Total Executive report on this with their recent newsletter below...

Culture is King CULTURE follows Leaders... Hello Culture will make or break your business toward 2020 and beyond... Leaders define CULTURE - View videos and articles on Culture HERE In This Edition: Culture is King Cultural Research How Culture affects Your Future Total Executive Culture Stock-takes Executives Roles & Investment Available NOW Register Now* Search by Subject Cultural Research Cultural Leadership Total Executive have interviewed over 3000 innovative SME owners and executives in corporate, enterprise and government to learn their key to competitive advantage in Australia and overseas Culture is KEY to competitive advantage NOW View the top level research results which shows currently Australia have several cultural concerns as explained here For further information on this subject Contact our Founder How Culture affects Your Future A Great Leader Inspires Cultural Change This video from one of our service providers explains how important culture is here Total Executive Culture Stock-takes Total Executive are conducting Culture Stock-Takes for medium to corporate enterprise businesses. Your Stock-take will help with: Improving Executive acquisition, recruitment and engagement Improvement of employee effectiveness Development of internal structures that incorporate the skills of your key influencers/networkers Provide exclusive benefits for your key staff And much more CEOs receive a complimentary Knowledge Pack valued at $20,000+ - including executive networking, mentoring and much more Learn more here Register your interest with our founder here To discuss how our leading providers are improving organisational culture - for executives and their staff - Contact Us Executives Roles & Investment Available NOW BREAK OUT OF SCHOOL... Get ready for accelerated change... If you haven't been looking already... Here are a small selection of the executives, roles, contractors and business opportunities Total Executive have access to NOW EXECUTIVES AVAILABLE: CEO - International Experience in Technology Sector - considering Global role CEO - Health Sector experience CIO - built teams over 50 from 20 - Financial experience HR Director - Financial / Insurance Sector Entrepreneur - looking for concepts to VC and take to market Manufacturing COO - looking for a change Investor - looking for VC options Sales Director - looking for contractual work internationaly many more ROLES AVAILABLE: Shared Services Director - National to start COO - Sydney / Melbourne MD - Small Business - IT client Digital Knowledge Director - Sydney Based Online Media Director - Sydney / Melbourne BDM - Building Sector - APAC many more CONTRACT ROLES AVAILABLE: Total EXECUTIVE have access to thousands of contractors for temporary contracts - Australia or overseas - CONTACT US BUSINESS INVESTMENT AVAILABLE: Total Executive mediate the sale of a successful IT business servicing the Health Industry with corporate clients and long term contracts. Vendor finance is available The owner is available to stay on for an extended period to help with introduction to all clients and training of business skills For a detailed Business Overview Contact Us We now have over 395 businesses, corporates and enterprise considering the executive members within the Total Executive network for future positions available in Australia and overseas For further information on any of these executives or roles above - OR, toconfidentially discuss future roles Contact Us You can now benefit from Additional Benefits with your Total Executive Membership Contact Us for these services below... Complimentary Cultural Alignment Analysis here   Member benefits when booking events - including these events here   Save 30% off Business, Trade and other Publications here now   Save money and time with Global Executive search for contractual and full time engagements here   Complimentary Business Analysis here   Your complimentary 2012 subscription for peers and partners is available now here Register Now* Your peers and colleagues can currently register for complimentary 2012 Total Executive membership here saving $495:00 Search by Subject Search the Total Executive Knowledge Bank by key subjects we cover here

You are receiving this membership newsletter because you have previously been a client when we have introduced you to publishers, coaching organisations and other companies providing services supporting executives and their staff. Or, you have been in communication with one of our team and confirmed that you would be interested in learning more about Leadership, Sustainability, Responsibility, Technology and/or Communication via our newsletter. If you believe you have received this email incorrectly, you may select to unsubscribe using the link below Email: Info@TotalEXEC.com.au  Phone:             +61 (0) 408 844 009       Total Executive Suite 102 370 Kingsway Sydney, NSW 2229 Australia Add us to your address book Copyright © 1989-2012 Total Executive All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend Update your profile

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The latest Leadership newsletter from Total Executive has been released with new benefits for members who follow an interest in Responsible Leadership Have you subscribed to Total Executive yet? Complimentary membership is currently available saving $495:00 Subscribe here

Hello  Welcome to our Monthly Membership Newsletter with a variety of NEW Exclusive Total Executive Member Benefits and Interviews for You Link to this newsletter online here Leadership Interviews Leading an International Organisation Tom Gorman - CEO, Brambles explains how to lead an international organisation over more than 50 countries here Is it a Good or Bad Time for Executive Transfer? James Allen - MD for Stanton Chase Australia provides insights here To discuss how our leading partners are improving engagement and direction - for executives and their staff - Contact Us Your Total Executive Membership Benefits Grow You can now benefit from Additional Benefits with your Total Executive Membership... Save 30% off Business, Trade and other Publications here now   Save money and time with Global Executive search for contractual and full time engagements here   Complimentary subscription to Executive magazines as shown here Your complimentary 2011/2012 subscription for peers and partners is available now here Leadership Articles What Leaders can Learn from The Rise of The Planet of The Apes Some interesting comparisons here Put Staff Down Cleverly to Increase Creativity Research shows that creativity can be improved through a clever put down here Are you Screening more than Your Employees Learn why and how you should screen more here CEOs favourite Lies Learn what they are here The importance of Networking at Executive Level Learn why it is so important here Do Nothing and Achieve More Great ideas here Attracting Talent Learn how to attract talent and build your business here View dozens of recent leadership articles here Communication Skills Beyond The Brand 'Culture' is the new competitive edge to marketing - view more here Build Exposure via LinkedIn Build exposure and increase web traffic using LinkedIn here Monitor what Others Say about Your Business Online You can be the eyes of the mirror as shown here It is OK to Lie to Your Boss When is it OK to lie to your boss? - learn here Get FAST relevant responses to your email This newsletter does not follow these rules - ARE YOU? - learn here Social Media Comes of Age Learn how social media, communications and security are working in harmony here View dozens of articles on communication here Learn how Total Executive can support your Communications (internally and externally) here Technology Knowledge The Power of Web 3.0 Learn how to design the transcendent web here Cloud Computing and Information Security Learn what is really the case with Cloud and security here Retail Banking and Apponomics Learn how banking is changing here Make your website Mobile and Tablet Friendly Learn how to do it cheaply here 5 things you Need to Know about the iCloud Learn what is most important for your business here Fight the GOOD IT Fight Learn how to fight the Malware here View dozens of technology articles here Total Executive Interviews and Reviews What an Australian Marketing Award Winner thinks about Marketing Reg Bryson - Founder of Brand Council talks about how marketing is changing here Questions to Ask at the Informational Interview Learn what you should be asking here 6 innovation lessons from eBay Learn new ideas from eBay's think tank here Australian Safety Innovation Attracting global attention as shown here View dozens of interviews and reviews with leaders here Total Executive Exclusive Educational Benefits* Total Executive members have access to exclusive benefits with coaching, education and mentoring, like those shown here Contact us to discuss exclusive benefits for your staff and direct family members Upcoming Events with Exclusive TE Member Benefits*... Your Total Executive membership entitles you to receive exclusive benefits when booking and attending conferences, events and forums. To book any program below with Total Executive benefits simply reply to this email with your contact details... we arrange the rest for you. LEADERSHIP For the Real World Complimentary Breakfast about the latest skills in leadership engagement for Total Executive Members available here To have your event promoted Contact Us Register Now* Your peers and colleagues can currently register for complimentary 2011/2012 Total Executive membership here saving $495:00 Test Your Brain Have you tested your Brain lately? Test your memory here View a history of Brain Tests here Search by Subject Search the Total Executive Knowledge Bank by key subjects we cover here

You are receiving this membership newsletter because you have previously been a client when we have introduced you to publishers, coaching organisations and other companies providing services supporting executives and their staff. Or, you have been in communication with one of our team and confirmed that you would be interested in learning more about Leadership, Sustainability, Responsibility, Technology and/or Communication via our newsletter. If you believe you have received this email incorrectly, you may select to unsubscribe using the link below Email: Info@TotalEXEC.com.au  Phone: +61 (0) 408 844 009 Total Executive Suite 102 370 Kingsway Sydney, NSW 2229 Add us to your address book Copyright © 2011 Total Executive All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend

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Hello  As part of your 2011 membership provided by Total Executive, we occasionally have exclusive invitations to unique leadership workshops, forums and events... The complimentary information sessions and networking options described below are hosted by Social Leadership Australia - created for leaders who are looking for new methods to work beyond the limitations of formal authority and create lasting solutions to entrenched problems... If you are not in Sydney at these times, we recommend you invite your senior colleagues and peers. Look forward to seeing you there. Kind regards Grant Leaders need to see the real world - not the inside of a classroom. Why would you send your best people into a refugee support centre,  public housing estate … or a remote Aboriginal community … or a prison to learn about leadership? This is what Social Leadership Australia does with over 500 leaders from Government, NGOs and Top 500 companies each year and here's why: “Extraordinary …a once in a lifetime experience … the most challenging and most valuable development experience I’ve had in my career.” —Simon Terry,  General Manager, NAB “Without a doubt the best post-graduate program that I’ve ever attended. I got enormous value out of my MBA but this was much deeper learning.” —Rod Douglas, CEO, SuccesSystems The Sydney Leadership Program. Challenge yourself. Change your world. Join us for breakfast or evening drinks and hear Robbie Macpherson, Head of Social Leadership Australia, explain why a dynamic leadership program that combines the Adaptive Leadership model with teaching in the community is having a bigger impact than most other classroom based approaches. If you are working with increasing complexity and change; if the toughest issue you face is actually beyond your four walls; if the projects you are driving require cultural shifts or changes to values and behavioural norms, then Sydney Leadership just may be one of the best professional development opportunities you have come across. Download the Sydney Leadership information brochure HERE. Join us for a complimentary breakfast or evening introductory session Breakfast Session: Tuesday 6th September 7:30am to 9:00am Stockland Learning Centre - Level 2, 133 Castlereagh St Sydney OR; Evening Session: Wednesday 21st September 6:30 to 8:00pm The Benevolent Society - Level 1, 188 Oxford St Sydney Bookings: Call (02) 9339 8057 Or, email Leadership@bensoc.org.au It will be great to see you there. Yours sincerely, Robbie Macpherson Head, Social Leadership Australia Limited Bookings Available...   To book or invite one of your senior staff - simply reply to this email with your preference of breakfast or evening session, OR Email Social Leadership Australia HERE To discuss involvement in future Total Executive programs please Contact Us

