by beCause Global Associate Jennifer Sertl, founder Agility3R, helping leaders navigate complexity – Sibos is an annual conference organized by the  SWIFT International Banking Operations Seminar for the financial industry. This year’s conference was held at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Over 7,000 decision makers were in attendance from over 212 countries debating the future of money in particular global finance, crypto-currencies, payments, securities and trade issues.  While much of the conference was geared to financial institutions and multinational corporations, there were messages and lessons discussed that can help all leaders across sectors be better prepared and should be scaled. All leaders will navigate sea-change better by strengthening discernment, building strong networks, and ensuring a more robust toggle between local and global. “People focus on... more

by beCause Global Associate David Hain, Director Transformation Partners — We live in a fast-moving, complicated world that frequently makes it a struggle to pause for breath, far less to make sense of it all. This US military acronym describes it perfectly — VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. We are hyper-networked and have incredible technology at our disposal, yet the very pace of technological advance creates confusion, exhaustion and suspicion in its wake. Customers and employees today are highly empowered, infinitely more demanding than previous generations and with an attention span that is significantly shorter because of the choices available to them from the device in their hand. Yet often they are cynical and change weary – wary of... more

As our consulting engagements always have been international, our clients – Fortune 500 companies, global NGOs, governments – agree it does not matter whether I base from Lausanne or New York.  I am delighted that my fascinating work with them is boundary-less.  While beCause Global Consulting continues to provide a spectrum of services – design strategic action plans; create multi-sector alliances; provide executive coaching; integrate corporate social responsibility; improve organizational and governance structures; etc. – our particularly unique specialty is to help clients develop and execute effective stakeholder engagement processes that directly impact achieving their goals.  You can hear my most recent interview on Radio Frontier, Geneva, about our pioneering work on Strategic Relational Engagement (SRE).  See what clients say about... more

  Cross-sector, cross-culture, cross-boundary learning is alive and well. My second year at IMD continues to be filled with rich intellectual and creative stimulation. I worked with finance professor Arturo Bris in Advanced Strategic Management (ASM). In this intensive program, 42 participants from 27 countries in 23 industries each clarified how to deal most effectively with a significant business challenge. IMD professors shared innovative tools, frameworks and lenses to analyze unique dilemmas and the extraordinary group learned as much from each other. I was in a panel discussion, Bottom Up Entrepreneurship for Democracy and Development, led by Iqbal Quadir, Director of MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, hosted by IMD’s Evian Group led by international political economy professor Jean-Pierre... more

On June 24 I gave the closing remarks at the UN Global Learning Managers Forum (LMF) in Turin, Italy on the social responsibility of learning, training and staff development in global organizations.  It was an absolutely stellar learning platform: the calibre of content and structure was at the very highest standards to allow for a truly great knowledge exchange among 39 Learning Managers from 35 UN Agencies globally. Before I facilitated a discussion on how they each might best engage their respective internal and external stakeholders, I observed as they shared with each other in various modules on a broad spectrum of important topics.  They are at the cutting edge of utilizing new technologies to reach staff throughout the  world. While the politics... more

An airline company sues an online ticket provider. Fishermen from the Gulf pay a visit to an oil firm in London. An investment brokerage is accused of misleading government. Today’s headlines could be quite different if more companies embraced efforts to engage stakeholders.  Why should you care about engagement?  More enterprises understand that a broader spectrum of internal and external stakeholders has a direct impact on their core business. Those that have engendered deep levels of engagement – what I call strategic relational engagement (SRE) – are far more successful in shaping that impact to their advantage. Neuroscience research supports experience that profound relationships with stakeholders are vital to business success. Other studies show how employee and customer engagement are intimately... more

Listening to international musicians improvize at the Cully Jazz Festival  I thought about the “beautiful music” made through the interactions of 28 senior executives from 19 countries representing 15 industries during the IMD program Advanced Strategic Management.  Each ASM participant entered the program determined to design the best solution to a concrete business challenge they faced.  They left not only as individuals each with his or her own finely honed action plan, but also as a team of  executives who indeed made beautiful music together through helping each other.   And, as I led my session first at ASM and then for the full IMD community on the importance of Highly Relational Engagement of Stakeholders – internal and external – for creating long-term value, I also experienced how through our engaged dialogue we too created unique and beautiful music since it is... more

As Executive-in-Residence at IMD, I am building on my decades of experience facilitating for clients from all sectors globally my trademark process of stategic relational engagement (SRE™) of stakeholders. I am focusing on the strategic position of value creation and competitiveness through SRE. I am distilling and synthesizing key teachable lessons for leaders who participate in IMD executive education programs . I am developing essential guidelines for practical applications in various contexts. These include internal stakeholder applications for boards and senior management whether horizontal across function or vertically in direct reports; external stakeholders whether customers, suppliers or willing partners; and more complex potentially adversarial external stakeholders (i.e.: activist shareholders, government regulators, NGOs and other civic groups, etc). Companies know they... more

We started 2011 with a magnificent hike through Verbier in the Swiss Alps. We got there by the fantastic Swiss public transportation system with the second to last segment on the St Bernard Express and the final segment on a Gondola: at every stage, we were surrounded by beauty!  Shortly after I was honored to learn I was chosen as one of the 100 Top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior.  Really nice personal and professional start to a new year.  Wishing you the best in this year too!