Initiatives

Of all the factors that influence outcomes, leadership stands at the pinnacle; no other factor provides the leverage and nexus to have such an impact and make a difference in success or failure, cooperation or conflict, partnership or polarization.

Leadership is extremely important and vital today: times of change can become chaotic and regressive when poor leadership prevails, and, alternatively, enlightening and progressive in the presence of inspiring leaders.

Today’s world is changing at a bewildering pace. In no other period in the history of human events (with the exception of wartime) have we encountered so much change so fast, with so much inter-connectivity. Studies have proven, over and over, collaborative leadership is the most effective way to handle change, complexity, and uncertainty.

In today’s inter-connected world, where the large majority of employees are working in teams, cross-boundary relationships, or strategic alliances, for organizations seeking competitive advantage, collaborative leadership is an essential configuration.

• For the most part, other forms of leadership, when applied to complexity, change, engagement, and connectedness, are misguided, dysfunctional, or obsolete.
• Adversarial, Transactional, and Hierarchical Leadership approaches are simply outmoded or not effective in much of today’s world.
  Why? because these neither take advantage of the power of people’s energies to collaborate to produce extraordinary results, nor engage collaborative innovation necessary for rapid adaptation.

For all-too-many leaders, the constructs of leadership are ill-defined, ambiguous, and muddled.

Our roots in Collaborative Leadership are very different from many other organizations that teach leadership. We came from the field of action — honing our insights, practices, and frameworks from practical experience in the fields of strategic alliances, high performance teams, collaborative innovation, entrepreneurship, complex projects, turn-arounds, and trust building.

As Thought Leaders, “Pracademics,” and experienced Practitioners, we bring mindsets, strategies, and skillsets that really work in real world — the crucible of action.

We believe that business schools, while fulfilling a critical role in commerce, place most of their emphasis on “managing,” not “leading.”

• America graduates 100,000 MBAs every year. Most know how to manage things, assets, and processes. But when they rise from entry-level “managers,” most are not refined in their thinking about “leadership.”
• In simple terms, managers tend to maintain stability, seeking efficiency, while minimizing risk.
• On the other hand, the leader’s quest must be continuous improvement, adaptation to change, innovation, integration across organizational boundaries, and generating competitive advantage, while building high performance teams that take advantage of the collective skills and insights of the people in the organization.

The Institute is made up of people who are not aimed at producing more effective managers – business schools do masterful job already. Our aim is to produce world-class leaders that are suited for the conditions we face in today’s inter-connected world of complexity and change.

Many of us, as we have reached our 60th and 70th decades on this planet, are deeply concerned that the world is not evolving in the positive direction we had hoped to see.

There is simply too much violence, despair, and degradation occurring for us to stand by and watch idly.

These are all signs of a terrible decline in leadership across the land.

American values, embodied in our cherished institutions, are no longer trusted. To see how all but a few of our most fundamental institutions are declining, see State of Distrust in America (download PDF).

Unless we take action to rebuild trust in our institutions, America as we know it will be a declining civilization. Effective leadership is the only means of achieving this critical turn-around.

While the task of Rebuilding Trust in America is far larger than we can tackle, we have determined we can make an important difference in four target areas where we have unique strengths, need is great, and there is an short-term opportunity.

Collaborative Capitalism – Collaborative Leadership can create 25% Competitive Advantage
Book Writing — Bringing four Collaborative Books into print
Wisdom Project —  Seniors working together to inventory and record their wisdom
Youth Leadership – Aimed at building a solid foundation for the future of the Millennial generation
Not-for-Profit Excellence – Providing Collaborative Capabilities to the social impact sector
Collaborative Business Standards – Enabling International (ISO) Business Relationship Excellence

Leaders who pass key standards of excellence will receive a Certificate of Collaborative Leadership.

The Collaborative Leader seeks to:

• unite not divide
• inspire not open fire
• elevate not denigrate
• embrace not disgrace
• enlighten not frighten
• enthuse not confuse
• engage not enrage
• align not malign
• integrate not segregate
• lift not rift or drift
• to use differences as engines of innovation