A Leadership Behavior to Becoming a 21st Century Strategic Hustler?: Learning Behavior

I am back. Happy Belated New Year.

Article 19 in my "Leaders Are Born to Be Made!" series continues to share my leadership and management insights to drive strategic execution-personally and professionally. Each article discusses the "world-class leadership behavior and/or management best practice" associated with the featured letter of the A.G.I.L.E. L.E.A.D.E.R.S.H.I.P. with a G.R.I.P.: A World-Class Integrated Leadership Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Results. The featured letter of this article continues with the "L" in A.G.I.L.E.; which introduces Learning Behavior.   

Great leaders are great teachers. However, before being able to teach you must be dedicated to learning. I am a life-longer learner who loves the discipline of the learning process. My continued personal and professional growth is attributed to my learning behavior. In fact, I cherish the opportunity to learn how well I have learned during the transfer of the learned knowledge to another learner. Noted Professor and former General Electric (GE) CEO Dr. Jack Welch, states: “Before you can be a leader success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others”. 

You may recall the ten goals to success discussed in an earlier article in this series covering ‘Goal-oriented Behavior.’ In summary, the first six goals are focused on you learning to become the best leader you can be; where the remaining four goals focus on you helping to grow leaders by teaching. My personal and professional growth are greatly attributed to my desire to learn, perform, and teach.

In this Information Age Revolution, professionals like: Jerone De Flander, author of "The Execution Shortcut" and "Strategy Execution Heroes"; Gary Cokins, MBA, CPIM, author of “Performance Management: Integrating Strategy, Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics”; Randy Bartlett, Ph.D., CAP, author of “Business Analytics: Using Data Analysis Tools: to Improve Your Organization’s Decision Making and Strategy”; Paul R. Nivens author of “Balanced Scorecard: Step-By-Step: Maximizing Performance an Maintaining Results” and “Objectives and Key Results Driving Focus, Alignment, and Engagement with OKRs”; Gail Stout Perry co-author of “The Institute Way: Simplify Strategic Planning & Management with the Balanced Scorecard” ; and Dr. Michael L. McCrimmon author of “Leadership Daily”; are colleagues and noted management consultants who, like me, share a passion for learning and teaching to help connect business strategy, transformation ambition, analytics, and execution discipline.

The following shares my insights on learning behavior from experiences globally and within the US. Keep on reading and learning.

As a part-time member of the international faculty (Associate Professor) and senior member of the academic board of Cambridge Corporate University (CCU) (www.cambridgecu.ch), the education arm of CPI International Group (CPI), (www.cpigroup.swiss), a nearly two billion Swiss francs conglomerate in Luzerne Switzerland, I earned global recognition for thought-provoking lectures on leadership and technology project management.   I was appointed to the academic board member as a business development manager focused on driving a multi-year Organization and Business Transformation initiative called CCU Worldwide (CWW). My mission was to expand the CCU Corporate Education Model globally.   

Let me give you a brief background on CPI. It is the holding company for business activities conducted in 19 countries on four continents in the areas of: Software Development, Healthcare, Renewable Energy, and Education. The company is managed via regional managers who report to the CPI headquarters in Switzerland. The four wealthy business sectors require a reliable international network of agents, distributors, strategic partners, and investors. This process involves many factors that make the process rather complex and undefined, however, challenging, and enjoyable. Diversity, cultural conflict, economic, political, globalization, business setup; all are factors that bring many challenges to the process and offer great opportunities for value creation. CCU’s Board of Trustees and Academic Board works with CPI executive management team—i.e. president/CEO and directors—to create and sustain a powerful model of a corporate university to better alignment with the CPI's goals and initiatives, achieve buy-in throughout the organization to emphasize learning and the utilization of a powerful brand concept to promote ongoing development.

