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Why Experience Alone Is No Longer Enough for Senior Leaders

Senior leaders discussing modern leadership development strategies

For decades, experience functioned as proof of leadership readiness. Years in senior roles were assumed to translate into sound judgment, steady authority, and reliable decision-making. In many environments, that assumption held true.

It doesn’t anymore.

Senior leaders today face a kind of complexity that experience alone was never designed to manage. Markets shift without warning. Organizations grow faster than leadership structures can stabilize. Teams operate across cultures, time zones, and expectations. In this setting, leadership is tested not by familiarity, but by interpretation.

This is where an executive mentoring program becomes critical. Not as a supplement, but as a stabilizing force that helps leaders convert experience into relevant judgment.

Experience Built the Career. It No Longer Carries the Role

Most senior leaders earned their position by solving hard problems. They learned through exposure, repetition, and consequence. Over time, that experience shaped instinct and confidence. Yet many now find themselves facing challenges that resist instinctive solutions.

Decisions arrive without precedent. Stakeholders expect clarity in uncertainty. Authority must be exercised carefully, not assumed. The gap is not competence. It is perspective.

An executive mentoring program exists to address that gap.

Where Experience Quietly Breaks Down

Decision-making when past patterns stop working

Experience teaches leaders to trust what worked before. Growth, disruption, and volatility weaken that trust. Executive mentoring programs give leaders a place to slow their thinking without slowing momentum. Mentors help leaders test assumptions, question reflexive decisions, and see second-order consequences before they surface in the organization.

The value is not advice. It is judgment refinement.

Leading people through ambiguity, not structure

Many senior leaders developed their style in environments with clear hierarchy and physical proximity. Today’s teams operate differently. Authority feels lighter. Influence matters more. Through an executive mentoring program, leaders examine how their presence is received, how communication lands, and where clarity is missing. These insights rarely emerge from experience alone. They require reflection guided by someone who has already navigated similar terrain.

Navigating transformation without isolation

Technology, regulatory change, and evolving social expectations place senior leaders in positions of constant recalibration. Many carry this weight alone. An executive mentoring program provides a consistent, confidential relationship where uncertainty can be explored without consequence. Leaders gain space to think clearly before acting publicly.

What an Executive Mentoring Program Actually Develops

At senior levels, development is not about learning skills. It is about strengthening how leaders process complexity.

Effective executive mentoring programs focus on:
  • Decision framing under uncertainty
  • Awareness of personal leadership impact
  • Interpretation of organizational dynamics
  • Long-range thinking beyond immediate pressure
This work happens over time. It cannot be rushed or standardized. That is why mentoring programs rely on continuity rather than curriculum.

Why Structured Leadership Development Needs Mentoring

Formal executive leadership development programs introduce frameworks, language, and shared understanding. They are valuable. Yet without ongoing interpretation, many insights fade once leaders return to daily pressure.

An executive mentoring program keeps development alive between moments of formal learning.

Mentors help leaders:
  • Apply development insights in real decisions
  • Translate theory into context
  • Recognize when old habits reassert themselves
This bridge between learning and behavior is where real leadership growth occurs.

The Role of the Executive Mentor

At senior levels, mentors must bring more than seniority. They must bring relevance.

Strong executive mentoring programs match leaders with mentors who have lived through comparable scale, responsibility, and consequence. This alignment accelerates trust and depth.

Mentors offer:
  • Perspective shaped by enterprise-level accountability
  • Pattern recognition earned through experience
  • Calm challenge during moments of pressure
Their value lies not in instruction, but in how they help leaders think.

Long-Term Impact of an Executive Mentoring Program

Organizations that invest in executive mentoring programs often see changes that compound quietly:
  • Leaders make more consistent decisions
  • Executive teams align faster during uncertainty
  • Transitions create less disruption
  • Senior leaders remain engaged longer
These outcomes do not arrive overnight. They develop as leadership judgment matures.

What Senior Leaders Come to Realize

The most effective leaders eventually reach the same conclusion: experience provides memory, not clarity.

Clarity comes from reflection, challenge, and perspective. An executive mentoring program offers all three, without agenda or evaluation.

Leaders who engage in mentoring:
  • Question their assumptions earlier
  • Communicate with greater intention
  • Lead with steadier presence under pressure
Experience stops being a constraint and becomes an asset again.

Closing Perspective

Experience built today’s senior leaders. It still matters. But it is no longer enough on its own.

Modern leadership requires continuous recalibration. Executive mentoring programs create the conditions for that recalibration to happen thoughtfully rather than reactively.

For leaders operating where decisions carry real consequence, mentoring is no longer a luxury. It is part of how leadership stays effective, relevant, and human at scale.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Experience provides familiarity with past situations, but today’s leadership challenges often arrive without precedent. Rapid market shifts, organizational complexity, and heightened stakeholder expectations require leaders to interpret ambiguity rather than rely on pattern recognition. Without structured reflection, experience can quietly limit perspective instead of strengthening judgment.
Experience builds confidence in what has worked before. Executive mentoring programs create space to examine whether those instincts still apply. Through ongoing dialogue, mentors help leaders test assumptions, refine decision framing, and see broader implications before choices ripple across the organization. The value lies in sharpening judgment, not offering instruction.
Executive leadership development programs introduce frameworks and shared language. Executive mentoring sustains that development in real time. Mentoring supports leaders between formal learning moments, helping them apply insight under pressure, recognize when old habits resurface, and adapt thinking to context rather than theory.
Over time, executive mentoring strengthens decision consistency, improves alignment during uncertainty, and reduces disruption during transitions. For leaders, it restores clarity under pressure and turns experience back into an asset rather than a constraint. The impact compounds quietly as leadership judgment matures.

Executive Springboard talent growth

Every workplace has untapped talent waiting for the right conditions to emerge. Sometimes it’s the analyst who quietly automates half their workload without telling anyone, or the customer service rep whose knack for pattern recognition could sharpen your entire sales strategy. The challenge isn’t that these people lack ambition—it’s that the systems around them don’t always notice, nurture, or reward their extra capacity. Company leaders and managers who learn to spot these overlooked strengths can dramatically improve team performance without adding headcount. Doing so means moving past assumptions, asking the right questions, and making intentional space for experimentation. When hidden potential meets the right opportunity, the results can reshape careers and strengthen the organization from the inside out.

Recognizing What’s Hiding in Plain Sight

Leaders who know how to spot the sparks others miss can change the trajectory of their teams. Often, the most capable people in the room are not the ones making the most noise. They might be quietly solving problems, turning in reliable work, and staying off the radar, their real capacity tucked away where it’s easy to overlook. Paying attention to those quiet team members feeling overlooked can reveal skills that aren’t showing up in the current job description. It’s not about pushing them into the spotlight against their will, but rather about creating a space where their talents can be noticed, valued, and given room to grow. The starting point is curiosity—asking what more they might want to do, and meaning it when you listen.