You are receiving this membership newsletter because you have previously been a client when we have introduced you to publishers, coaching organisations and other companies providing services supporting executives and their staff. Or, you have been in communication with one of our team and confirmed that you would be interested in learning more about Leadership, Sustainability, Responsibility, Technology and/or Communication via our newsletter. If you believe you have received this email incorrectly, you may select to unsubscribe using the link below Email: Info@TotalEXEC.com.au  Phone: +61 (0) 408 844 009 Total Executive Suite 102 370 Kingsway Sydney , NSW 2229 Add us to your address book Copyright © 2011 Total Executive All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend Update your profile

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Hello With Your Total Executive Membership you have access to the largest executive network in Australia including Yourself and 15,000+ Total Executive Members Our extended network via our partners We are often asked if we provide recruitment services? That is not our standard business - though we know and partner with the best providers... And we have introduced some of our clients to executives with specific skills in Australia and overseas through the Total Executive membership network. How well are you connected given serious employers who are recruiting are aware of the information shown HERE We highly recommend you register and upload your CV with: Executives Online Six Figures (It costs you nothing and these are two of the top executive recruitment networks) Contact Us - we provide additional links to future employment and contract options Kind regards Grant Are you connected with the most innovative executive search network in Australia with options of international engagement? Executives Online delivers fast-track executive resourcing - Interim Management, Project Management, Change Management and Permanent Executive Recruitment. Their services are unique - you will be contacted if your skills match new positions and contracts available. They have been helping senior executives be placed QUICKLY into global positions. Why are they so successful? - They are FAST and they Save Companies Money in their recruitment processes. Their database is global, multi-sector, specialising in low cost, fast-tracked recruitment of all management and C-Level executives, both interim and permanent. We recommend you register now so they can consider you for a large volume of upcoming executive positions - it costs nothing and only takes a moment. REGISTER HERE Six Figures is Australia's leading jobsite for Executives, Senior Professionals and Professionals. The site provides an untapped source of talent for savvy hirers with Complimentary Standard Job Ad Postings and paid Featured Job ads. You should also REGISTER HERE for their complimentary membership.

You are receiving this membership newsletter because you have previously been a client when we have introduced you to publishers, coaching organisations and other companies providing services supporting executives and their staff. Or, you have been in communication with one of our team and confirmed that you would be interested in learning more about Leadership, Sustainability, Responsibility, Technology and/or Communication via our newsletter. If you believe you have received this email incorrectly, you may select to unsubscribe using the link below Email: Info@TotalEXEC.com.au  Phone: +61 (0) 408 844 009 Total Executive Suite 102 370 Kingsway Sydney, NSW 2229 Add us to your address book Copyright © 2011 Total Executive All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend Update your profile

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"This movie - Rise of the Planet of the Apes, through it's engagement with creatures emotions via the very clever replication of eye contact has the ability to impact the psyche of the human race and encourage a change for the better"

Grant Crossley, founder Responsible Leadership

Are your leaders connecting with the inner desires of your staff - a willingness to connect with our environment, community and nature...

How are your leaders engaging staff?

Are they communicating sincerely - looking them straight in the eye?

Are they still tied up with the antiquated historic style of management - ruling by Carrot and Stick?

So your staff always need to watch their back...

Do your leaders leave staff distant?

Wanting to start an Uprising?

Or, do your leaders engage with compassion...

Encouraging engaging conversation...

Building an environment of collaboration

Is your business encouraging engagement with community, staff and our environment as is an underlying theme for Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

Think about how your leaders are engaging with staff? Do they need a helping hand?

If so, Contact Us to discuss Responsible Leadership

And make sure you check out this Movie of The Year:

http://www.apeswillrise.com/

All images above sourced from http://www.imdb.com

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Hello  Welcome to our July 2011 Membership Newsletter with a variety of Exclusive Total Executive Member Benefits (highlighted below)* for You Clarify Your Identity Clarify Your Identity before starting your Mission Hans Tempel - CEO of Mercedes explains how your first step is to Clarify Your Identity in order to lead from the front here To discuss how our leading providers are improving engagement and direction - for executives and their staff - Contact Us Escaping the COLD* During the Cold it is time to Invest in the Warmer Climate Far North Queensland have had their experience of tough times - Now executives can support the north. View some ideas available where Total Executive membership benefit offers are available as shown here A couple Great places to stay where Total Executive can help provide the best deals for your family and staff include: Port Douglas - The Sheraton Mirage Details on what they have to offer are here Cairns - The Sebel Details of what they have to offer are here Much more of what is available in the region is shown here Executive Survey* You can Help Enhance the Relationship between clients and providers - then view survey results Join the hundreds of executives who have helped provide a platform of engagement between clients and their providers globally here Leadership Articles Is Anger a Symptom of Depression? Rhondalynn Korolak talks about how depression can result from anger turned inwards here View dozens of recent leadership articles here New Home for Consultants* Do you work SOHO? Consider a new complimentary service option... Consultants in Sydney now have access to offices where they can collaborate with fellow consultants, benefit from complimentary services and more... To discuss benefits available for Total Executive members further contact us Communication and Technology Articles When is it Time to Sack your Customer? Selective Marketing is on the right foot and ready to boot! Learn more here View dozens of articles on communication here Fight the GOOD IT Fight Learn how to fight the Malware here View dozens of technology articles here Total Executive Interviews and Reviews What Executives are Thinking about Leadership Kelly Magowan, CEO of Six Figures talks about how executives have been starting to protect People rather than protecting Profits here View dozens of interviews and reviews with leaders here Total Executive Exclusive Educational Benefits* Total Executive members have access to exclusive benefits when studying, like those shown here Contact us to discuss exclusive benefits for your staff and direct family members Upcoming Events with Exclusive TE Member Benefits*... Your Total Executive membership entitles you to receive exclusive benefits when booking and attending conferences, events and forums. To book any program below with Total Executive benefits simply reply to this email with your contact details... we arrange the rest for you. LEADERSHIP For the Real World Complimentary Breakfast about the latest skills in leadership engagement for Total Executive Members available here Relationships are built through Communication Each of us have a distinct method of communication Book with exclusive Total Executive benefits here View the full programme calendar here To have your event promoted Contact Us Have you Trained your Brain Lately? How is your Information Processing? Measure your Mind Here View many more Brain Training Exercises here Register Now* Your peers and colleagues can currently register for complimentary 2011/2012 Total Executive membership here saving $495:00 Search by Subject Search the Total Executive Knowledge Bank by key subjects we cover here

You are receiving this membership newsletter because you have previously been a client when we have introduced you to publishers, coaching organisations and other companies providing services supporting executives and their staff. Or, you have been in communication with one of our team and confirmed that you would be interested in learning more about Leadership, Sustainability, Responsibility, Technology and/or Communication via our newsletter. If you believe you have received this email incorrectly, you may select to unsubscribe using the link below Email: Info@TotalEXEC.com.au  Phone: +61 (0) 408 844 009 Total Executive Suite 102 370 Kingsway Sydney , NSW 2229 Add us to your address book Copyright © 2011 Total Executive All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend Update your profile

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Hello  Total Executive occasionally have exclusive invitations to unique leadership workshops, forums and events... The complimentary information sessions and networking breakfasts described below are hosted by Social Leadership Australia - created for leaders who are looking for new methods to work beyond the limitations of formal authority and create lasting solutions to entrenched problems... If you or your colleagues in Queensland Australia would like to attend, please have them contact us and we will look after the rest. Look forward to seeing you there. Kind regards Grant Why would you send your best people into a public housing estate … or a remote Aboriginal community … or a prison to learn about leadership? That’s what we did with more than 200 leaders from Government, NGOs and Top 500 companies in 2010 alone. And this is the sort of thing they had to say about it: “Extraordinary …a once in a lifetime experience … the most challenging and most valuable development experience I’ve had in my career.” —Simon Terry,  General Manager, NAB “Without a doubt the best post-graduate program that I’ve ever attended. I got enormous value out of my MBA but this was much deeper learning.”  —Rod Douglas, CEO, SuccesSystems I’m writing to invite you to come along to one of our forthcoming information sessions about the Queensland Leadership program and discover how Social Leadership Australia’s unique approach to learning is delivering some of the most powerful leadership development programs in Australia. Queensland Leadership is our flagship leadership development program in Queensland. Each year it brings together a cohort of up to thirty high-talent, big-thinking individuals from across the business, government and not-for-profit sectors to learn what it means to exercise real leadership—leadership that works beyond the limitations of formal authority, leadership that helps create new, lasting solutions to entrenched problems. If you are working with increasing complexity and change; if the toughest issue you face is actually beyond your four walls; if the projects you are driving require cultural shifts or changes to values and behavioural norms, then this may be one of the best professional development opportunities you have come across. At the heart of Queensland Leadership is the Adaptive Leadership model developed by Ronald Heifetz and his colleagues at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.  Having worked almost exclusively with this model in all our programs since 2002, we at Social Leadership Australia are some of Australia’s foremost Adaptive Leadership practitioners. But we take this model to a new level by bringing the learning into the community, because we believe leaders need to see the real world, not the inside of a classroom. A comprehensive information booklet about Queensland Leadership is available on our website: www.benevolent.org.au/leadership Join us for a complimentary breakfast on one of these two dates: Thursday, 28th July 7:30am to 9:00am The Benevolent Society, 9 Wilson Street, West End, Queensland OR Thursday, 11 August 7.30am to 9.00am The Benevolent Society, 9 Wilson Street, West End, Queensland Contact Social Leadership Australia to discuss further and book: amandam@bensoc.org.au or 07 3170 4618 Yours sincerely, Robbie Macpherson Head, Social Leadership Australia Limited Bookings Available...   To book or invite one of your senior staff or colleagues in Queensland - simply reply to this email with your preference of breakfast session, OR Email Social Leadership Australia HERE To discuss involvement in future Total Executive programs please Contact Us Email: Info@TotalEXEC.com.au  Phone: +61 (0) 408 844 009 Total Executive Suite 102 370 Kingsway Sydney, NSW 2229 Copyright © 2011 Total Executive All rights reserved. Forward this email to a friend Update your profile