In 2017, CCU witnessed many great achievements. With CCU confirmed as the leading Corporate University in Europe, Ranked as Number #1 in the Pharmaceutical Industry Management Studies, the expansion of the CCU activities to new countries and the valuable addition of the Healthcare and the Renewable Energy program, CCU has a well-established reputation as a provider of business and management education and as a hub for research and consultancy services. The correlation of these achievements, leadership changes, and my performance led to an offer from the president/CEO of CPI as Managing Partner and Vice President (VP) of Academic Affairs. The CCU Board of Trustees ‘BoT’ confirmed the appointment.

Expanding the CCU corporate footprint worldwide required a collaborative effort of the president/CEO of CPI (Switzerland/Egypt), president of CCU BOT (Switzerland/Egypt), and VP of Academic Affairs (US). CPI is constantly considered to adjust to given situations. To establish ongoing and sustainable change management in CPI, CEO Dr. Hossam El-Shazly, a Harvard and University of Liverpool graduate, political & economic advisor and international expert in change management & business liaison who holds doctorate degrees in veterinary medicine, change, and strategic planning created ALSKLS, a strategic model that is integrated in CPI’s corporate culture.

ALSKLS (Action Learning, Structured Knowledge, Leading Strategy) represents an innovative strategic model in which business cases and collective experience from the CPI’s operations around the world have been screened and reviewed by expert teams and talented managers. The process moved to the CPI Corporate University, CCU (Cambridge Corporate University).

At the CCU the action learning process is converted into a structured knowledge and corporate curriculum where more than 220 students are currently enrolled from inside and outside CPI in different programs, degrees, and countries. This process is the foundation for the creation of value creation strategic leads that describe and draw the future map of the CPI. The ALSKLS focuses on the need to present a new mindset to the process of managing change and crisis control away from the dominant resistance approach that occupies most of the available models. 

Source: CPI International Group

I leveraged the ALSKLS strategic model to apply the Balanced Scorecard methodology to communicate, measure, and manage strategy execution. Through leadership lectures and executive meetings, I educated, inspired, and enlightened the leadership team to an integrated leadership framework for breakthrough performance and extraordinary business results that embraces a Performance Improvement Innovation Life cycle: [Leadership-Culture-Strategy-Standardize-Streamline-Automate-Migrate-Obliterate]. Since the targeted effort of organic growth embraced countries as: Australia, Bahrain, Beijing, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Mexico--to name a few, practicing the leadership behaviors being taught in this "Leaders Are Born To Be Made" series proved value. For example, "Deliver Results Through Effective Delegation" and "Help Grow Leaders By Teaching", behaviors the will be covered later in this series, enabled me to connect, communicate, cooperate, coordination, and collaborate from a distant location to foreign entities.

The ALSKLS methodology which makes CPI an innovative learning organization, provided me with ample opportunities to learn the intricacies of international affairs and the technologies [systems, infrastructure, and applications] to support CCU hybrid eLearning model. The dimension that distinguishes learning from more traditional organizations is the master of certain basic disciplines, which are innovation learning organization. These disciplines are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning.  An in-depth discussion of each is beyond the scope of this article. They can be learned and explored in their entirety in the referenced text. Each proved vital in using the following Model of Cultural Learning (MoCL) to navigate the ALSKLS model and strategic road map to create an effective and efficient CCW strategy.  

Source: A.G.I.L.E. L.E.A.D.E.R.S.H.I.P. with a G.R.I.P.

Before CCW, my experience [15+ years] using this model as a learning and communication tool in cross-cultural environments [operations, projects] staffed with human resources from: London [United Kingdom], Dublin [Ireland], Zurich [Switzerland], Johannesburg [South Africa], Toronto [Canada], Nigeria [Africa], United States—just to name a few; was it accelerated moving the team beyond cooperation to collaboration and increased the value of lessons learned from each other, resulting in a better solution. It took us beyond tolerant and cooperation towards building cultural synergies at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. This process transformed from a discrete event to one that was continuing and evolving. In building trust, the model allowed us to connect, communicate, cooperate, coordinate, and collaborate. The insights gain from those experiences proved fruitful in using the model for the CCW initiative.