Using Tools to Remove Friction

Technology can play a part in unlocking capacity too. A manager looking to reduce friction in documentation and approvals might point their team toward resources that make the work faster without sacrificing quality. For example, if converting, editing, or sharing PDFs is slowing down project flow, this site may help by giving employees an easy, accessible way to handle those tasks. When the right tool meets a clear need, the productivity boost is immediate, and team members have more bandwidth to focus on higher-value contributions.

Discovering Interests Beyond the Job Description

The simplest way to find out what else someone can do is still to ask. Building trust and inviting team members to talk about what energizes them outside of their formal responsibilities can open the door to new possibilities. When leaders let employees share broader interests in a setting where that curiosity is taken seriously, it often leads to surprising alignments between personal passions and organizational goals. A side interest in data visualization, for example, might be exactly what’s needed to improve internal reporting. The insight doesn’t just benefit the individual—it strengthens the team’s collective range.

Opening New Career Paths

Sometimes, realizing someone’s potential means helping them reimagine their career entirely. A team member who has shown a sharp aptitude for systems thinking, data analysis, or digital security might benefit from further education that channels those strengths into a specialized field. If technology and protection of information spark their interest, they might decide to choose an IT degree track that builds the expertise needed for high-demand roles. Supporting these ambitions not only strengthens the individual’s career prospects but also enriches the organization’s long-term capabilities.

Putting Structure Around the Search for Skills

When you want to move from suspicion to certainty, structure helps. One of the clearest ways to see underutilization is to use a skills matrix to map capabilities across the team. This isn’t just a list of credentials; it’s a living document that captures strengths, side skills, and even budding interests that haven’t been put to work yet. By visualizing where skills overlap, where gaps exist, and where potential outstrips the current role, leaders can start thinking strategically about reassignments or new projects. The point isn’t to stretch people thin, but to give them opportunities that play to their best work and encourage them to take ownership of new territory.

Connecting Effort to Impact

For some employees, the disconnect isn’t that their skills are invisible it’s that they’ve never been given specific, actionable feedback that links their actions to outcomes. A manager who can give feedback tied to visible impact helps team members understand why their contributions matter, and where their strengths are most valuable. This kind of feedback works best when it’s timely, tied to actual events, and specific enough to show a clear line between effort and effect. When people see how their work changes results, they’re more likely to step into new challenges with confidence.

Opening Doors with Short-Term Experiences

In other cases, you don’t uncover hidden abilities until someone gets to work in an unfamiliar environment. One way to make that happen without disrupting the organization is to introduce temporary cross-functional projects that run for just a few weeks or months. This can be done through internal talent marketplaces, short-term collaborations, or shadowing arrangements that expose people to new workflows. The experience often triggers fresh thinking for the employee and the teams they interact with, revealing skills that might never have emerged in a routine schedule.


Unlocking underutilized talent isn’t just a matter of efficiency, it’s about shaping an environment where people feel seen and valued for more than their current job title. Leaders who commit to noticing quiet strengths, structuring opportunities for growth, and creating space for personal passions often find that the payoff extends far beyond individual performance. The organization gains adaptability, depth, and resilience when its people are encouraged to stretch into new skills and perspectives. Even small shifts, like targeted feedback or short-term project rotations, can uncover capabilities that might otherwise remain hidden.

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Executive Springboard leadership lessons

Executive Springboard mentor Peter Himmelman discusses his new book of poems and prayers and his thoughts on faith, loss, personal triumphs and wonder of the world around us. 

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Executive mentoring supporting enterprise orientation

In today’s intricate organizations, success is not solely determined by how effectively a leader manages their own area. Genuine impact arises from an enterprise focus, the capacity to view the entire business, comprehend how various components interrelate, and make choices that advantage the organization collectively, rather than just a single department. At Executive Springboard, we observe that numerous skilled executives possess technical expertise yet find it challenging to function at this wider, organizational level. This is where executive mentoring serves as a significant tool. It assists leaders in broadening their viewpoint, enhancing cross-functional influence, and guiding in a manner that promotes overall organizational outcomes.

This article discusses the true meaning of enterprise orientation, its significance for successful leadership, and how seasoned executive mentors assist leaders in cultivating this mindset and skill.

What Is Enterprise Orientation?

Enterprise orientation represents the perspective and competencies that empower leaders to:

  • View the organization as an integrated system rather than a series of independent functions.
  • Comprehend how their choices and behaviors influence other areas of the company.
  • Work together across departments to address challenging issues and capitalize on possibilities.
  • Focus on organizational objectives rather than individual or departmental interests.

A leader focused on the enterprise doesn’t solely inquire, “What’s best for my team?” They inquire, “What’s best for the company?” They consider trade-offs, timing, and long-term effects, rather than solely focusing on immediate victories in their specific domain.

The Importance of Enterprise Orientation

In numerous organizations, the major challenges, growth, transformation, innovation, and integration, necessitate collaboration across functions. Leaders who function solely within their specific area frequently:

  • Fail to seize chances to add value throughout the organization.
  • Generate tension with colleagues and other departments.
  • Face challenges in impacting choices that are beyond their immediate authority.
  • Are overlooked for larger positions because they are viewed as “too functional” or “too limited.”

On the other hand, leaders who exhibit an enterprise mindset:

  • Are relied upon to manage intricate, multi-departmental projects.
  • Are viewed as reliable contenders for general management and C-suite positions.
  • Cultivate deeper connections with colleagues and high-ranking executives.
  • Generate greater sustainable, enduring value for the organization.

Enterprise orientation does not involve giving up functional excellence; it entails merging specialized knowledge with a wider, more strategic viewpoint.

The Divide Between Specialized Knowledge and Organizational Mindset

Various executives attain high-level positions due to their excellence in their areas, sales, marketing, operations, finance, or technology. Yet, as they transition into wider positions, they frequently encounter a different range of requirements:

  • They have to make choices with insufficient information and conflicting priorities.
  • They need to impact colleagues and higher-ups who are not under their supervision.
  • They have to manage immediate demands alongside long-term planning.
  • They need to maneuver through organizational politics and cultural dynamics.

In the absence of enterprise focus, even the most skilled functional leaders may face difficulties. They might concentrate excessively on their specific domain, neglect to forge essential partnerships, or make choices that benefit their department to the detriment of the entire organization.

How Executive Mentoring Fosters Business Focus

Executive mentoring is particularly effective in fostering an enterprise mindset among leaders as it offers:

  • A secure, private environment to contemplate choices, compromises, and organizational interactions.
  • Availability of seasoned leaders with enterprise-level experience who can provide valuable insights.
  • Advice on considering the broader context of their role and making choices that enhance the entire organization.

