This past month I’ve dedicated several hours each week to become more engaged on social media platforms.  For decades I’ve guided clients on how to engage with a broad spectrum of stakeholders.  Since Sept 2010, as Executive-in-Residence at IMD, I’ve taught participants in executive education programs comparable skills and written articles about it.  As I’ve always focused on the importance of connectedness and how to achieve it, I felt the need to spread my wings in this time of social networks and, as with all else of value, learning is in doing.  Just as I’ve “met” and now actively engage with interesting people since I’ve been on Twitter, I am discovering a whole new community on XeeMe and I am... more

During February among many wonderful IMD executive education programs I worked with Bill Fischer, IMD Innovation Management Professor and Idea Hunter maestro assisting executives examine and refine plans for their future.  Next week with IMD Finance Professor Arturo Bris during IMD’s Advanced Strategic Management program we’ll help other global executives tackle their challenges.  We engage with participants before, during and after these on-site programs and, I continue to write about the strategic value of engaging stakeholders with my latest series published by ReWiring Business.  Share what you have found to be effective and/or challenging in engaging stakeholders.

  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

The best strategic plans and/or state-of-the-art technologies are only as good as the people who actually execute them. Long-established research shows that people yearn most powerfully for human connections. More recent scientific studies using mathematics show that an ability to cooperate is the secret of humanity’s success. So, when we help our leaders and teams know how to engage with a broad stakeholder spectrum we give them tools to reach their greatest potential. Neuroscience research supports that deep relationships with stakeholders are vital to success. Studies show that the combined levels of engagement of your employees and customers have an outsized effect on your performance. Thus, creating and sustaining SRE – multi-directional, emotionally deep, profoundly trusting relationships that unleash people’s... 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

In my first week as Executive-in-Residence at IMD I observed and commented on executive education programs.  One was led by Dan Denison whose focus includes organizational culture, leadership and the impact they have on performance and effectiveness, and Tom Malnight whose focus includes global strategy, evolutionary organizational change, internal growth and renewal.  They guided participating executives through exercises designed to help them effectively tackle a changing and uncertain future.  Another group of executives interacted with James Henderson  whose focus includes helping companies achieve and sustain their competitive advantage, through a comparable exercise in developing strategies under times of uncertainty.  And in my first gathering of faculty and senior staff with IMD president Dominique Turpin we as an internal team explored many of... more