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View the latest Total Executive newsletter for June 2011 below with lot's of benefits for members... Hello Welcome to our June 2011 Membership Newsletter with a variety of Exclusive Total Executive Member Benefits (highlighted below)*

Complete our survey on Improving Partner Connections here

The 6 C's of Leadership - Jon Scriven - Qantas Group Executive of People and Corporate Services

Learn how to have good conversations and the five critical things to know about building high performance workplaces here

You can Help Enhance the Relationship between clients and providers - then view survey results

Join the hundreds of executives who have helped provide a platform of engagement between clients and their providers globally here

Creating Individual Futures - A New Perspective on Career Management

Charles Brass talks about how a new breed of consultant and counsellor has emerged in the recruitment field here

View dozens of recent leadership articles here

Do you work SOHO? Consider a new complimentary service option...
Consultants in Sydney now have access to offices where they can collaborate with fellow consultants, benefit from complimentary services and more...
To discuss benefits available for Total Executive members further contact us

Designing Connected Brands

Is your brand connected with the customer? Learn more here

View dozens of articles on communication here

IT is about creating new products, Not just Cutting Costs

A global CIO study shows the web has enabled many businesses and corporates to develop new products and profit centres using IT as explained here

View dozens of technology articles here

Is Policy our Roadmap?

Graeme A Kraehe AO, chairman of Bluescope and Brambles talks about the carbon tax here

View dozens of interviews and reviews with leaders here

Contact us to discuss exclusive benefits for your staff and direct family members

Your Total Executive membership entitles you to receive exclusive benefits when booking and attending conferences, events and forums.

To book any program below with Total Executive benefits simply reply to this email with your contact details... we arrange the rest for you.

MULTIPLIERS: How the Best Leaders Inspire their Team
Liz Wiseman explains how multipliers get more done with fewer resources in:
Melbourne
Sydney
Brisbane

Relationships are built through Communication
Each of us have a distinct method of communication
Book with exclusive Total Executive benefits here

View the full programme calendar here

Do you avoid Distraction? Measure your Mind Here

View many more Brain Training Exercises here

Email: Info@TotalEXEC.com.au  Phone: +61 (0) 408 844 009

Total Executive

Suite 102

370 Kingsway

Sydney, NSW 2229

Add us to your address book

Copyright

© 2011 Total Executive All rights reserved.

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View the latest Total Executive newsletter for June 2011 below with lot's of benefits for members... Hello  Welcome to our June 2011 Membership Newsletter with a variety of Exclusive Total Executive Member Benefits (highlighted below)*

Complete our survey on Improving Partner Connections here

The 6 C's of Leadership - Jon Scriven - Qantas Group Executive of People and Corporate Services

Learn how to have good conversations and the five critical things to know about building high performance workplaces here

You can Help Enhance the Relationship between clients and providers - then view survey results

Join the hundreds of executives who have helped provide a platform of engagement between clients and their providers globally here

Creating Individual Futures - A New Perspective on Career Management

Charles Brass talks about how a new breed of consultant and counsellor has emerged in the recruitment field here

View dozens of recent leadership articles here

Do you work SOHO? Consider a new complimentary service option...
Consultants in Sydney now have access to offices where they can collaborate with fellow consultants, benefit from complimentary services and more...
To discuss benefits available for Total Executive members further contact us

Designing Connected Brands

Is your brand connected with the customer? Learn more here

View dozens of articles on communication here

IT is about creating new products, Not just Cutting Costs

A global CIO study shows the web has enabled many businesses and corporates to develop new products and profit centres using IT as explained here

View dozens of technology articles here

Is Policy our Roadmap?

Graeme A Kraehe AO, chairman of Bluescope and Brambles talks about the carbon tax here

View dozens of interviews and reviews with leaders here

Contact us to discuss exclusive benefits for your staff and direct family members

Your Total Executive membership entitles you to receive exclusive benefits when booking and attending conferences, events and forums.

To book any program below with Total Executive benefits simply reply to this email with your contact details... we arrange the rest for you.

MULTIPLIERS: How the Best Leaders Inspire their Team
Liz Wiseman explains how multipliers get more done with fewer resources in:
Melbourne
Sydney
Brisbane

Relationships are built through Communication
Each of us have a distinct method of communication
Book with exclusive Total Executive benefits here

View the full programme calendar here

Do you avoid Distraction? Measure your Mind Here

View many more Brain Training Exercises here

Email: Info@TotalEXEC.com.au  Phone: +61 (0) 408 844 009

Total Executive

Suite 102

370 Kingsway

Sydney, NSW 2229

Add us to your address book

Copyright

© 2011 Total Executive All rights reserved.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Why A Framework?

Green ICT – sometimes called Green IT – is a much-discussed topic, in the ICT industry and beyond. The problem is, it means different things to different people. There are too many definitions, and not enough definition.

This lack of definition has made it difficult to measure the effectiveness or the extent of an organisation’s implementation of Green ICT. As the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. And you can’t measure what you can’t define.

To many people, Green ICT is only about reducing the energy consumption and carbon footprint of the ICT function within the organization. ICT is a significant consumer of electricity worldwide, on a par with the airline industry. Therefore it makes sense, as emission reduction becomes desirable and even mandatory, that ICT users should look at ways of reducing the energy consumption of their systems.

But there is more to Green ICT than that – which is why Green ICT is becoming an increasingly important issue. Green ICT goes beyond the ICT function and the ICT department – in many ways ICT, and Green ICT, is a central enabling technology to many aspects of sustainability. In very many cases ICT provides the measurement tool, the data repository, the reporting mechanism and the mitigation techniques that make sustainability possible.

Green ICT is becoming an important issue for many reasons. Data center power bills are soaring as electricity prices go up and new server technologies pack more and more processors, which consume more and more power, into less and less space. Water cooling is making a comeback to handle the heat dissipation issues. At the same time tough economic circumstances are putting a greater focus on running costs, and power consumption as a component of those costs is becoming more visible. Reporting requirements are becoming more stringent and there is an increased awareness across business and society of the unsustainability of many current consumption patterns.

ICT as a low-carbon enabler is an important component of the Green ICT Framework. It is not enough simply to reduce ICT’s carbon footprint – to make a real difference, ICT must be harnessed to greater purposes.

This process includes...

Equipment Lifecycle

This pillar covers the acquisition and procurement of ICT equipment, and disposal or recycling at the end of its lifecycle in an environmentally responsible fashion.

ICT equipment, like all other equipment, passes through a lifecycle. It is manufactured, sold (and for every sale there is a purchase), used and often reused, and then ultimately disposed of. That disposal may mean it is discarded or destroyed, but it may also be sold or given to another person or organization, where it has another lifecycle contained within its larger lifecycle.

End User Computing

End User Computing is that part of the ICT process which the end user controls. There are four areas – personal computing (desktop), personal computing (mobile), departmental computing, and printing and consumables. For each of these there are a range of different technologies and techniques that can reduce the organization’s power consumption and carbon footprint. End User Computing is especially important because, as the only part of ICT that exists outside of the specialized ICT function, it has the greatest effect on the wider green attitudes and behavior of the organisation’s workforce.

In many organizations, particularly larger ones, there is a significant amount of computing that takes place in end user departments away from the control of the ICT department.

Printing and Consumables

Printing is one of the largest consumers of resources in the IT function. There are a number of factors, of which the actual power consumption of printers is just one. Printers are very inefficient users of energy. They are usually left on, and consume significant amounts of energy even when idle. But there are many other factors which, while they do not directly affect the organization’s power consumption, have a significant effect on the environment.

Enterprise Computing

Enterprise Computing is that part of the ICT function controlled directly by the ICT department – typically the data center, networking, software development and outsourcing. In organizations large enough to have a data center, the effective management of the equipment within it and its environment can be one of the most important aspects of Green ICT.

Data Center ICT Equipment

The two most important types of ICT equipment in the data center include servers (including mainframes) and storage devices. Servers are usually the biggest consumers of power, and that power consumption continues to rise as more powerful processors are used inside them, and as the number of servers proliferates.

The average power consumption of a rack of servers has increased fivefold over the last ten years.

