COMMUNICATION KINGDOM SERIES—March 2024 Sprint

Communication Kingdom Series

CORNERSTONE—Spring 2024 Sprint

Cornerstone

KEYSTONE—Spring 2024 Cohort

Keystone

FIRESIDE FIELD GUIDE—Spouse Retreat Autumn 2023

FIRESIDE FIELD GUIDE—A GATHERING

CHANGE, ADAPTATION & RESILIENCE—March 2021

Change, Adaptation & Resilience

CHANGE, ADAPTATION & RESILIENCE—September 2021

SCRATCH & CLAW—February 2021

SCRATCH & CLAW

SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES—April 2021

Spiritual Disciplines 

Book or Textbook

Book Club

Facilitated Dialogues

Leaders are readers, and reading engages the mind in so many profoundly meaningful ways, literally demanding that we linger for sustained periods of time with focused concentration. If you ever wonder What books should I be reading to become a better leader, please join us for Book Club!

Live Online

Leath Learning Presents: BOOK CLUB

Leadership

Culture

Non-Series Series

Conversations with Faculty & Friends

Slides

Lecture

Workshop

Printed Workbook(s)

Succession is tricky business.
Sure, most businesses begin simply&mdash;an idea and two dedicated hands&mdash;but they evolve into complex, multi-layer organizations by the time their founding leaders are ready to hand over the reins.
For many, humble beginnings set high standards for personal attention, quality service, and product reliability. And as the business grows and thrives, these pillars remain but in a far more complex form, guided by more minds and hands competing internally for attention and resources.&nbsp;
Add to this the impending retirement of boomer-owners from their businesses (some 48% of all private US companies according to a 2018 survey by Project Equity) and you have what amounts to the &ldquo;the biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth&rdquo; in US history occurring right now and in immediate decades.&nbsp;
Economist Robert Avery predicts there will be a $10.4 trillion net-worth transfer between generations by the year 2040. This transfer telegraphs a major shift, as subsequent generations are less traditional and much more adventurous. The competitive landscape of management teams, co-CEOs, the role of influential advisors, governance, and advisory boards is about to change forever.
Are you ready for this? If you are, you&rsquo;re the exception to the rule.
If your business means a great deal to you and those succeeding you, and together you want to see it continue, then join us for Your Turn: Private Business Edition to explore your company through our lens in an effort to not only see it survive you but to flourish and thrive for generations to come.&nbsp;
We know all too well how tough it is to see your baby objectively, but the day you stop working FOR your business or IN your business and start working ON your business is the day you graduate from entrepreneur, manager, or CEO to legendary founder and visionary leader.

Blake Leath

Joe Brouillette

In Person

Blended Learning

Your Turn—Private Business Edition

Strategy

Change

Communication

Developing Successors, Orchestrating Transitions & Executing Business Continuity Plans

Succession (already tricky business) is multiples trickier in family businesses.
Most family businesses began simply enough. In the words of one of our favorite clients, &ldquo;35 years ago with a notepad and one telephone that, in a good week, would actually ring a time or two.&rdquo; When run right, family businesses that began humbly enough actually set the standard for personal attention, quality service, and product reliability. They remain, century after century, pillars of the greatest and most progressive and successful civilizations. Excluding socialist countries, between 75% and 90% of the world&rsquo;s business is carried on by family companies. As scholar William O&rsquo;Hara writes in his landmark book, Centuries of Success, &ldquo;Before the multinational corporation, there was family business. Before the Industrial Revolution, there was family business. Before the enlightenment of Greece and the empire of Rome, there was family business.&rdquo; Indeed, while only 77 of the 1955 Fortune 500 have remained independent, approximately 20,000,000 family businesses of significant size and revenue are thriving worldwide.
But the family business is not without its perils. Between the first and second generation, only about 1/3 of family businesses survive, and of those, only 12% reach a third generation. An exclusive 3% to 4% of third generation survivors make it to a fourth. Alone, these are sobering statistics, and even more so considering that &ldquo;the biggest intergenerational transfer of wealth&rdquo; in US history is occurring right now and in immediate decades. Economist Robert Avery predicts there will be a $10.4 trillion net-worth transfer between generations by the year 2040. This transfer telegraphs a major shift, as the subsequent generations are less traditional and exceedingly adventurous. The landscape of management teams, co-CEOs, the role of influential advisors, governance, and advisory boards is changing forever.
Are you ready for this? If you are, you&rsquo;re the exception to the rule.
If your family business means a great deal to you, and you and those succeeding you might like to see it continue, then join us for Your Turn: Family Business Edition to explore your company through our lens in an effort to not only see it survive you, but to perhaps even flourish and thrive for generations to come. It&rsquo;s really tough to see one&rsquo;s baby objectively, but the day you stop working FOR your business or IN your business and start working ON your business is the day you graduate to leader.

