's website provides a range of easily downloaded materials for patients, health providers, and employer organizations.