Data Center Environmentals

Quite apart from the ICT equipment in the data center, there is the issue of the data centre itself. The data centre’s non-ICT infrastructure can quite easily (and most often does) consume more power than the ICT equipment within it. There are three main aspects:

Networking and Communications

Communications – the “C” in ICT, plays a significant role in modern ICT. There are a number of green issues specifically to do with communications. These include:

Outsourcing and Cloud Computing

Outsourcing has been one of the big issues in ICT since the industry began, with computer bureaux, in the 1950s. The issues have evolved as the technology has evolved. Ultimately, all outsourcing is a make vs. buy decision. Is it more effective to make or do something yourself, or have someone else build it or do it for you? The equation keeps changing, depending on a number of factors.

In ICT, outsourcing discussions have traditionally centered around the issues of cost and capability. The cost argument usually runs along the lines of the outsourcer having economies of scale that are unavailable in-house, and the capability argument along the lines that the requisite skills are not available in-house.

The rise of sustainability as an issue has added a new dimension to the ICT outsourcing debate. Many facilities management companies are now highlighting their green credentials and building energy-efficient data centers that they say will enable users to lower their overall carbon footprint.  That may well be the case, but the traditional make vs buy arguments still hold. One key issue with outsourcing, and one that is overlooked surprisingly often, is that of measurement. It is impossible to tell if outsourcing is a good deal or not financially if you don’t know the real cost of what is being outsourced. Similarly, you can’t tell if an outsourcer is going to reduce your carbon footprint if you don’t know what it is to start with.

Recent complication to the outsourcing debate is the emergence of cloud computing, where processing takes place in the “cloud” – somewhere on the Internet far from the user. Cloud computing is not necessarily outsourced, but it very often is – making the debate even more complex.

Software Architecture

Computer systems consist of software running on hardware. Indeed, it is often argued that the software is the system, and that the hardware is simply an enabling technology. Most discussion about Green ICT refer to hardware, but software is also a factor.

The software architecture often determines the hardware architecture, which in turn may have a significant effect on the amount or type of hardware used – with all the consequences of the energy consumption of those systems. The way software is developed and used is significant – code can be efficient, or it can be “bloatware”. Systems can be developed from scratch, adapted or borrowed (with “objects”) from other software, or purchased off-the-shelf. Each approach has consequences for energy consumption.

ICT as a Low-Carbon Enabler

It is generally agreed that ICT is responsible for around 2 percent of the world’s carbon emissions – mainly through the usage of electricity to run the hardware, much of which comes from carbon-emitting power stations. That means that even if the carbon footprint of the entire world’s ICT function was halved, overall emissions would fall by only 1 percent.

The real potential benefits of Green ICT are in using ICT as an enabling technology to help the organization, and the wider community, reduce its carbon emissions. That is covered by the fourth pillar of the Framework.

Governance and Compliance

Many organisations nowadays are conscious of the desirability of being a good corporate citizen. Increasingly, that means acting in a green and sustainable manner. Publicity about climate change and related issues has greatly raised the profile of sustainability, and virtually all organizations are attempting to boost their green credentials. In some cases they do it because they are forced to, in some cases it is a case of “greenwash” or paying only lip service to environmental matters. But in many cases the organization’s management sincerely wants to do the right thing.

There is now an increased awareness that, when it comes to the environment, everybody is a stakeholder, and that good corporate governance also includes good environmental management. Green ICT is in many ways a management and governance issue. I

Teleworking and Collaboration

The term “teleworking” covers a range of technologies and practices that have to do with working at a distance or working remotely. Varieties of teleworking include telecommuting, teleconferencing and videoconferencing, and telepresence (a form of high-resolution videoconferencing).

Collaboration tools and techniques enhance the capability of a group of people to work together. There are a great many ways to do this, but all of them entail being able to share documents an processes and information, making their business processes more efficient (see below) and reducing the need for physical contact. In that sense, collaboration is a teleworking, with all the benefits of that process.

Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) is the process of improving the ways an organisation or an individual does things – making them more efficient, with fewer steps or greater effect. The term is used in both a specific and a general sense. The specific sense refers to a management discipline called BPM, which typically identifies five phases: Design, Modeling, Execution, Monitoring and Optimization. In the general sense, BPM refers to the overall process of managing and improving business processes. ICT has a major role to play in improving most business processes. It provides both the tools for modeling the processes and many of the enabling technologies for execution.

Business Applications

Most organisations run a number of ICT-based business applications. The range varies greatly depending on the industry sector, but typical applications include Financial Management Information Systems (FMIS), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Many organizations also run more specialised or even custom applications specific to their industry, or to provide them with competitive advantage.

ICT is very important in each of these applications, which are essentially specialized business process management exercises. Managers seek greater efficiencies in every phase of every process. The fewer times and the shorter distance physical items have to be moved, the better. The fewer transactions that need to be made, the better.

Very small improvements can have a significant effect, because of the scale of the operation and because of flow-on effects further up (or down) the supply chain. Green ICT has a very important role in improving the efficiency of many industrial and commercial processes specific to individual industries, such as the manufacturing process, electricity distribution, and engineering and construction. Every industry has unique processes which can be made more efficient through the application of ICT – and efficiency means green.

Carbon Emissions Management

Carbon Emissions Management is an emerging discipline which focuses on the management – and ultimately the mitigation – of an organization’s carbon emissions. This includes the use of ICT systems specifically designed to reduce the carbon footprint, rather than doing so as a byproduct of greater efficiency. A key ICT application is Carbon Emissions Management Software (CEMS), which provide a compliant and consistent format for presenting greenhouse gas emission data to executive management and regulators

As the carbon emissions regulatory framework continues to evolve, CEMS is becoming an increasingly popular tool to manage the carbon emissions lifecycle. The market will continue to mature and will most likely consolidate around major technology vendors and a smaller group of niche or vertical industry players, and CEMS products will become a functional component within many organizations’ application portfolio. Envirability has researched the CEMS market, and written a major report on the background to CEMS and how to select and implement a product. See www.cemsus.com

Resource Sources:

[i] Williams, E, (2004) Energy Intensity of Computer Manufacturing - Environmental Science and Technology, 38, 2004. Iowa City. IA, USA ACS Publications

[ii] www.epeat.net

[iii]  http://ewasteguide.info

[iv] Koomey, J.G. (2007) Estimating Total Power Consumption by Servers in the U.S. and the World Stanford CA, USA. Retrieved 13 January 2010 from

http://enterprise.amd.com/Downloads/svrpwrusecompletefinal.pdf

[v] Gantz, J. (2009), The Diverse and Expanding Digital Universe, Framingham MA, USA. IDC

[vi] www.corpgov.net

[vii] www.itgi.org

[viii] www.telework.gov

[ix] Philipson, G., Foster, P. and Brand, J. (2010) CEMS: A New Global Industry”, Sydney, Australia. Envirability.

Source:

Graham Philipson
Envirability

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The late Dr Richard Buckminster-Fuller 1895-1983, Architect, inventor, designer, futurist, philosopher and poet, (Geodesic domes, dymaxion car and map, dome homes etc.) spoke and wrote often about how we have been conditioned to speak in 'flat earth' language. What do I mean by that? Well how about 'the four corners of the earth', 'wide, wide world'.

In his 53 or so lecture circuits of the planet his direct questioning of many large scientific audiences showed that scientists as yet realistically, "see," the Sun going "down" in the evening - though science has known for 500 years that this is untrue. More accurately we experience "Sun clipse" and "Sun sight"

"Scientifically speaking, (which is truthfully speaking), there are no directions "up", and "down," in Universe - there are only the angularly specifiable directions "in," "out," and "around."

"The first aviators flying completely around the Earth, having completed half their circuit, did not "feel up-side-down". They had to employ others words to correctly explain their experiences. So, aviators evolved the terms "coming-in" for a landing and "going-out," not "down" and "up".

Only a flat world could have a Heaven to which to ascend and a Hell into which to descend.

The power plays and politics of flat world vs spherical go back along way. The implications of our some of our 'flat earth' ways of thinking in regard to say, innovation and creativity, may be profound.

For more read "Critical Path" by R. Buckminster Fuller or "Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth" by the same author should do the trick. You can download this for free I believe from http://pdfdatabase.com/r-buckminster-fuller.html.

Source:

Jon Pratlett

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Hello  Welcome to our May 2011 Membership Newsletter with a variety of Exclusive Total Executive Member Benefits (highlighted below)*

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Creating a New Normal - How do you Do it?

How individuals and organisations respond to life changing events will determine the outcomes they experience.
How do you move forward from catastrophic events like those experienced in Queensland, Christchurch, Japan and many other countries this year?
Leaders of organisations can learn a lot from how successful response to devastation is conducted.
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Scan the World for Strategic Advantage via Innovation

Consider how to make your business authentically local as the global speed to innovate for future business growth is accelerating as explained in the video here

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Keys to Successful Entrepreneurs in Eastern and Western Cultures
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Is this the greatest business challenge of the next thirty years?

For years we have been told that the greatest business differentiator is the quality of the people we employee. Sure, this is important, but is it the greatest differentiator? After all aren’t there plenty of others that are at least as important - innovation, scale, efficiency, quality …

But now, there are several universal trends that indicate ‘people’ will almost certainly be the most important differentiator for the next few decades, and the reason is simple – scarcity.

The western world and to some extent the developing world will find it increasingly difficult to find employees. Those organisations that compete effectively for labour will thrive and those that don’t will disappear. The labour market will become increasingly competitive as employers position themselves to attract and then retain the people they need.

The GFC was nothing more than a temporary distraction from this on-going issue. The trends across all of the western world and much of the developing world are the same:

1)            Lower birth rates

2)            People living longer

3)            A shortage of skilled labour

4)            Greater work mobility

So what are the implications?

It all comes down to this.

It will be harder to find people and it will be harder to keep people; that organisational success will be increasingly determined by how successful an organisation is at finding and keeping good people.

