Onboarding Senior Executives

In these uncertain times it is even more important that organisations retain their senior executives and ensure they start to contribute as soon as possible. Research by CLC suggests that within 18 months 60% executives fail to deliver on their objectives. Research also indicates that the cost of recruiting a senior executive can be 150% of their salary. Fiona Ellis, Director of Bath Consultancy Group describes Bath Consultancy Group's Transition Support process.

Bath Consultancy Group has recently worked very successfully in the further education sector helping colleges improve their leadership to transform performance. We have noticed that teachers are under increasing pressure to make management decisions amidst a policy labyrinth.

Danny Chesterman has been instrumental in raising awareness of the challenges faced by Further Education colleges. He has contributed to Sir Adrian Webb's report on the policy confusions in the FE sector and has recently led a seminar with senior leaders on policy and leadership. Danny draws on his experience working with government departments, local authorities and within three further education colleges in recent months.

Even though there is an economic crisis, the principles of business success remain the same:

• Strategies need to be developed that align current action with the organisation's purpose
• People need to be clear about what's needed and energised to make it happen
• Change processes must be integrated and implemented quickly

The difference, and the ultimate test for organisations during these times, is how leaders themselves approach the recession.

This paper prepared by the Centre for Excellence in Leadership (CEL) provides an executive summary of ‘Leadership in FE: Managing Complexity', a report authored for CEL by Sir Adrian Webb, an academic and adviser to the Welsh Assembly Government and former vice-chancellor of the University of Glamorgan. Sir Adrian Webb produced a review into further education in Wales which was published in December 2007.

Dowload Executive Summary:  FE Leadership Amid Complexity Exec Summary 102 Kb

Download full report:  FE Leadership Amid Complexity - Seminar Report 196 Kb

With the latest report from the Equality and Human Rights commission revealing a woeful drop in the number of women attaining the top jobs in Britain; it is high time that organisations took a fresh view.  According to Sue Pritchard of Bath Consultancy Group, the key to tackling this latest trend lies not in doing more of the same, but in joining up and aligning their work on organisation culture change, leadership development, and company policies and procedures to really make the difference.

Download:   Decline of women in top jobs 48 Kb

(By Chris Smith, Principal Consultant, Bath Consultancy Group)

Leadership is about relationships not just simply the qualities of the successful leader.  There are many books and articles about leadership often offering a post-event explanation for what individual leaders achieved. 

While hindsight is enlightening these books tend to focus on the personal qualities and strengths of the leader and how they personally made the difference.  While they typically offer part truths and helpful insights, such recipes for success offer little practical value because leadership is always contextual.  We need to understand about more than just the thinking and actions of the leader to complete the picture. 

    Download:  Strategic Leadership 112 Kb

Today’s lifestyle involves significant risks to personal health and organisational performance where long hours, high stress, limited time for relaxation or exercise, damaging eating and drinking habits and frequent periods away from home are commonplace.  Leaders are increasingly conscious of poor management practices and anxious to avoid potentially costly and high profile court cases.

High on the corporate agenda remains the need to engage talent and be seen as an attractive and socially responsible employer in a highly competitive market for skills, as well as the commercial need to reduce sickness absence often attributed to stress and anxiety at work.

The focus of this work is on keeping pressure positive and creating climates where innovation and high performance are more likely to thrive.  Fit and healthy executives feel better about themselves, are more astute and energetic and better able to attend to key relationships including clients, other stakeholders and direct reports in order to contribute to their organisation’s performance.

    Download:  Leading for Optimum Performance & Well-being 85 Kb 

No one can dispute the fact that the current UK Government has invested substantially in leadership development.  We have seen the establishment of leadership academies in all the main areas of the public service - albeit with widely varying funding regimes. 

But there has been too much investment in individual leaders as if they are separate and free agents rather than a participant in a web of complex relationships; and too much leadership development in abstract, rather than sited in the heat of the struggle with a particular issue.

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