Within the ALSKLS method, I led the development of the following strategic road map based on the Balanced Scorecard Institute’s Nine-Step Methodology.

Source: The Institute Way and Cambridge Corporate University

An in-depth discussion is beyond the scope of this article. I am at liberty to share that during the Program Launch phase, the answers to the MoCL questions allowed customizing the methodology. Small teams of employees at different levels discussed strategic issues and generated several of the key components. The teams included: Senior Management Team, Strategic Theme Team, Objective Owner Teams, and Communications Teams. Dr. Hossam and myself served as Executive Co-Champions. We collaborated in leading the BSC Program Champions. Customized training preceded the work of each team.

Profound Learning/Teaching Requires Commitment

Many companies, large and small, are no longer in business because they lacked learning behavior. My career has proven that the only success a company or an individual can have is measured success. Thus, gauging the effectiveness of connecting business strategy, transformation am-bition and aim-bition, and execution discipline must be based on the numbers—or aim-bition.  In the Information Age of the 21st century having the willingness and ability to create and sustain an analytics-driven culture. As Dr. Bartlett writes, “Corporate culture can be defined as ‘how we do business.’ An analytics-driven culture necessarily blends analytics and company know-how. We can raise the analytics content of the culture by adjusting the Leadership, Specialization, Delegation, and Incentives.” This only happens with commitment to learning and teaching.

As a lifelong learner, true learning takes placed when the leader/teacher invest the time and the emotional energy to energize those around them in a dialogue that produces mutual understanding. You can command behaviors by issuing orders. But developing effective leaders who will continue to teach others requires a serious commitment to learning and teaching. The following graphic shows critical factors to support this: Depth of Learning, Level of Commitment, Amount of time required, and Continuous Generation of Leaders. Though an in-depth discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

Source: The Leadership Engine (Dr. Noel Tichy) and Situational Leadership (Center for Situational Leadership)

In closing, effective leadership creates a learning culture that allows C.H.a.N.G.E. and Adoption to harmoniously exist. We learn from experiences. The more effectively we listen the better we learn. As a leader, you should always learn what creates value and how to deliver it. Learning and growing excites everyone, motivating people to want to make the business the best it can be. They accept criticism and new ideas. They see the wisdom in them and apply what they learn to themselves and the value chain. Again, you can only learn if you listen!

Though an in-depth discussion on the disciplines to having an innovative learning organization—i.e. systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team building-- were beyond the scope of this article. Understand they contribute to learning. Effective leaders are learners who consciously think about their experiences. They roll them over in their minds, analyze them, and draw lessons from them. They constantly update and refine their view as they acquire new knowledge and experience. And they store them in the form of stories that they use to not only guide their own decisions and actions, but their team and to lead others. The learning organization must have leaders who learn. The following L.E.A.R.N.E.R. mnemonic recalls major points to learning behavior:

L = Listen effectively; it is the key to learning

E = Exhibit enthusiasm about contributing to something bigger than yourself

A = Aspire toward excellence

R = Recognize the importance of being a lifelong learner

N = Nurture personal development in yourself and others

E = Enjoy self-directed learning

R = Review your life as a series of emotional learning experiences

Learning leads to growth and success for people and the organization. After all an organization cannot be what its people are not. The next behavior we will discuss is Effective Behavior.

Until then……….Keep Doing the Strategic Hustle!

ALL THE BEST, CONTINUED SUCCESS

Dr. Frank Lee Harper, Jr., Ph.D., PMP, CGEIT, LSSBB - “Strategic hustler?

Excerpts from:

Harper, Frank, L. (2014). A.G.I.L.E. L.E.A.D.E.R.S.H.I.P. with a G.R.I.P. - Updated First Edition: A 21st Journey from Street Hustler to Strategic Hustler?; available on Amazon, Amazon.India, Createspace

Harper, Frank, L. (2018). A.G.I.L.E. L.E.A.D.E.R.S.H.I.P. with a G.R.I.P. – Second Edition: A World-Class Integrated Leadership Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results; not available In-manuscript