Much to their credit, many organisations resisted the temptation to reduce their workforce during the recent economic downturn.  If the last major recession of 1991-92 taught us anything, it was that employees do not forget.  If an organisation fails to look after their employees during the tough times then those same employees are not going to show any commitment to that employer during the good times.  This time around many organisations moved fast to protect their employer brand by ensuring that wherever possible, employees were retained, even if that meant in some instances reducing work hours and conditions.

The employer brand, the attractiveness of that organisation as a place to work, has therefore become as important to retention as the product brand is to product sales. Leading organisations now have in place a wide range of ongoing initiatives to protect and strengthen their employer brand.

Those organisations with a strong employer brand are not only able to attract the very best people but they are able to retain them longer and employ them more productively.

Whilst estimates vary, it is generally calculated that the cost of losing an employee is equivalent to 85% of their total employment costs - and this is just the bottom-line impact.  On top of this you have the disruption that a departing employee causes in terms of the continuity of the customers relationships and the general disruption to the focus of their team and their team leader.  Employees that work within a stable work environment with lower turnover tend to stay whilst those employees who work in an environment with a high turnover tend to leave.  In other words high employee turnover is self-reinforcing.

What actions are employers taking to help build their employer brand?

The first thing they are doing is undertaking research, finding out what it is that existing and potential employees are looking for from an employer.  The analogy with product branding is obvious.  Get to know your market!

There are, of course, many complexities involved in this exercise. No two people are likely to have exactly the same requirements from their employer.  Some may be happy to trade job security for less money, whilst for others they are happy to face higher employment risk for more income.  Some employees like to work in a collegiate, co-operative environment, others in an environment based more on individual effort.  There are of course, an infinite number of variables.

The challenge for the employer therefore is to clearly define what ‘types’ of employees they require.  This requires a clear articulation of values and behaviours, work types and organisational culture.  Once the organisation has clearly defined the types of employees they are seeking and also clearly understand what employees are seeking from employers, they can then set about the task of:

1)            Building a work environment that retains these types of employees

2)            Putting in place recruitment strategies that will secure these type of employees

Of course some organisations focus on attracting employees without focussing on what is necessary to retain them.  These employees are attracted by what is promised and are disappointed by the reality once they arrive. In the marketing world this is like being attracted to a box of chocolates in pretty wrapping which then turn out to taste pretty awful. We have all had these purchasing decisions and we generally feel conned as a result. Certainly we would not by that product again and we may even bad-mouth the product to our friends.

The reason why many employers focus on the recruitment strategies to the detriment of the retention strategies is that it is easier.  It is easier to put up a stand at a university to attract the young and the brightest than it is to actually build an organisational environment that lives up to the promise.

Building a strong retention environment requires a number of things.

First, the employer needs to think of their employees as customers and the leaders within that organisation responsible for ensuring that these customer needs are met.  Each leader is responsible for a unique customer group, their team.  Each team will have its unique customer issues and requirements.  A team within a large manufacturing company that works on the shop floor will be extremely concerned about Occupational Health and Safety, whereas a white collar worker within the accounting department of the same organisation will have no such concerns.

So the first step any organisation must take is build an understanding of each of these unique employee groups (once again this is exactly the same as building a segmented marketing strategy for products), asking the question ‘what is it they want in order to feel passionate and committed, productive and focussed?’

Of course, the only way to know this is to ask them.  The leader, for example, could simply sit with his or her team members and ask the question, "What is it that you need to be more engaged, committed, passionate and productive in your job?"

There are, however, some serious problems with this approach.  First, it would be a very unusual team where all employees felt they could speak openly about every issue they have.  Are they, for example, really going to criticise their team leader’s communication practices? Are they going to complain that they are too busy in case this is misinterpreted as their inability to cope? Are they going to raise issues about their overly bureaucratic information systems when this could be seen as simply their desire to dodge the paper work?

Secondly, they may not actually know or be able to clearly articulate what it is they require. Most of us are unclear about what really drives us, whether this is be with respect to our jobs, our purchasing decisions or our personal lives. Often our thoughts are jumbled and priorities are unclear.

Because of these problems there is a tendency for employees to give a simple and obvious answer to what they need, that is, they simply want more money. But research has shown that money is rarely the prime motivator. Organisations who simply out pay their competitors will struggle. Pay is a blunt instrument. The challenge for the organisation is to identify and encourage intrinsic motivators or emotional connections. Whilst these are more difficult to identify, the employer who indentifies and delivers these emotional connectors will build the most compelling employer brand.

This is not to say one on one conversations are invaluable, they are.  But they are not sufficient.

To find out what employees really want, the organisation needs to do its research. A confidential, well-constructed contemporary employee opinion survey is the most popular vehicle for this. Over the past ten years employee surveys have moved from mere tokenism to become one of the most powerful organisational performance improvement initiatives available.

What other single initiative can:

• Make teams and businesses more efficient
• Strengthen leadership
• Improve employee engagement, passion and commitment
• Increase customer focus
• Improve sales
• Build alignment
• Enhance employer branding
• Reduce employee turnover

Other tools such as exit interview software also provides valuable insights.

Retention improvement action planning software helps larger organisations deliver different retention strategies to different segments or teams.

Conclusion

Building the best possible employer brand is based on developing the best possible understanding of employee needs and then meeting these needs.  Because these needs evolve over time and the structure and makeup of corporations change, this research needs to be fresh and continuous. Great organisations will have in place an effective, on-going process for capturing employee issues and addressing them.

Every successful organisation will be constantly striving to build the best possible business environment for their employees, a workplace that encourages ideas, passion and commitment.

This organisation has the retention issue under control and they have built and can defend what is becoming the true business differentiator for all companies, people.

Source:

Lanning Bennett
Founder

COI Group

www.coigroup.com

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1. The History of Change is Social Innovation
2. The Future of Change is Social Innovation

To understand these two comments that underpin the existence of Total Executive and the knowledge portal we provide executives and their staff, we must first provide a couple definitions;

Innovation - The commercialisation of an idea/invention(1)

Social Innovation - Innovation developed through collaboration with community/society(2)

These definitions are considerably simplified from the definitions provided by Wikepedia below. However, I believe it is important to simplify the definitions right down to theire core - so their full impact on change can be understood.

Let's first take the impact of innovation on change...

If Innovation is the commercialisation of an idea or invention, then this means the idea or invention may have existed for years, even decades.

However, it is not until someone comes along and commercialises the idea or invention - ie use it to create something that produces a return of value (not necessarily a $value/profit  it could be of community value), that the act of innovation has been achieved.

Thereby, the idea or invention may have existed for years, though it is only at the point of commercialisation - ie innovation - whereby 'change begins'.

Now let's consider the impact of social innovation on change...

If social innovation is innovation developed through collaboration with community/society, this implies that the act of commercialisation has involved more than one person.

Therefore, a social innovation must have a much more significant impact on change, than an innovation alone - as the number of people involved is considerably more.

It is therefore, given the definitions above, that I believe the history and future of change will continue to rely on Social Innovation.

With this in mind, Total Executive has been created.

Our knowledge bank provide resources to aid discussion and argument on the cornerposts of our portal:

• Leadership
• Sustainability (All levels - not purely 'Green')
• Responsibility and CSR
• Technology and Communications

These are underpinned with the belief that knowledge, coaching and mentoring via the fantastic minds we have within our executive community will produce social innovations that will help with the changes our planet will require into the future.

We bring you our first newsletter in April 2010.

We look forward to hearing how you are fostering and developing relationships across sectors into the future.

References:

1) Wikipedia define Innovation as:

Innovation is a new way of doing something or "new stuff that is made useful".^[1] It may refer to an incremental emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations. Following Schumpeter (1934), contributors to the scholarly literature on innovation typically distinguish between invention, an idea made manifest, and innovation, ideas applied successfully in practice. In many fields, such as the arts, economics and government policy, something new must be substantially different to be innovative. In economics the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone or something better. Innovation leading to increased productivity is the fundamental source of increasing wealth in an economy.

Innovation is an important topic in the study of economics, business, entrepreneurship, design, technology, sociology, and engineering. Colloquially, the word "innovation" is often synonymous with the output of the process. However, economists tend to focus on the process itself, from the origination of an idea to its transformation into something useful, to its implementation; and on the system within which the process of innovation unfolds. Since innovation is also considered a major driver of the economy, especially when it leads to new product categories or increasing productivity, the factors that lead to innovation are also considered to be critical to policy makers. In particular, followers of innovation economics stress using public policy to spur innovation and growth.

Those who are directly responsible for application of the innovation are often called pioneers in their field, whether they are individuals or organisations.

2) Wikipedia define Social Innovation as:

Social innovation refers to new strategies, concepts, ideas and organizations that meet social needs of all kinds - from working conditions and education to community development and health - and that extend and strengthen civil society.