At Executive Springboard, our executive mentors collaborate with leaders to:

  • Broaden their viewpoint by assisting them in viewing the organization as a system.
  • Comprehend how various functions connect and identify where value is generated.
  • Manage intricate connections and authority structures throughout the organization.
  • Make choices that align operational priorities with organizational objectives.

Effective Ways Mentors Assist Leaders in Strategic Thinking

Helping leaders in recognizing the broader perspective

Mentors prompt leaders to reflect and consider: What are the organization’s key objectives? In what way does my role help achieve those objectives? What are the main trade-offs and interconnections?

Instructing on how to persuade across departments

Mentors provide techniques for establishing trust, harmonizing motivations, and generating mutually beneficial results with colleagues. They assist leaders in shifting from “I require this from you” to “How can we collaboratively address this?”

Guiding choices in uncertain circumstances

In intricate, unclear situations, mentors assist leaders in evaluating immediate versus future effects, departmental versus organizational priorities, and risks versus benefits. This fosters decision-making skills and self-assurance in making enterprise-level choices.

Building cross-functional relationships

Mentors provide guidance on establishing robust connections with essential stakeholders throughout the organization. They assist leaders in comprehending various viewpoints, communication approaches, and driving forces.

Encouraging reflection and learning

Mentors provide an environment for leaders to consider what is effective, what isn’t, and what insights they are gaining. This reflection speeds up the progression of business focus over time.

The Function of the Organization

Although executive mentoring is an effective resource, organizations equally play an essential part in promoting enterprise orientation:

  • Establish roles and incentives that promote collaboration across functions and foster a mindset focused on the entire enterprise.
  • Create opportunities for leaders to collaborate on cross-departmental projects and initiatives.
  • Foster a culture that appreciates an enterprise viewpoint and prevents isolated thinking.
  • Prioritize mentoring as an essential element of leadership growth, particularly for senior leaders and those with high potential.

When organizations integrate the appropriate structure, culture, and developmental assistance, they foster an atmosphere where enterprise orientation can flourish.

Final Thoughts

Enterprise orientation is essential; it is a critical leadership requirement in today’s interconnected and rapidly evolving business landscape. Leaders capable of thinking and operating at the enterprise level are more prepared to foster growth, spearhead transformation, and generate enduring value.

Executive mentoring is an effective method to speed up the growth of this mindset and ability. Through collaboration with seasoned executive mentors, leaders acquire the insights, discernment, and impact necessary to function beyond their role and guide the organization as a whole effectively.

At Executive Springboard, we hold the view that the most effective leaders are not only outstanding in their positions but also focused on the organization. With careful, mentor-focused assistance, we enable leaders to broaden their reach, enhance their influence, and get ready for the widest, most strategic positions within the organization.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Enterprise orientation is the ability to think beyond one’s function and make decisions that benefit the organization as a whole. It involves understanding how different functions connect, anticipating cross-functional impacts, and prioritizing long-term organizational outcomes over short-term departmental gains.
Many leaders advance because of deep expertise in a specific function. As responsibilities expand, they must influence without authority, manage competing priorities, and navigate organizational dynamics. Without an enterprise mindset, leaders may focus too narrowly on their domain, limiting their broader impact and growth.
Executive mentoring provides leaders with a confidential space to reflect on decisions, explore trade-offs, and understand organizational systems. Mentors with enterprise experience challenge functional assumptions, offer broader perspectives, and help leaders align their actions with overall business objectives.
Organizations support enterprise orientation by encouraging cross-functional collaboration, aligning incentives with enterprise goals, and embedding mentoring into leadership development. When structure, culture, and mentoring work together, leaders are more likely to adopt and sustain enterprise-level thinking.

Executive Springboard employer branding

Why Brands Still Matter Beyond Marketing

I am a reformed marketing guy, but I remain passionate about brands. Many people like me who grew up in “high image” categories like tobacco, liquor or perfume shied away from considering the functional benefit of what we sold. After all, who wants to remind people of their addictions? Instead, we focused on the emotional reasons why people would choose our kind of tequila over the Bad Guys’ product.
After all, if you have not created a brand that differentiates your offering from competition, if you are stuck in a commoditized world, creating demand might come down to lowering your price.

The Shift From Traditional Brand Thinking

From Emotional Branding to Data-Driven Marketing

As the science of marketing won favor, as digital A/B testing came to the fore, the analog world of brands receded. Over the years, I have had dozens of conversations with brand strategists, bemoaning how difficult business has become. Chief Marketing Officers have less time for them.

Where Brand Conversations Happen Today

I hold out hope for these strategists, and for the future of brands, but only if they look in unlikely places. Brands are no longer the exclusive domain of marketing. Instead, I believe CEOs and CHROs are where the brand conversations are taking place.

Expanding the Definition of a Brand

Beyond Customers to All Stakeholders

Historically, when you considered your brand, it was the reputation or relationship that your business had with customers or consumers. Under the umbrella of your brand were all the touch points you had with customers. Communications, packaging, website, sales calls, user interface, even billing are stimuli that define the relationship you have with your customer.


These remain part of the mix, but the circle of stakeholders has expanded beyond customers. Now we think of shareholders, communities served and employees.

The Core Elements of Brand Strategy

What Sits at the Heart of Any Brand

At the heart of a brand strategy are:

  • (1) an insight into what drives stakeholders to act in a desired way
  • (2) a brand promise that offers how the brand makes people feel and
  • (3) an essence that distills the brand into the few qualities that make the promise believable.

An Example of Brand Strategy in Action

So, if you are an NBA franchise, you might realize that many of your season ticket holders are businesses that entertain clients and prospects, and that the in-arena experience is a reflection on the ticket holder’s business. That you promise a ticket holder to be part of what is happening in their community. And that you offer an event that is more intimate than other pro sports, that is part of a night on the town and that creates an affiliation between you and other fans.


You build your marketing plan around ways to deliver the feeling of being part of what’s happening in your community.

Turning Brand Thinking Toward Employees

The Case for Employer Branding

With this as background, what if we turn our thinking about brands towards current or future employees? How do we retain them? How do we attract new people who bring desired competencies? How do we engage and align our current workforce? How do we want them to feel about the company, their colleagues and themselves for working there? How to we make their retention more than a function of compensation?


If your goal is to create a team of A-players who function well together, it’s time to consider your brand as an employer.

Aligning Brand Essence With Employee Identity

Choosing You as an Employer

Have you determined how your brand essence matches with how your workers think about themselves? Or whether what you promise leads workers to choose your company as their employer rather than other companies in your industry or in your area?


It‘s magic when a brand strategy works as well with your employees as it does with your customers. When this happens, you are able to use the same language, and the customer experience becomes the employee experience.


But if your customers don’t look like your employees, your employer brand might be quite different from your market-facing brand. There is no reason to have a suboptimal employer brand just for the sake of economy.