Your Turn—Family Business Edition

Peter Drucker famously observed, &ldquo;Culture eats strategy for breakfast&rdquo; and&mdash;for those tasked with implementing any new program, system, or methodology, be it strategic or not, beneficial or not&mdash;this maxim is all too familiar. Culture resists change. This is a good thing until it isn&rsquo;t. Culture is predicated on beliefs and values, the interactions of people and their principles, a shared vision of who they are what they strive to become. This cultural root system resists new for new&rsquo;s sake. It demands alignment and proof of benefits&mdash;a very good thing. However, external, sea-change shifts in competitive markets demand organizational agility and swift action, often creating disruptive change to the organization&rsquo;s cultural norms. Perhaps the most disruptive of these is the much-dreaded merger and/or acquisition forcing two cultures to operate as one.
Culture is the natural result of humans interacting to achieve mutual goals. It happens whether we&rsquo;re paying attention or not, whether we nurture it or not. Culture grows year upon year, event upon event, accumulating a series of &ldquo;the way we do things around here&rdquo; norms that work well for the environment into which it grows. But untended and unintentional cultures often develop rigid structures&mdash;systems and procedures, processes and solutions&mdash;over multiple years and multiple events, merging into a strong and supportive trunk. From here, trends and patterns of behavior branch out to meet the market environment producing a myriad of leafy events. To the extent these structures are rigid or flexible determines the organizations response to rapid change in its market environment.
This 3-volume course will help leaders and manager develop an eye for work-culture elements, gauge their readiness and responsiveness to change, then engage the right-others to champion incremental culture shifts that, while they may seem small and slow, lead to a significant course correction over time and distance and a sudden boil from multiple heated elements.
But this is not enough. Drucker&rsquo;s maxim looms large over these efforts. Top-down orders meet the most resistance from work cultures, accounting for the vast number of strategic and programmatic implementation failures. Only bottom-up efforts, small changes to people, their principles and their shared vision, sustain strategic change.
Our program addresses this issue directly, giving leaders and managers the tools and the wisdom to intervene at the root, to close previous culture chapters and pave the way for those to come. All the while, addressing the essential practices of personal resilience, process perseverance, and people engagement. We help leaders and managers not only to master the tools of culture shift, but the mindset needed to see these changes through a culture&rsquo;s natural resistance to full integration.

William David Rigdon

Brian Cesare

Ashley Acker

Clay Morgan

Dalton Jantzen

Dave Arnott

Gary Moreau

Dawn Leath

Greg Holden

Knute Sorenson

Kimberly Kyle House

Peter DeMarco

Paul Bruno

Phil Davis

Michael Wood

Amanda Forasteros

Raquel Romero

Rick Shaum

Steve Buchholz

Susan Thoma

Sylvia LaVoie

Walter Nusbaum

Shifting Work Culture

The Purposeful Practice of Cumulative Culture Intervention 

Interview(s)

Assessment(s)

Summary Document

Outbrief

The period immediately following promotion or landing a new role is crucial for leaders, as first impressions are hard to overcome, and preceding and present players are in a heightened state of anticipation, literally on the edge of their seats to see who you are and what you&rsquo;re all about. Errors or lapses in judgment made during this critical window of time are difficult to erase in people&rsquo;s minds but even harder to overcome in the future, especially if trust is violated and one&rsquo;s intentions are properly construed as negative, or misconstrued as anything approaching hostile, egotistical, controlling, or exclusive (versus inclusive).
Our New Leader Integration process occurs quickly (delivered in one fast and furious day, or no longer than five consecutive days) and is recommended between Weeks 3 and 4 in the leader&rsquo;s new position, and never after Week 6 because it&rsquo;s usually too late by then to undo damage caused by missteps made in the first month. Reinforcing our premise that &ldquo;inquiring is intervening,&rdquo; the very fact that a new leader invites us in to gather others&rsquo; impressions and expectations (along with helping shape the messaging that results) speaks volumes to the leader&rsquo;s confidence, coachability, and willingness to be vulnerable and transparent, all of which are essential hallmarks of mature, professional leaders in today&rsquo;s increasingly egalitarian workplace.

Anne Lucchetti

Carlos V. Duno

Charity Self

Colleen Murphy

Jean Grossman

Mary Ober

New Leader Integration

Interviews + Themes

Cohort or Class Project(s)

Beyond only hiring and culture creation, strategic planning is arguably the most fundamental employee-related endeavor in any organization, and research released in December 2020 indicates that in our [eventual] post-COVID-19 world, 85% of managers view it as their #1 priority in 2021.
It's no longer trite to say that we are entering an unprecedented era, because it's true; one ripened by new world orders, tremendous social change, sweeping technological advancements (robotics and AI among them), a plethora of information, increasing speed, decentralized decision making, and much, much more. In the past year alone, the United States has seen more than 10,000 retail stores roll up their carpets, and Fortune magazine estimates that more than 100,000 establishments that temporarily shut down due to the recent pandemic are now out of business for good. As Dylan sang, the times they are a-changin', and with so many genies out of their bottles (including tens of millions of employees in the States alone who might as well now be viewed as "free agents"), there's no stopping the sands of time.
Tumult, however, also presents untold opportunities. Baron Rothschild, for example, an 18th century British nobleman who famously made a fortune in the days following Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo famously suggested, "Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own."
Through our Strategic Planning Process, we introduce an evergreen solution (not an episodic event) that facilitates your organization's consideration of such realities&mdash;and responses to them&mdash;on an ongoing basis henceforth. We can also facilitate the creation of Vision, Mission, Values, Core Ideologies, Strategies, Goals, and Tactics (if desired) that can weave seamlessly together to strengthen prioritization, resource planning, and talent development in real-time to achieve a stronger state of preparedness and sustainability in the months and years ahead.&nbsp;