Over the years, the term has developed several overlapping meanings. It can be used to refer to social processes of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques. Alternatively it refers to innovations which have a social purpose - like microcredit or distance learning. The concept can also be related to social entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship isn't always or even usually innovative, but it can be a means of innovation) and it also overlaps with innovation in public policy and governance. Social innovation can take place within government, within companies, or within the nonprofit sector (also known as the third sector), but is increasingly seen to happen most effectively in the space between the three sectors. Recent research has focused on the different types of platforms needed to facilitate such cross-sector collaborative social innovation.^[1]

History

Social innovation was discussed in the writings of figures such as Peter Drucker and Michael Young (founder of the Open University and dozens of other organizations) in the 1960s.^[2]. It also appeared in the work of French writers in the 1970s, for example Pierre Rosanvallon, Jacques Fournier, and Jacques Attali ^[3]. However, the themes and concepts in social innovation have existed long before that. Benjamin Franklin, for example, talked about social innovation in terms of small modifications within the social organisation of communities ^[4] that could help to solve everyday problems. Many radical 19th century reformers like Robert Owen, founder of the cooperative movement, promoted innovation in the social field and all of the great sociologists including Karl Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim focused much of their attention to broader processes of social change. However, more detailed theories of social innovation only became prominent in the 20th century. Joseph Schumpeter, for example, addressed the process of innovation more directly with his theories of creative destruction and his definition of entrepreneurs as people who combined existing elements in new ways. In the 1980s and after, writers on technological change increasingly addressed the importance of social factors in affecting technology diffusion^[5]

 Recent developments

The idea of social innovation has become much more prominent with ongoing research, blogs and websites (such as the social innovation exchange) ^[6], and a proliferation of organisations working on the boundaries of research and practical action. Several currents have converged in this area, including:

• new thinking about innovation in public services, pioneered particularly in some of the Scandinavian and Asian countries. Governments are increasingly recognising that innovation isn't just about hardware: it is just as much about healthcare, schooling and democracy. ^{[7] [8]}
• growing interest in social entrepreneurship.^[9]
• business, which is increasingly interested in innovation in services.^[10]
• new methods of innovation inspired by the open source field.^[11]
• linking social innovation to theory and research in complex adaptive systems to understand its dynamics.^[12]
• collaborative approaches to social innovation, particularly in the public sector.^{[13] [14]}

A recent overview of the field highlighted the growing interest of public policy makers in supporting social innovation in these different sectors, notably in the UK, Australia, China and Denmark.^[15] A focus of much recent work has been on how innovations spread ^[16] and on what makes some localities particularly innovative.^[17]

History of Social Innovation and territorial development

There is another extensive literature on social innovation in relation to territorial (or regional) development, which covers: first, innovation in the social economy, i.e. strategies for satisfaction of human needs; and second, innovation in the sense of transforming and/or sustaining social relations, especially the governance relations at the regional and local level. A combination of both the modes provides a comprehensive approach to innovation in social and economic dynamics within territories. In Europe, from the late 1980s, research on social innovation from a territorial perspective was initiated by Jean-Louis Laville^[18] and Frank Moulaert^[19] and has been going on since then. In Canada CRISES initiated this type of research. The first large scale research project to work on territorial innovation analysis was SINGOCOM Social Innovation, Governance, and Community Building a European Commission Framework 5 project (2002-2004), that offered wide ranging discussions on Alternative Models for Local Innovation (ALMOLIN).

Some noted scholars

• Akhtar Hameed Khan
• Jean-Louis Laville
• Frank Moulaert
• Geoff Mulgan
• Michael D. Mumford

See also

• civil society
• post fordism
• social entrepreneurship
• Specialisterne
• sustainopreneurship
• Young Foundation

References

Get the latest knowledge…

Learn more about Leadership at www.TotalExec.com.au

For your complimentary Total Executive 2011 membership valued at $495:00 click here

Performance●Productivity●Profit 

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Feel Boxed In???

'Total Executive Views' is the section of our TotalEXEC portal where we display articles, news, reviews and interviews that have received interest by executives and their staff.

Subjects covered revolve around the cornerposts of our portal:

• Leadership
• Sustainability (All levels - not purely 'Green')
• Responsibility and CSR
• Technology and Communications

Most articles have first been trialled for review in social media locations.

A lot of these articles have featured in our newsletters and digital publications.

Some of them are sourced from other publishers.

To search for related articles, it is easiest to click on the tags below each article.

We look forward to your contributions to these articles.

All the best

The TotalEXECUTIVE team
Creators of Responsible Leadership

Get the latest knowledge…

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Performance●Productivity●Profit

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Companies can transform the attitudes and behavior of their employees by applying psychological breakthroughs that explain why people think and act as they do.

Over the past 15 or so years, programs to improve corporate organisational performance have become increasingly common. Yet they are notoriously difficult to carry out. Success depends on persuading hundreds or thousands of groups and individuals to change the way they work, a transformation people will accept only if they can be persuaded to think differently about their jobs. In effect, CEOs must alter the mind-sets of their employees—no easy task.

CEOs could make things easier for themselves if, before embarking on complex performance-improvement programs, they determined the extent of the change required to achieve the business outcomes they seek. Broadly speaking, they can choose among three levels of change. On the most straightforward level, companies act directly to achieve outcomes, without having to change the way people work; one example would be divesting noncore assets to focus on the core business. On the next level of complexity, employees may need to adjust their practices or to adopt new ones in line with their existing mind-sets in order to reach, say, a new bottom-line target. An already "lean" company might, for instance, encourage its staff to look for new ways to reduce waste, or a company committed to innovation might form relationships with academics to increase the flow of ideas into the organization and hence the flow of new products into the market.

But what if the only way a business can reach its higher performance goals is to change the way its people behave across the board? Suppose that it can become more competitive only by changing its culture fundamentally—from being reactive to proactive, hierarchical to collegial, or introspective to externally focused, for instance. Since the collective culture of an organization, strictly speaking, is an aggregate of what is common to all of its group and individual mind-sets, such a transformation entails changing the minds of hundreds or thousands of people. This is the third and deepest level: cultural change.

Linking all of the major discoveries in programs to raise performance has effected startling changes in the way that employees behave

In such cases, CEOs will likely turn for help to psychology. Although breakthroughs have been made in explaining why people think and behave as they do, these insights have in general been applied to business only piecemeal and haven’t had a widespread effect. Recently, however, several companies have found that linking all of the major discoveries together in programs to improve performance has brought about startling changes in the behavior of employees—changes rooted in new mind-sets. Performance-improvement programs that apply all of these ideas in combination can be just as chaotic and hard to lead as those that don’t. But they have a stronger chance of effecting long-term changes in business practice and thus of sustaining better outcomes.

Four conditions for changing mind-sets

Employees will alter their mind-sets only if they see the point of the change and agree with it—at least enough to give it a try. The surrounding structures (reward and recognition systems, for example) must be in tune with the new behavior. Employees must have the skills to do what it requires. Finally, they must see people they respect modeling it actively. Each of these conditions is realized independently; together they add up to a way of changing the behavior of people in organizations by changing attitudes about what can and should happen at work.

A purpose to believe in

In 1957 the Stanford social psychologist Leon Festinger published his theory of cognitive dissonance, the distressing mental state that arises when people find that their beliefs are inconsistent with their actions—agnostic priests would be an extreme example. Festinger observed in the subjects of his experimentation a deep-seated need to eliminate cognitive dissonance by changing either their actions or their beliefs.

The implication of this finding for an organization is that if its people believe in its overall purpose, they will be happy to change their individual behavior to serve that purpose—indeed, they will suffer from cognitive dissonance if they don’t. But to feel comfortable about change and to carry it out with enthusiasm, people must understand the role of their actions in the unfolding drama of the company’s fortunes and believe that it is worthwhile for them to play a part. It isn’t enough to tell employees that they will have to do things differently. Anyone leading a major change program must take the time to think through its "story"—what makes it worth undertaking—and to explain that story to all of the people involved in making change happen, so that their contributions make sense to them as individuals.

Reinforcement systems

B. F. Skinner is best known for his experiments with rats during the late 1920s and the 1930s. He found that he could motivate a rat to complete the boring task of negotiating a maze by providing the right incentive—corn at the maze’s center—and by punishing the rat with an electric shock each time it took a wrong turn.

Skinner’s theories of conditioning and positive reinforcement were taken up by psychologists interested in what motivates people in organizations. Organizational designers broadly agree that reporting structures, management and operational processes, and measurement procedures—setting targets, measuring performance, and granting financial and nonfinancial rewards—must be consistent with the behavior that people are asked to embrace. When a company’s goals for new behavior are not reinforced, employees are less likely to adopt it consistently; if managers are urged to spend more time coaching junior staff, for instance, but coaching doesn’t figure in the performance scorecards of managers, they are not likely to bother.

Some disciples of Skinner suggest that positive-reinforcement "loops" have a constant effect: once established, you can leave them be. Over time, however, Skinner’s rats became bored with corn and began to ignore the electric shocks. In our experience, a similar phenomenon often prevents organizations from sustaining higher performance: structures and processes that initially reinforce or condition the new behavior do not guarantee that it will endure. They need to be supported by changes that complement the other three conditions for changing mind-sets.

The skills required for change

If a company urges its employees to be ‘customer-centric’ but paid little attention to the customer in the past, they won’t know how

Many change programs make the error of exhorting employees to behave differently without teaching them how to adapt general instructions to their individual situation. The company may urge them to be "customer-centric," for example, but if it paid little attention to customers in the past, they will have no idea how to interpret this principle or won’t know what a successful outcome would look like.

How can adults best be equipped with the skills they need to make relevant changes in behavior? First, give them time. During the 1980s, David Kolb, a specialist in adult learning, developed his four-phase adult-learning cycle. Kolb showed that adults can’t learn merely by listening to instructions; they must also absorb the new information, use it experimentally, and integrate it with their existing knowledge. In practice, this means that you can’t teach everything there is to know about a subject in one session. Much better to break down the formal teaching into chunks, with time in between for the learners to reflect, experiment, and apply the new principles. Large-scale change happens only in steps.

Second, as the organizational psychologist Chris Argyris showed, people assimilate information more thoroughly if they go on to describe to others how they will apply what they have learned to their own circumstances. The reason, in part, is that human beings use different areas of the brain for learning and for teaching.¹

Consistent role models

Most clinical work confirms the idea that consistent role models, whom the famous pediatrician Benjamin Spock regarded as decisive for the development of children, are as important in changing the behavior of adults as the three other conditions combined. In any organization, people model their behavior on "significant others": those they see in positions of influence. Within a single organization, people in different functions or levels choose different role models—a founding partner, perhaps, or a trade union representative, or the highest-earning sales rep. So to change behavior consistently throughout an organization, it isn’t enough to ensure that people at the top are in line with the new ways of working; role models at every level must "walk the talk."