Building an Employer Brand

How to Create It

Creating an employer brand can be done in the same way as your brand for your customers. Get an experienced brand strategist to lead the process from outside the organization. Seek input across the organization. Create an internal team to develop and activate the brand. Take advantage of key opinion leaders who can become internal brand ambassadors.

Activating the Employer Brand

Where Strategy Meets Culture

Once developed, the activation of an employer brand is critical. It is where strategy and culture often meet. And it is where a CEO or a Chief People Officer takes the lead.

Four Elements of an Effective Employer Brand Strategy

A Mission That Gets People Out of Bed in the Morning

This is what differentiates a job from a calling. A job provides a straightforward value equation of work for compensation. If your employee buys into a purpose you provide that transcends what they can do on their own, your relationship is cemented by something deeper than a paycheck.

Reinforcement Mechanisms That Make Workers Feel Valued

If a worker feels like their contribution is insignificant, even if directed towards a glorious mission, they might not become engaged. If they understand why their work is important and receive feedback that indicates mastery, they will find pride in playing their part.

Stories That Explain Your Values

There is immense power in storytelling to internalize culture. Stories connect an organization’s

Means of Collaboration That Strengthen Belonging

Work can provide transcendence beyond meaning alone. Being part of something bigger requires shared goals, collaboration, learning from others, and celebrating success together.

Why Employer Brand Matters More Than Ever

For some in the marketing world, giving brands high priority may seem like a relic from a bygone era. For those concerned about the relationship between their business and the people who make it go, there are few things more important.

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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

An employer brand is how current and potential employees perceive what it feels like to work at your organization. It reflects your mission, values, culture, and the emotional experience of being part of the company.
Employer branding directly affects retention, engagement, and the ability to attract top talent. Because it intersects with culture and leadership behavior, it naturally belongs with CEOs and Chief People Officers rather than marketing alone.
Customer branding focuses on how your organization is perceived by the market, while employer branding focuses on how employees experience the organization. In the best cases, the two align but they don’t have to be identical.
An effective employer brand is activated through a clear mission, recognition systems, meaningful stories, and strong collaboration. Together, these elements help employees feel valued, connected, and committed beyond compensation alone.

Executive Springboard change leadership

Almost any time an executive joins a new company, there is a mandate to change things. CEOs or VPs are seldom told, “Keep us on the same path we’ve been traveling.” Sometimes you hear, “We want you to be a change agent.” Other times it is specific: “We cannot continue to lose share on the most important part of our portfolio!” Sometimes, it’s just implied, like when a person with a strong sales background takes over for somebody with an operations bent.

There is an interesting rationale to hiring you to a senior position. Companies will assume that the person on the outside is more capable of implementing needed change than people on the inside. They have an unblemished record. Maybe nobody inside is ready for a senior role. Maybe it is thought that the way things have been done is not a recipe for future success, and that it takes people who have succeeded with another strategy to move the organization ahead. Maybe it that internal people’s growth is not recognized, and they continue to be viewed in the same light as when they were hired.

Here is the truth behind the change you are responsible for implementing… If you are hired into a company as a new executive, you don’t know how ANYTHING gets done in the organization. You don’t know processes. You don’t know culture. You may have a strategy, but in a 2013 Katzenbach Center study, it was shown that 64% of global senior executives saw culture as more critical to the success of change management than strategy or operating model. Maybe you’ll invest time to learn how things work. Maybe you’ll rely on the people who do know how to get things done, as you figure out what to direct them to do.

How, then, can you possibly make change happen quickly? Let me offer these six strategies:
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1. Work your 90-day plan.
Any executive taking on a new role should develop a 90-day plan. Build in your understanding of the company and environment, based on your research. Clarify your vision for success. Lay out what progress can you realistically make in that first quarter. What are the components of your action plan? What resources do you have to draw upon or acquire? What barriers are anticipated, and how can they be overcome? What quick wins can be accomplished, to demonstrate progress and to build relationships?

If you are being recruited for the position, share the plan with colleagues in your last round of interviews. It shows you have taken the job seriously, that you have projected yourself into the role that you seek and that you can show a path to accomplish things.

Why do companies focus on the first 90 days? Because, by Day 90, if there are red flags about you, many people expect they will show up. The honeymoon is over. There can be tangible evidence of your ability to deliver. You have enough exposure within the organization for a consensus about you to begin to form. The first 90 days plan is the equivalent of a coach who scripts out the first ten plays or so in a football game. It doesn’t indicate whether or not you will win, but it does establish the game plan.

A critical component of the 90-day plan is establishing relationships with the people who will help make change happen. Some might be directly involved in implementing the change. Others just have to keep out of the way!

It is unrealistic to accomplish the change you seek to make in 90 days. A company would hire a consultant to do that, not an executive. Accompanying the details of the first 90 days might be extended goals for the significant change you seek.
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2. Be ready to scuttle part or all of that plan on Day 1.
You build the plan based on previous experience. But the laws of physics that worked for you in your past life might not hold in the new universe you face. Remember that your plan is a guess at what will work. When you run into the reality of your new situation, you must be quick to adapt. Ask yourself two questions:
– Is the change you are considering necessary?
– Is the organization ready for change?

An environment may be more or less responsive to actions than you reckoned. Assumptions of available resources might prove inaccurate. Deadlines might have to change. Process might have to be rewired. And if you find that the change is necessary and the organization is not ready, you may have to administer shock treatment. This is generally not good for your tenure in your company, but it might be required for the organization’s survival.
Expectations often change dramatically once you walk in the door. A colleague joined a hotel chain with a brief to introduce brand management throughout the organization. Once employed, he learned that authority from P&L to customer needs was wielded at the unit level. There was no easy short-term way to inject a centralized concept of branding.
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3. Get key people onboard.
Medical marketers pay careful attention to key opinion leaders (KOLs), usually physicians whose written or verbal recommendations carry influence with others in their profession. You will find key opinion leaders in your company, and not necessarily where you’d expect when you look at an org chart.
Key opinion leaders often are at the confluence of several groups of interaction. They are hubs of communication. Watch what happens in an audience when a KOL reacts to a leader’s comments. Does the room react to their nods of agreement, crossed arms or rolled eyes? These people are worth cultivating.