Jay Leigh

Strategic Planning Process

Designing the Future

An extensive one-on-one interview process involving all key leaders and a representative sample of employees that is conducted between Day 60 and Day 90 following the integrative consummation of two or more companies, Aligning Forces has four typical aims: (1) To take a thoroughly exhaustive, incredibly meaningful real-time &lsquo;snapshot&rsquo; of the combined enterprise two to three months in, (2) To gather each party&rsquo;s perceptions of the other to date, along with hopes or suggestions going forward to optimize the relationship, (3) To summarize thematic perceptions of key leaders and their personal impacts on others, and (4) To document every interviewee&rsquo;s perceptions of him or herself, his or her department/function/team/project, an assessment of interactions between them and interfacing groups, any concerns about delivering what is expected, an assessment of current and/or requested resources, and prognostications about the future&mdash;with or without change(s) to the aforementioned.
Far and away one of our most exciting, treasured Client Experiences, Aligning Forces is not an inexpensive proposition, but for the equivalent of one employee&rsquo;s salary, Executive Leadership is reliably afforded a rare glimpse into the crystal ball of much that was impossible to discern or ascertain in due diligence, commonly including misalignments, accruing slights and/or grievances that&mdash;if left unresolved&mdash;may swell and swallow everyone's envisioned success, blooming structure/system/process landmines, hidden cancers, hidden gems, talent diamonds in the rough, pleasant surprises, untold synergies, unrealized potential, emerging priorities, and both near and long-term focal areas.
What price, clarity?

Greg Methvin

Michelle Simms

Aligning Forces

A Full Report on Listen & Learn Interviews with Representative Stakeholders

This is a collaborative Client Experience, not a program, but our Program Advisors are standing by to help you envision how our partnering in your integration efforts could be useful.
Organizations like ours are commonly retained for 1 to 5 years to help with "cultural integration" between two or more merged companies. This can involve facilitating strategy sessions, coaching executives, writing newsletters, filming videos that document successes, spotlighting employees who demonstrate desired behaviors, delivering classroom programs and workshops that create common language and/or approach, instilling values, helping with re-organization efforts, leading Do Tanks (that translate to immediate action, versus Think [or just Talk] Tanks that do not), coming alongside department heads and team leads to translate Executive Vision into everyday action, and so much more.
For clients with limited time, resources, or specialization in these areas for years 1 thru 5, or for those desiring an objective third-party to assist, we are ready when you are.

Partnering in Organization Integration

Doing What Works: Years 1-5

Poster

Digital Files

Though it is so incredibly immersive (like the very air we breathe), it can be difficult sometimes to describe culture, much less define how we wish it to be years down the road. Culture Roadmapping&nbsp;brings form to the essence that is culture through an artistic, iterative process resulting in a literal printed poster of culture: What it is today, What it needs to become, and How we will go about specifically bringing it to life.
Culture Roadmapping&nbsp;requires championing by senior leaders who feel called or compelled by circumstances within and beyond their organization to explicitly articulate the present and desired cultural state of their enterprise&mdash;and the path to get there. Culture Roadmaps are incomparable tools for expressing Vision, Strategy, Goals, how they (and the rest) tie together, and how to get there in coming years.

Culture Roadmapping

Plotting the Course

Do Tank

Having collected extensive examples of managerial malpractice in our 30+ years of consulting, we offer an interactive, year-long Client Experience involving monthly Do Tanks plus one-on-one executive coaching to surface SWOT findings, undiscussables, and sacred cows to accelerate alignment, problem-solving, and performance excellence in a format that is positive, constructive, and guaranteed to energize and inspire.

Managerial Malpractice

Cutting through the Gordian Knot of Managerial Mediocrity

Online Survey with Statistical Analysis

Employee Perceptions of Safety Culture, most commonly undertaken by our manufacturing, mining, processing, production, and refining clients, is a tailorable survey process that often combines face-to-face interviews with online input to reveal actual safety culture strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Such organizations are highly regulated and incredibly sophisticated when it comes to safety management, but sometimes leaders&rsquo; and employees&rsquo; attitudes or behaviors are not 100% conducive to &lsquo;doing the right things right&rsquo; all the time, which can erode the soil necessary for authentic safety cultures to flourish. For example, we regularly find disparities or dissonance between what policies say and how people feel and behave when employing them. Personal Responsibility, Management Credibility, Communication, Engagement, Conscientiousness, and Accountability &amp; Ownership are among the categories commonly evaluated, but the survey is 100% customizable.

Employee Perceptions of Safety Culture

Survey + Analysis

Client Experiences

Programs & Experiences

SERIES
PROGRAMS

Cohort
Programs

Classroom
Programs