The way role models deal with their tasks can vary, but the underlying values informing their behavior must be consistent. In a company that encourages entrepreneurial decision making at low levels, one middle manager might try to coach junior employees to know how to spot a promising new venture; another might leave this up to them. Both, however, would be acting in line with the entrepreneurial principle, whereas a boss who demanded a lengthy business case to justify each $50 expenditure would not be. But organizations trying to change their value systems can’t tolerate as much variance in their role models’ behavior. If entrepreneurial decision making were a new value, both of these middle managers might have to act in roughly the same way in order to encourage their subordinates to make bold decisions.

Behavior in organizations is deeply affected not only by role models but also by the groups with which people identify. Role modeling by individuals must therefore be confirmed by the groups that surround them if it is to have a permanent or deep influence. (Most teenagers could tell you a lot about this.) Say that a well-respected senior leader is waxing lyrical about making the culture less bureaucratic and even conforming to the new regime by making fewer requests for information. If the sales reps in the company canteen spend every lunchtime complaining that "we’ve heard this a thousand times before and nothing happened," individuals will feel less pressure to change their behavior. Change must be meaningful to key groups at each level of the organization.

Putting the approach into practice

The case of a retail bank shows how these four conditions can coalesce to change mind-sets and behavior and thereby improve performance. But though we have grouped the actions of the bank under the four conditions, it didn’t apply them in a neat sequence. As in any change program, there was much disruption and risk. Nonetheless, basing the program on four proven principles gave the CEO confidence that it would eventually succeed.

A few years ago, this CEO took the helm of a large European retail bank that employed more than 30,000 people. He set several targets: doubling the economic profit of the bank, reducing its cost-to-income ratio to 49 percent (from 56), and increasing its annual revenue growth from the current 1 to 2 percent to 5 to 7 percent—all within four years. But retail banking is almost a commodity business. No financial-engineering shortcuts or superficial changes in practice could win a competitive edge for the bank. It could meet these performance goals, the CEO realized, only by galvanizing its people to deliver far better customer outcomes at a much lower cost. That meant changing the culture of the bank by transforming it from a bureaucracy into a federation of entrepreneurs: managers would be rewarded for taking charge of problems and deciding, quickly, how to fix them.

The story of change

First, the CEO developed these insights into a story that would make sense to all of the bank’s employees, top to bottom, and would persuade them to change their behavior in line with the new principles. His principal technique was dialogue-based planning, a refinement of double-loop learning (see sidebar, "People want to develop," for a different technique). First, he drafted a top-level story of the way he perceived the bank’s position and refined the story with the help of his executive directors. Each of them in turn developed a chapter of the story relevant to his or her direct reports; the human-resources director, for example, explained how she would improve the system for identifying potential highfliers and redraw their career paths so that they would spend less time in low-impact jobs. Every director assigned responsibility for each "deliverable" in the story to one member of his or her team. Each team member then had to develop a performance scorecard setting out what he or she would do differently to meet the new goals.

The directors and the CEO then met again to retell their chapters and to get feedback from one another. Each director shared the amended version with his or her subordinates, who in turn retold the relevant part of the story to their own direct reports, and so on down five levels of the organization to the branch managers. At each retelling, the emphasis was on making the story meaningful to the people listening to it and to the groups to which they belonged.

At every level, information flowed upstream as well as down. Part of the story told by the director of retail operations, for example, was the customers’ desire for faster banking processes. One thing slowing them down, according to the staff of the branches, was the document imagers, which broke down, on average, every three days. Ordering a new imager thus became a detail in each branch manager’s story, and the branch staff could translate the top-level story—"our customers want faster operations"—into a practical result that also made their lives easier. At each level of the organization, an employee heard the relevant version of the proposed changes from his or her immediate boss, the person widely regarded as the most effective communications channel.²

How could the CEO know that people really bought into his story? The secret, he felt, was to ensure that it described how life would be better for all of the bank’s stakeholders, not just investors and analysts.

Reinforcing systems

The most dramatic structural change at the bank was eliminating 20 percent of its managerial jobs. The hypothesis, later proved correct, was that doing so would remove a swath of useless activity, without any falloff in performance. All of the bank’s managerial jobs were terminated, and managers were invited to apply for the remaining 80 percent. Applicants knew that they had succeeded if they were invited to a dialogue-based planning session—another way of signaling the importance of the process. Unsuccessful candidates left the bank. The goal was not, primarily, to improve the bank’s cost-to-income ratio; on the contrary, the cost of laying them off was quite high. Rather, since fewer managers now had to make the same number of decisions, this move was intended to force the survivors to make them more quickly.

Those managers who consistently ranked in the lowest level were asked to leave the company

Simultaneously, the bank’s performance-management process was sharpened. Under the old system, managers were rated from 1 to 5 each year and remunerated accordingly. On average, 84 percent of them got a rating of 3 or more, though the performance of the bank was hardly as good as those results would imply. It injected reality into the process by introducing rankings within cohorts. To reveal the true relative performance of the bank’s employees, a manager assessing ten people, say, could rank no more than three as top performers and had to put at least one person in the lowest level. The ten directors evaluated the top 50 managers in meetings chaired by the CEO. The bonus for gaining the first rank was increased to 20 percent, from 10. Managers in the lowest rank, who would formerly have received a bonus of 5 percent, got none at all. Those who consistently ranked in the lowest level were asked to leave.

Skills for change

There was more drama to come. After four months of developing the new strategy with the ten directors, the CEO realized that only five of them were committed to change and equipped to see it through. To ensure that his bank had the right skills to change its practices and culture, he replaced the other five with new directors, three of them outsiders.

Meanwhile, the top 50 managers spent two days at a skill-development center where their leadership abilities—in coaching and decision making, for example—were assessed, and each drew up a personal plan to develop those talents. The company began to assess the performance of its people not just on whether they "made the numbers" but also on the leadership dimension. One manager who had consistently won high bonuses was known to be hell to work for, a fact acknowledged by the new measurement scheme: he was paid the lowest sum appropriate to his post. This news, which traveled fast on the grapevine, underlined the message that leadership really counted.

Consistent role models

Dialogue-based planning ensured that leaders at each level of the organization were "singing from the same song sheet." Their planning sessions were high-profile events where they themselves started modeling the new type of behavior that the bank wanted its staff to adopt. The CEO’s enthusiasm also inspired employees to behave differently. He convinced them that although change would take a long time and would be very hard to achieve, his passion for improving the life of everyone involved with the bank was heartfelt.

Both messages came through strongly in the way he reshaped his executive team. The five departing directors left just as the most disruptive changes were starting, and the work of the remaining five became even more intense during the six months it took to find replacements. It would have caused far less chaos to search for them while leaving the old team in place—and in the dark—but the CEO’s conscience told him not to do so. Besides showing other managers that there was nothing soft about the change program, his approach demonstrated his integrity and his respect for the needs of all of the bank’s people, even those he didn’t want to keep in the long term. In such a large-scale change in behavior, the leader’s character and integrity matter enormously.

The outcome

The bank, which is now two years into its four-year improvement timetable, is about halfway toward meeting its targets for reducing its cost-to-income ratio and increasing its revenue and economic profit. This achievement is a sure sign that behavior is heading in the intended direction throughout the bank. Does it prove that mind-sets too are changing? No numerical evidence is available, but from close observation we can see that the culture really has evolved. The bank isn’t a comfortable place to work, but the focus on performance is far stronger, functional silos are being broken down, and people treat every task with far more urgency. A small but indicative example: average queuing times in branches have dropped by over 30 percent, largely because branch managers can count on their employees to work a more flexible shift system by making the most of part-time work and temporary cover. The imagers are working as well.

It is neither easy nor straightforward to improve a company’s performance through a comprehensive program to change the behavior of employees by changing their mind-sets. No company should try to do so without first exhausting less disruptive alternatives for attaining the business outcome it desires. Sometimes tactical moves will be enough; sometimes new practices can be introduced without completely rethinking the corporate culture. But if the only way for a company to reach a higher plane of performance is to alter the way its people think and act, it will need to create the four conditions for achieving sustained change.

People want to develop

Workshops that draw on transpersonal psychology, a progressive branch of the discipline, can speed up cultural change and make it more enduring.¹ Transpersonal psychology suggests that the innate desire to develop and grow infuses human beings with energy. Employees will not put sustained effort into a new kind of behavior if they have only a rational understanding of why it matters to the company; it must mean something much deeper to them, something that they know will have an effect on their personal growth.

Giving them an emotional connection to the new behavior can trigger that shift in perspective. The workshops help to change behavior by establishing these connections and thus giving change a personal meaning for participants. When large numbers of managers go through such transformational workshops within a brief time frame, small group by small group, the graduates create a critical mass of individuals who willingly embrace the new behavior and culture so that both are more likely to be sustained.

The format and off-site setting of such workshops generally resemble those of other corporate get-togethers, but their content is unusual. Facilitators experienced in applying the principles of adult learning and transpersonal psychology to business use conversations, role-playing, and reflection to help participants tap into their rational and subconscious hopes for the future. These hopes may contrast uncomfortably with the current work of the participants—both what they do and how they do it. The contrast can unlock a deeply felt need for change.

An international energy company, for example, had tried for years to make "people development" a core value and discipline. It was succeeding only among the few managers who already believed that they should serve as coaches and counselors. Many managers saw themselves as bosses rather than teachers. To get the 1,000 most senior managers to adopt a "coaching" mind-set (and some other positive cultural attributes), the company put them all, 30 at a time, through a three-day transformational workshop, starting with the executive team.