Once they are identified, ask KOLs for their opinions and listen to what they have to say. Not only do you get useful feedback, but the KOLs begin to feel invested in your course of action. They feel heard. They can become powerful ambassadors for your initiatives. And it is far more effective to use these people to influence dissenters than, as the new person, to win dissenters over yourself.
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4. Tap into legacy.
If you can make a link from where the organization has been to where you are going, it is easier to bring people along. Bruce Weindruch wrote in Start with the Future and Work Back: A Heritage Management Manifesto, “Once you know where you want to go, the value of harnessing your history becomes immeasurable.“

Lots of organizations create awards that reinforce desired performance. A few wise people name these awards after legendary executives in the company’s past. In this way, employees see how somebody long-revered epitomized a particular behavior that is currently valued. People respond positively to a change that is framed as a reversion to core values held since the mythic beginning or in “glory days.”
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5. Understand the value of your ignorance.
Being new allows you to ask naïve questions that can cast light on unnecessary paradigms. Why are things done the way they are? Why are these people involved in a process? Is the assessment of risk from an action accurate? Has the way you’ve succeeded in the past ever been tried here? In the early days, you can get away with asking these questions because people understand you really want to learn how things work, not because you have a particular agenda.

Being new allows you to break norms. Maybe experiments can be tried that might not be approved otherwise. Maybe shortcuts in process can be explored. Apologies might be required when the rule-breaking becomes apparent. But as former Rear Admiral Grace Hopper said, “It is easier to beg forgiveness than to ask permission.”

Being new allows you to seek opinions of employees and to aggregate them into arguments for a course of action. In this way, you do not provide your opinion of a direction to be taken, but instead you offer your summation of the experiences and opinions of the organization at large.
Employees will cut you some slack on your ignorance of process, if you can compensate by demonstrating your competence in other areas that matter to them. Use your functional expertise to coach others. Use your management skills to achieve goals through other people. Use humility to reassure people that they are part of the solution, rather than something you dreamed up all by yourself.
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6. Act decisively when the time comes.
Don’t spend too much time trying to gain universal acceptance or consensus. Not everybody will agree, and opportunities may disappear if you try to get everybody on board. If getting everybody to agree is out of reach, settle for having nobody strenuously disagreeing.

When it’s time to share a course of action, communicate it with conviction. Talk to the KOLs. Share how they shaped your thinking, even if your direction differs from their recommendation. Recruit them to be ambassadors. Membership in a leadership team means that dissenters do not air their disagreements outside of the team. They must accept losing the argument and avoid becoming an obstacle. Ensure that people understand that the time for debate is over and that the time to execute is upon you. Delegate responsibility in a manner that will get things done. Let people do their jobs while reinforcing what is important. Recognize that managing change involves managing others through a process of grief.
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A change agent is first and foremost a leader. You don’t make change happen by yourself. You shouldn’t expect everything to go perfectly, but to recognize mistakes and learn from them. You are not proving to others that you are the smartest person in the room. Rather, you tap into the organization’s expertise while maintaining a perspective that is open to new solutions. You recognize that you don’t have the competence to execute by yourself, and you motivate the same people who might resist you to push through.

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Corporate Culture

Executive Springboard helps leaders with their development and onboarding, so they can quickly make an impact and sustain that impact long-term. Helping an executive succeed can involve providing guidance on the functional issues they face. Equally important is helping them navigate the relationships and culture they encounter.

I asked for readers’ opinions on the most important questions that can be asked to understand a corporate culture. It took a little while to work through the flood of responses that I received, still longer to organize them in a coherent manner. I found eight themes emerging, with a fair amount of overlap among them.

1. General culture description
Ask a number of people in an organization to describe the corporate culture. Allow them to address this open-ended question however they see fit. Consider the patterns in the responses. What elements mentioned repeatedly? Is the description consistent? Is there a difference between the reality of the culture and how they would ideally see it?

Getting more granular, how is culture taught? Is it part of any corporate onboarding program? Is there corporate folklore that tell stories of the organization’s heroes and their achievements? How do their accomplishments match up with the company’s values?

2. Behavioral norms
Consider the behavior of the CEO and how it acts as a model for the organization. Does the CEO interact daily with people “down the line,” for example, with customer service reps or administrative assistants? Does the CEO know anything personal about these people, beyond their role in the company? How much is the CEO seen or heard? Do they stay in headquarters, or are they often seen in branches, plants or customers’ offices?

How much does the organization expect people to collaborate? Does the employee base frequently see leaders interacting, or do they just manage their own spheres of influence?

Is the organization one where everybody feels like they have skin in the game, or do leaders micro-manage employees? It was felt that bosses’ overreach at the expense of employee autonomy can diminish morale and kill creativity.

What happens when strong performance comes at the expense of corporate values?

How are exceptions to the rules tolerated? Are policies and procedures standardized and enforced? Would behavior that is unacceptable for the finance function be allowed among the sales team?

Are there any taboos… dress code, work hours, working from home, etc.? Are there expectations about behavior that extend beyond the workplace (e.g., social media use, personal habits?)

3. Performance
What is the performance review process? Is it formal or informal? Frequent, annual or irregular? Do you force a “grading curve,” or do you allow all to be strong performers with areas for growth (In Minnesota, we call this The Prairie Home Companion Curve, where everybody is above average!)

How do you react to major and minor mistakes? Are there disciplinary consequences? How does this impact employees’ willingness to give bad news and own up to their responsibility? Does the organization forgive and move on? Are there ways of gaining institutional learning from mistakes?

How does the company recognize, reward or celebrate success? What is measured and how are successes rewarded? Are the metrics long- or short-term? Is there a focus on revenue, profit, customer retention, cost savings or other factors? Is there consistency in what is measured, or might strong performance that was rewarded last year be ignored this year?

How often are the successes that are acknowledged individual rather than collective? In other words, does the culture allow people to be singled out for their achievements?

4. Power
Where does the power reside? Within the C-suite, are all people equal, or is there an inner circle? If power at the top is unevenly distributed, is this reflected more broadly throughout the organization? Is this a result of personality, tenure, competence or a strategic consideration?

Who owns the P&L? Does control of the P&L impact how influence works? Is this simple or matrixed?

How is power most often used by those with power towards those without? Is it enabling? Abusive?

How does the organization’s immune system manifest itself? In the face of somebody who might be challenging the status quo, what are the common forms of resistance?

5. Diversity and Inclusion
Does the organization reflect diversity, or is it a “good boy network?”

Can you demonstrate times when you have engaged in opportunities to promote diversity and inclusion of people or thought leadership? Does the employee base resemble the customer base? What challenges, if any, does the company face in making employees feel included? As Professor Michael Gaffley of Nova Southeastern University recently told me, “Diversity is about counting numbers. Inclusion is about making numbers count.”

How does the company encourage mixing of different people, perspectives and experience? How does leadership learn from younger employees about new trends in the marketplace? How does the institutional knowledge of long-tenured employees be memorialized when they retire?

How do you walk the tightrope of encouraging different ways of thinking while benefiting from behavior that conforms to a set of agreed-upon values?

And in a surprising corollary (and closely tied to behavior norms and performance), what is the organization’s tolerance for risk? Is conformity highly rewarded, or do people get ahead by taking chances and succeeding? Do extraordinary efforts that fail garner praise or punishment?