The rational case for the importance of people development to the company’s strategy and operations was easily stated. Creating an emotional connection between the managers and the new behavior was harder. The workshop leaders asked people to discuss, in pairs, the following question: "When were you mentored in your career?" Participants had good memories of the defining moments of mentoring that had helped them achieve their current positions. They remembered the people who had the courage and interest to give them the hard feedback or encouragement they needed. Then the facilitators asked, "Whom have you mentored? How does it feel to help others develop?" These questions too prompted memories that evoked strong positive emotions.

But transpersonal psychologists think that getting individuals to have an emotional response to a required new form of behavior isn’t enough to persuade them to adopt it permanently. It must also help to satisfy their innate appetite to grow. When they view the new behavior’s meaning from this completely different perspective—not as the fulfillment of an external requirement but rather as a way of satisfying a personal need—they are unlikely ever to give it up.

The facilitators stepped up to this level of meaning when they asked the energy company’s managers, "When you leave this company, what do you want people to say about you?" Given the opportunity to think about this question, few were content to answer, "I made the company richer." Many hoped to be remembered for the difference they had made to other people’s lives, for caring enough to help their colleagues grow. Many also realized that a big gap separated what they would like to hear, on the one hand, and what their coworkers would actually say, on the other. Often those closest to retirement, with the most to offer as mentors, felt this gap the hardest. They realized that developing other employees would satisfy their own personal aspirations, not just the company’s.

After every manager had been through the workshop, the group ranked leadership development as the second most powerfully experienced value at work (exhibit). Eighteen months previously, leadership development had received no votes. The proportion of employees who said that they had received good feedback and coaching rose to 80 percent, from 30, while 75 percent said that the behavior of their managers had changed significantly. The new values would have failed to take hold if in addition to giving employees an emotional connection to behavioral change the company hadn’t implanted the other three conditions necessary to achieve it: appropriate skills, supporting structures, and role models. The workshops helped to promote all of these conditions as well.

—Gita Bellin and Michael W. Rennie

Notes

Gita Bellin is an independent consultant, and Michael Rennie is a director in McKinsey’s Sydney office.

¹Transpersonal psychology developed in the 1960s, when Abraham Maslow, Stanislav Grof, and others began integrating the classical Asian traditions of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and yoga into their theories and the practice of humanistic psychology. To develop the workshops described here, the authors have also drawn on ideas from cognitive, behavioral, and gestalt psychology; neuroscience and quantum physics; emotional intelligence; and adult learning.

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Recently I had an interview with Michael Ullmer, Deputy CEO of NAB (National Australia Bank) who explains Responsible Leadership is first and foremost about doing the right thing.

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Sometimes in organisations people get bound up and make things too complicated.  But if you sit down and discuss a particular challenge - forget about the policies and procedures - and ask if you were to solve this by just doing what you feel is right - what would you do?

It is interesting how framing it as simply as that often allows people to identify insightful ways of solving a problem that also meets the policy requirements, without being distracted by the minutiae.

Many large organisations struggle with such a simple notion.  You could ask whether the banking industry would have the current public relations challenges if issues were viewed through the lens of 'doing the right thing'.

The second dimension of responsible leadership is that it drives long term sustainable growth in shareholder value - this is something I believe very strongly.

This is not an altruistic perspective - this is about doing what is in the best long term interests of shareholders.

So while responsible leadership may have altruistic components this alone is not sustainable from a business perspective.

Looking at the current situation in the banking industry, many have been turning a tin ear to the legitimate complaints from external constituencies.  This may lead to a new regulatory overlay that can damage long-term value for shareholders.  Whereas proactively 'doing the right thing' has the potential to get ahead of the curve, enchancing reputation, and thereby creating long term shareholder value.

For example, NAB, by removing unpopular fees like those on unauthorised overdrafts, has improved relationships with customers and increased engagement with our staff, leading to increased advocacy for our brand.

As a result, a year down the track, we  have seen a very significant increase in net new account openings.  There has also been a significant lift in the volume of mortgages we are writing.

We are doing the right thing by our staff, investing heavily in development of our leaders in a holistic way – as individuals and in context of what is relevant to us as an organisation.

One program has been ‘The Leader Within’ run by Manfred Kets de Vries from INSEAD to see what motivated people as leaders and what their true beliefs are.  This has had a profound impact on staff as they discovered what future they wanted from their roles.

This is about getting people to align their true inner feelings and drivers with the organisational objectives.

Two years ago we introduced the Enterprise Leaders Program for our top talent where we have assembled a faculty of professors from the leading business schools to build capacity to drive value at an enterprise level.

We have also worked with the Benevolent Society to introduce into our development programs elements addressing ethical leadership and engaging with the community.

This is about developing people, as individuals, through formal learning, mentoring, coaching and the like, and importantly working on specific projects that build capability.

We have graduates working on community projects supporting organisations such as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to address key strategic issues that develops their skills in complex problem solving, project management and teamwork.  At the same time, the community organisations get access to skilled resources that help them take their organisation forward.

So to me, responsible leadership in a business context is about taking a long term view and recognising that doing the right thing by your customers, community and staff is key to delivering long term sustainable value for shareholders.

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Performance●Productivity●Profit

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 Last week I met up with Ha-Dieu Ford. Ha-Dieu is the Chair of Women in Finance in Victoria, a position she has taken on with a wealth of experience in the financial sector since completing initial financial studies in the 1990's.

Our discussion revolved around Ha-Dieu's thoughts about Responsible Leadership which is one of her core interests with being Effective in Business.

Ha-Dieu explained that Responsible Leadership is about focusing on a style of business across all sectors that incorporates:

• Communications
• Outcomes
• Results and
• Feelings

To start, leaders need to move away from blame and take personal responsibility for outcomes and mistakes. It important as leaders that you ask yours questions on how you are contributing to your own professional development, your team, your stakeholders, your industry and our organisation.

If we look at how this has worked with Ha-Dieu since commencing with Women in Finance, everything began with first understanding the business model and key proposition for their member base.

From perspective as their Chair, Ha-Dieu needed to ensure the organisation continued to deliver benefits to increase their participation and engagement with members through an effective framework. This framework began with creation of their vision. This vision commence with understanding why drove the industry to a platform like Women in Finance and a vision for the future of Women in Finance.

Developing their future vision also required looking back at what had worked and what had not worked during the bull markets prior to the GFC and how this knowledge could be incorporated into a new focus.  2010 also brought about a refocus on quotas and diversity issues in the business world which greatly assisted the value of the work of Women in Finance and there was an increase focus organisations looking at Women in Finance as an external outsource solution/program to address the diversity criteria for organisations.  This was a perfect opportunity for Ha-Dieu to review the field of sustainability for her organisation.

Stepping back from the value generation included considering 'Why would I join as a Member?' whether as a woman, man, business or corporate.

Underlying this whole thought process the key consideration of Responsible and Ethical Leadership was part of all key decisions.

For example, introducing new member benefits program to introduce a mentoring program for women was considered key to contributing to the professional development of women in the financial sector. 

Another new member benefit initiative was the introduction of a public speaking club (using Toastmasters International program). This was seen as very important for facilitating networking & professional development of members in their networks.  Whilst the some of the key goals of the Women in Finance platform’s was about professional development and professional networking for middle to senior management, men have been encouraged to participate in the member benefits program and represent 10% at various networking events and forums.

Even when looking at the mentoring program, the stakeholder who reported to receive the most benefits from the program was the men who participated as mentors.  Ha-Dieu believes that to create change and a paradigm shift, it’s important to engage and include men in the process.

When asked about the importance of a Sustainable Future:

Sustainability is an important part of being a responsible leader. Not just in the essence of being green. Sustainable future depends on leaders providing security for their organisation into the future. This was one of the lessons from the past where funds were poured into other areas like speakers rather than the most important areas - like programs to benefit members i.e. website and branding, mentoring, toastmasters public speaking.

As a responsible leader, Ha-Dieu believes any membership organisation should continue to look at ways to spend their money effectively and to continually increase member benefits, whilst identifying gaps and meeting the needs of their corporate members.

More leaders are looking for ways to invest time in contributing to networks through valuable communications that lead to collaborations and even sharing of IP. Thereby, the future of Women in Finance will look more about how to support their networks with business orientated events that invest in members needs - like mentoring - to complement valued speakers who now speak without requiring payment.

Returning back to what Ha-Dieu sees as the key attributes of a responsible leader, Ha-Dieu explains...

"It all starts with values... skills are secondary."   Whilst experience is important, it’s easier to acquire new skills but difficult to teach people values.

Ha-Dieu believed skills and experience are important as your need that to effectively execute strategy, management and marketing for the business.  However supporting this is her values based approach to decision making and believes that this is important element building the organisation and aligning with the vision of the organisation and stakeholders. 

Some of her core values include the following:

• Integrity
• Accountability
• Innovation and Marketplace differentiation
• Gratitude - supporting those who support you

Values based leadership incorporated into the abilities of responsible leaders enable the ability to contribute continuously to changing markets, whilst always the “How Questions” How can I add more value to the organisation, the members, the committee and the industry?”  Support and recognising all those who have contributed toward their future success and everyone they impact upon.

And that brings us to the final element that Ha-Dieu sees very important for a responsible leader - feelings.

As a Responsible Leader, if it feels right, you are likely to be on the right track. The whole concept of feelings is embedded in our psyche and communications. There are many terms that even become a little clichéd in our current society - like 'Gut Feeling' or 'Speaking from the Heart'.

The truth is our feelings guide us and responsible leaders are connected with values that help others before themselves. If it feels right as a responsible leader, continue what you are doing and adjust as required.

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Performance●Productivity●Profit

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