6. Decision-making and communication
How are decisions made? How much will senior leadership delegate? What are signoff levels? Does a plan cascade down or is it built bottom-up? How inclusive is the process for capex, product development and annual budget-setting?

Under what situations will the company invest time and money to develop evidence-based decisions?

When decisions are made, how are the communicated?

Does the company run on PowerPoint? Xcel? Email? Conversation? Does technology allow remote employees to be vital parts of decision-making?

If a manager represents their team in a proposal that is rejected, how do they report the decision to their team? What responsibility to they have to reflect the consensus of the deciding group?

How often do employees hear from senior executives? What media are used? What message is given? Would the majority of employees be able to state strategic priorities?

7. Conflict resolution
What and where are the common areas of conflict? Are these based on unmatched objectives between stakeholders? Incentives that are not aligned? Disagreement on expected outcomes? Politics?

How do issues get resolved? Is consensus sought? Are they made by decree or through an arbiter? How often does resolution result in a “win-win” situation? In one side backing down, in face of evidence it had not considered before? In one side backing down for reasons that were not data-driven? What is an example of a conflict faced within a department? Of a conflict between two functions or business units? How were these resolved?

How much of the CEO’s job is deciding between two opposing viewpoints that cannot be resolved by themselves?

8. Vision and Mission
What does the company want to be known for in 3-5 years? What terms define that vision? Are they financial? In customer terms? Employee-focused? Shareholders? Other stakeholder groups?

Where did the vision come from? Who developed it and through what process?

Why does the company exist? What is its mission? What motivates people to come to work in the morning? How well does it relate to the whole business? Are there large parts of the company that seem to be out of scope, and how are they managed?

How well is the vision and mission internalized by employees? Can they tell you what the vision and mission of the company are? Do they find them compelling and achievable? Are they committed to accomplish them?

My initial intention was to provide a tight set of questions to get at the essence of a company’s culture. That’s what we try to do in a short conversation with corporate leadership prior to a mentoring engagement. But I was impressed with the passion and insights provided by dozens of responses. You had a lot to say about what’s important to capture in corporate culture. This became a sprawling exercise that fleshed out a very squishy topic. Thanks for sharing your wisdom!
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Leadership by Executive Springboard

When many organizations talk about their commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), they talk with pride about the fact that they have Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) for the major ethnicities and groups. But although ERGs can be a sign of an organization’s commitment to DEI, they need to be looked at, as they may not always be working well for the employees or the organization.

A close look at ERGs
A review of ERGs in thousands of organizations shows that many are created as an initiative of the employees themselves and not as an initiative of the organization’s leadership. In many cases, they do not emerge out of the strategic vision of the organization. Frequently, they have little to no budget for the first few years of operation, until they can secure a few dollars, generally to pay for food and beverage for an event or two. ERGs are also often run on a volunteer basis by employees who need to do that work on top of the actual job that they were hired to do, which is not always good for them or the organization. Their small budgets frequently get even reduced through cuts over the years. In such cases, the impact of ERGs may not be as high, as they don’t have the resources to plan activities of significance. In some cases, ERGs can be seen more as a space for some employees to socialize, without much positive impact to their careers.

Professional development requires budgeting
Many organizations say that among the objectives of ERGs is professional development, yet with little or no budget, many ERG members find themselves having to be asking for favors. ERG members usually need to contact other employees to see if they can speak at events. When they contact professional trainers and speakers, in many cases they need to ask if they would speak or do training for free or at a reduced fee because they don’t have the funds needed to afford their professional services.

This lack of budgeting and funding limits the quality of the speakers and the training, which limits the quality of the employee learning and development and the experience. In such cases, the words don’t match the actions. For ERGs to be impactful, they need to be part of the organization’s vision, so that they are part of the annual planning and budgeting process. They need to have the funding to afford and acquire the high quality training needed for their members to be able to develop and grow personally and professionally. That way, ERG members don’t have to be asking for favors, which can be uncomfortable and discouraging and sends the wrong message to external partners about the commitment of the organization to DEI.

One way to help to set ERGs up for success is by looking for ways to better fund them. Historically, when ERGs have funding, it often comes from an allocation from a DEI or HR function in the organization. But there can be other sources, when other departments, businesses and executives become sponsors. There have been multiple roadmaps to identify opportunities for funding, which can come handy, when exploring options.

ERGs can help to bring employees together
But even when not having access to sufficient budgets, there are still ways in which ERGs can increase their impact. At a time when people are not all bought into mandatory time in the office, a critical component is to create a sense of community. People have to feel like they can get more out of their careers by being with colleagues. This is an opportunity for ERGs to help to bring people together in a fulfilling, relevant, fun and engaging way. If ERGs do this right, events can draw people from throughout the company, whether they are in the ERGs or not. Once together, it is about having content and activities that can help them develop so that they can leverage career opportunities in the organization.

Leadership sponsorship and involvement are key for ERGs’ success
Another important observation for ERGs is that their activities usually appeal mostly to employees at junior levels. Their events and activities are usually not as well attended by members of the leadership or executive team. But the interest, engagement and involvement by the leadership team are critical for the success of ERGs and other DEI initiatives. That’s an indication for whether the efforts are directly connected to the organization’s strategic vision.

If employees see the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), who is Indian, attending an ERG sponsored panel during the Diwali observance in the company, or if they see the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who is African American, attending a speaker event during Black History Month, it sends a message of executive sponsorship and alignment that goes beyond a celebration of a cultural identity. It becomes a message to employees that the leadership and the executive team support and are committed to DEI in the organization and are willing to make the time to join at events and activities because they are important.

Strategic alignment and focus are key for ERGs
ERGs have many benefits for their members and the organizations, but, just like with everything, they need to be managed strategically and thoughtfully. They can also have their challenges and limitations, which are not always as obvious or intuitive. The CHRO at a major university recently mentioned her institution’s experience with them. ERGs should be structured to provide support and to cascade corporate culture to employees who share underrepresented characteristics, enhancing retention and developing leaders. But if left unattended, they can run amok, taking on their own identities, creating silos and sometimes serving as venting forums, instead of unifying people. When that happens, the results are not as positive for the employees or the organizations.

​Recently, there has been interest in revisiting and better understanding ERGs, so they can be either improved or replaced with alternative models. In the Diversity Journal, Stephen Young & Barbara Hockfield recently proposed a new model, replacing affinity teams with cultural equity teams. But before giving up on ERGs, many organizations are interested in learning about ways to increase the chances they succeed. What’s important is connecting ERGs with the strategic vision of the organization, establishing business objectives and success metrics, just like any division, unit or initiative.

With the right focus, ERGs will be beneficial for both employees and organizations
ERGs can be very beneficial to employees and organizations when managed strategically. They can provide a multiplier effect on companies’ DEI efforts, by fueling employee engagement, learning, and development. But this won’t happen on its own, and good intentions are not enough. For ERGs to be successful and to have a meaningful impact on the organization and employees, they must be adequately funded, sponsored by members of the leadership team and clearly linked to the organization’s strategy, objectives and metrics.

About the authors:
Steve Moss is the President of Executive Springboard. He served as a marketing executive in global organizations, as CEO in a green-tech start-up and as a consultant, marketing best practice trainer and brand strategist before founding Executive Springboard. He earned his BA degree from Georgetown University and his MBA from the Wharton School.
Luis Moreno has a passion for Personal and Professional Development and reads, studies, speaks, and writes on topics related to Human-Centered Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Diversity and Inclusion and other related topics. He earned an MBA from the Carlson School at the University of Minnesota and is a Humphrey Public Policy Fellow. He is a member of the Young American Leaders Program (YALP) at Harvard Business School. The State of Minnesota gave Luis the Distinguished Service Award for his contributions in the areas of race relations, justice, community service, education, and civil and human rights.
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executive leadership by Executive Springboard

Our long-held notions of what is involved in effective leadership are getting a serious relook. There is a decoupling of several things that were closely associated with leadership: masculinity, swagger, overconfidence and extroversion to name a few.

We have leveraged our experience, expertise and research on Emotional Intelligence, Human Centered Leadership, and Executive Leadership Coaching and Consulting to discuss the effective qualities of leadership and how they evolve in time. We have discussed these dynamics with multiple organizations and would like to share some with you.

It’s said that people don’t leave organizations, they leave bosses. While many people around the world have identified with that sentiment, there is another important insight: People leave organizations that don’t respond to bad bosses. If somebody brings up the shortcomings of a boss, especially when the boss’s behavior and actions are against the values of the organization, and the organization’s leadership looks the other way and takes no action, employees notice. Employees expect organizations to control the quality of its leadership. Organizations have a responsibility to plan and invest in training and coaching their leaders, or they risk employee flight beyond that manager’s direct reports. Also, when employees leave, those who stay also start leaving in their mind, as it has been studied through the workplace dynamic known as “Quiet Quitting”, when employees experience low engagement and limit their efforts to the requirements of their roles, without doing extra efforts.

Some organizations and leaders have believed the idea of “Once a great leader, always a great leader” but we dispute that notion. In fact, as demonstrated by research and anecdotal experience, great leaders are like great athletes; they need the continuous training, coaching and practice to remain at the top of their game and to continue to win events, matches, and medals. The moment we stop learning, we begin to fall behind.

Steve shares this experience from a few months ago: I had a tough conversation with a sales leader seeking a new job. He had great stories of accomplishments with his previous employers, not just as driver of revenue but as a manager of other salespeople. But I had to stop him when he referred to the recruiter at a prospective employer as “the gal who interviewed me.” I told him, “Dude, you’re not going to get past the screener interview if you call her ‘the gal.’ You just proved yourself to be a fossil.”

Business evolves. We must evolve as leaders, too. The workforce is changing constantly, as new generations of employees join the team. Expecting to have now the same great results we had a few years ago using the same leadership practices of the past, represents a big risk for the leader and for the organization. They may no longer work.
Leaders need to remain coachable. Kevin Wilde notes that, as we get older and more senior, we tend to be less interested in feedback. That’s natural. But shutting down completely to feedback is highly correlated to failing in a job — even if you’ve been successful in every previous role. This doesn’t mean just asking for feedback. It is about listening, considering, believing, and appreciating the feedback, and acting on it. Some leaders pride themselves on asking for feedback, but they dismiss it when they get it, by not believing it, by being defensive about it and by basically resisting the feedback.

When it comes to leadership, what has worked in the past won’t necessarily work now. The world changes continually and so do organizations and employees, especially their expectations of what great leadership is. Board and leadership team composition is different today. The workforce is dominated by Millennials who want different things from work than Boomers and Gen Xers did. And leaders often know what change is necessary, even if they have yet to completely embrace it.

In Luis’ work and research, he has identified some notable new directions in leadership.

1. Involved Leadership
The leadership of the past: “Don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions.”
The new leadership: “Thanks for identifying this problem. Let’s go over it together. I may be able to share some perspectives and may point out some resources that may help.”

If the boss is only there to be presented with already well-thought-out solutions, why do we even need a boss? Sometimes this can play into the development of employees. People may not be experienced or confident enough to decide or to resolve a complex problem that even experienced leaders may not be able to resolve easily. This is especially important when navigating complex workplace dynamics involving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), such as differences arising from racial, cultural, gender or generational factors.

Steve comments: I once had three managers reporting to me who were at different points of their leadership journey and development. One would say, “I saw this problem, and after considering options, I took this course of action. I hope you agree.” The next would say, “I’m facing an issue, I’ve identified some options, but I need help on finding the right course.” And the third would say, “I think I have a problem.” For me, there was joy in working with all three as they grew as leaders. In case you are wondering what happened to the manager who was not yet ready to identify problems and come up with solutions, she successfully grew into VP Marketing roles at world-famous sporting goods and accessory companies. This is another manifestation of inclusion. Different team members want to identify and solve problems differently and we need to be open minded and engage with all of them so that we can arrive at the best solution as a team, together.

Luis comments: In my work with Law Enforcement agencies, I have learned something very important. As leaders, we need to learn to see the value in an employee’s ability and diligence to identify a problem, even if the person has still not identified the solution. Consider when Law Enforcement agencies are working on preventing terrorism, narcotraffic and crime. When an agent says: “I have identified a problem,” if we leave it to that agent to resolve the problem alone and we wait for the agent to have the solution, it may be too late. A building could be blown up or a person could be hurt in the meantime. We need to value the identification of a problem and engage. In some corporate scandals that have made it to the news in the past decade, the investigations revealed that multiple employees had identified the problem and had brought it up to their leaders. But some leaders waited for them to come up with the solutions. The result was not good, as many of us saw in the news.
​
This also reminds us of a quote from Barack Obama about what he learned early in his first term as president. “One of the first things I discovered…was that not every decision that landed on my desk had an easy, tidy answer. The black-and-white questions never made it to me- somebody else on my staff would have already answered them.”

2. Caring Leadership
The Leadership of the Past: “It’s 7:00 am, let’s get started. This is the agenda…”
The new Leadership: “How’s everybody doing? How was your weekend?”

At the guts of the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) is the weekly L10 meeting among leaders. The first 5 minutes on that 90-minute agenda is called the Segue or the Check-in. It is a personal connection. Attendees share a personal or professional win from the past week or a discovery that would inspire others. Why would you start a strictly facilitated meeting with something soft like this? Because businesses are composed of people, and the connection of people is what gives a business its traction.

For decades, leaders believed the Jack Welch credo that it was not necessary to be liked, as long as you were respected. But new research suggests that being liked can lead to being respected. There is a difference between treating people as people and working so hard to please that you don’t make the tough calls. We are not advocating for lenient management. There are also cultural and generational layers to this dynamic. In certain cultures, like in the Latino culture, it would be very hard for people to respect a leader that they don’t like. That’s because liking someone is part of the result of them seeing themselves identified with the person and their human values. Younger employees are also less likely to respect leaders who they can’t relate to and like, in the way that previous generations were more likely to do.

3. Inclusive Leadership
The leadership of the past: “You did a great job! I’ll present it to the Board!”
The new leadership: “You did a great job! I’d love for you to present it to the Board. How’s your calendar for next Tuesday at 10:00 am”

This is not necessarily how we think about inclusion. Bear with us. Steve comments: Michael Gaffney teaches functional leadership at Nova Southeastern University and is an internationally known keynote speaker on inclusion, diversity, belonging and equity. He once told me, “Diversity is about counting numbers, and inclusion is about making numbers count.” Making the numbers count at a micro level means giving team members the chance to exhibit what they can do.
​
I once had a boss who would say, “There is no limit to how far you will go if you are willing to give others credit.” Think of four steps in a job well done: First, it is in the accomplishment itself. Second, is the recognition from your boss. Third, being sponsored for your performance. Fourth, being given the visibility that your accomplishment deserves.
Perhaps your employee is internally driven enough to take satisfaction from their achievement without it being acknowledged. That may not do as much to move their career forward. You could praise them and take no further action. This reaffirms the value of what they have done, while leaving unsaid what, if anything, you will do as their advocate. You might use their accomplishment as a data point in your advocacy of them. Here, you tell others of the value they are delivering. The final step in inclusive leadership is giving them the chance to impress others, as they have impressed you. There is the risk that they might fail. You may have to spend time coaching them to mitigate that risk. But this wins respect from your achieving direct report and from others who see the exposure they are getting. This helps with employee engagement, motivation, development and retention. It’s a win for the employee, the leader and the organization.

It’s a new era with new leadership challenges. Employees’ expectations of leaders have changed. Fundamental goals have changed. Leaders have to evolve to this new reality. Great leaders, like great athletes, need to be checking the new trends and research, and get the coaching and the training necessary to keep learning, practicing, pivoting, and putting in the work to become and remain great leaders.

​About the authors:

Steve Moss is the President of Executive Springboard. He served as a marketing executive in global organizations, as CEO in a green-tech start-up and as a consultant, marketing best practice trainer and brand strategist before founding Executive Springboard. He earned his BA degree from Georgetown University and his MBA from the Wharton School.

Luis Moreno has a passion for Personal and Professional Development and reads, studies, speaks, and writes on topics related to Human-Centered Leadership, Emotional Intelligence, Diversity and Inclusion, Talent, and other topics. Luis obtained an MBA in Marketing & Strategy from the Carlson School at the University of Minnesota and is a Humphrey Public Policy Fellow. He is engaged in efforts to increase U.S. Competitiveness and Shared Prosperity as a member of the Young American Leaders Program (YALP) at Harvard Business School. The State of Minnesota gave Luis the Distinguished Service Award for his contributions in the areas of race relations, justice, community service, education, and civil and human rights.

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executive mentoring and leadership

My first role as a Vice President involved a move to Canada. I was asked to lead the marketing department for my company’s subsidiary, just outside of Toronto. It was one of the great learning experiences in my career.

You couldn’t ask for a much easier international transition. A flight of less than an hour. People who spoke the same language. A broader portfolio than I was accustomed to, but with many familiar brands. How hard could it be? I read a few books on Canada and its history, and I was ready to roll.

Sure, there were some language issues. Tabling an issue meant to discuss for decision, not to put it off. And then, a decision was taken, not made. British spelling was used, Governour. I had to get used to the metric system (easy guide: 28°C is 82°F, 16°C is 61°F, 0°C is freezing and -10°C is frigging cold.)

There were other subtle differences. Blinking green traffic lights, blue laws that kept grocery stores closed on Sundays, and milk in plastic bags. Some things impacted my business. Price elasticity was more pronounced in Canada. People valued order and politeness more than in the States. Concern about the environment was far more developed.

I felt very fortunate by how I was welcomed by my organization. I made friends there. I had a generous allowance for housing. I dove into my work and had some early successes. And my wife and I knew that this was to be a three-year rotation. At home with three small kids, she was more supportive than she had to be about my absences, as our family didn’t move from Connecticut until about 3 months into my tenure.

The learning experience was sometimes painful. I went through my first layoffs and firings. I overestimated the equity I had built in some of our brands. My boss become abusive as his position was threatened and he feared I was more politically connected than he was. I dealt with the awkwardness of succession as my rotation came to an end.

Truth be told, we were sorry that our expat life ended with a repatriation to the US. We were geared up for an assignment in Europe that didn’t come. Years later, my wife and I spent Thanksgiving in Buenos Aires as we considered a move there. We concluded that the culture was too far out of our comfort zone for that to work for our family.

Throughout my career, I’ve seen international assignments that didn’t go well. A colleague told me of his experience when a rotation in Greece left him with no sponsor there and no way back home for five years. In my first visit to South Africa, I ran into a newly-placed country manager who hadn’t realized what living in the Third World really entailed. I asked my company’s MD in Korea to take on a role in the US, because he was one of the best marketers in the company. He faced enormous resistance from an American team that was unconvinced that his successes in Asia would translate elsewhere.

Learning a new culture, whether it is national or corporate, is hard work. It is easy to make a misstep. Some of us are better prepared for the transition than others. Some of us read books on Canadian history, others get coaches who prepare them and their family for their new lives. Almost always, that coaching ends by the time an executive arrives in their new home. And that’s a problem.

As well prepared as my friend in South Africa thought he was, his failure came from not having help in- market. Same with the guy marooned in Greece. My own plate was too full to adequately provide the support my colleague from Korea needed in the US.

What is gained from spending the money to send an executive halfway around the world for a three-year rotation? Arguably, it makes the executive more effective and versatile, creating a more well-rounded company. Hopefully, it injects a new perspective into the host company. Leaving aside moral justifications, this is the business case for diversity practices.

If diversity is operationally defined by the number of underrepresented people hired by a company, inclusion is more about their retention and success. Inclusion often focuses on making cultural changes in the organization to encourage acceptance. That’s playing the long game. But shorter term, it often misses the opportunity to provide sponsorship to those diverse employees that the company wants to keep and grow.

Here is the lesson I learned. While almost everybody needs a coach or mentor, the need is critical for those who are different. While inclusion efforts attempt to tear down the wall to acceptance, those recruited can’t wait for the wall to come down. They need a boost right now.
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