(CLP) Programs

Appleton Greene corporate training programs are all process-driven. They are used as vehicles to implement tangible business processes within clients’ organizations, together with training, support and facilitation during the use of these processes. Corporate training programs are therefore implemented over a sustainable period of time, that is to say, between 1 year (incorporating 12 monthly workshops), and 4 years (incorporating 48 monthly workshops). Your program information guide will specify how long each program takes to complete. Each monthly workshop takes 6 hours to implement and can be undertaken either on the client’s premises, an Appleton Greene serviced office, or online via the internet. This enables clients to implement each part of their business process, before moving onto the next stage of the program and enables employees to plan their study time around their current work commitments. The result is far greater program benefit, over a more sustainable period of time and a significantly improved return on investment.

Appleton Greene uses standard and bespoke corporate training programs as vessels to transfer business process improvement knowledge into the heart of our clients’ organizations. Each individual program focuses upon the implementation of a specific business process, which enables clients to easily quantify their return on investment. There are hundreds of established Appleton Greene corporate training products now available to clients within customer services, e-business, finance, globalization, human resources, information technology, legal, management, marketing and production. It does not matter whether a client’s employees are located within one office, or an unlimited number of international offices, we can still bring them together to learn and implement specific business processes collectively. Our approach to global localization enables us to provide clients with a truly international service with that all important personal touch. Appleton Greene corporate training programs can be provided virtually or locally and they are all unique in that they individually focus upon a specific business function. All (CLP) programs are implemented over a sustainable period of time, usually between 1-4 years, incorporating 12-48 monthly workshops and professional support is consistently provided during this time by qualified learning providers and where appropriate, by Accredited Consultants.

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Executive summary

Digital Leadership

The need for Digital Leadership

This is the course for leaders in the age of business transformation. It will equip them with strategic execution tools, and – importantly – the vision, the mindset and the personal resources to lead in the 21st century, from both the digital and all-important human perspectives.

The already dizzying pace of Industry 4.0, the digital era, has been accelerated through the pandemic of the early 2020s, and many leaders have had to scramble to react.

This is despite technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, robotics, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and advanced wireless transforming the way business gets done, and how the leadership of modern organizations has evolved.

Fast-forward to today, and with the advent of remote and hybrid working, a blended distributed workforce and other major forces impacting our organizations, adopting digital is a must-do, not a nice-to-do. For those leaders still resisting change, there is a risk of being left behind and failing altogether, unless they rapidly evolve their own knowledge, skills and behaviors for the demands of modern business, and prove their ability to navigate the future successfully.

The Digital Leadership program aims to fast-track leaders’ development through practical, action-oriented workshops, which focus on leadership skillset evolution, the impact of leaders on others, and the protection of the bottom line for years to come.

The combination of digital evolution and know-how, coupled with a strong human touch, is at the heart of our Digital Leadership journey. This powerful combination represents a collection of must-have attributes for 21st Century leaders who want to succeed in the modern workplace.

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Beyond Digital: Whole business transformation

To compete in this highly complex, fast-paced and competitive landscape, leaders need to understand how to develop and execute strategy in a digital world. This requires a holistic approach that is implementation-centered.

Adopting digital is not an option; it’s compulsory — just as at the turn of the century when adopting the internet was not optional. And yet, according to Forbes and IBM, 84% of digital transformations still fail.

The reason for this is that it is not just about digital: we need to expand the meaning of digital transformation to include a whole business model transformation. It is about people, customers, culture, business model adaption, digitalization, the present and the future.

It’s not about having a digital strategy but a strategy for a digital world.

The Digital Leadership program is the pathway for leaders to success in the modern workplace, workforce and ways of working.

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What do we mean by Digital Leadership?

Digital leadership means engaging with all the different transformational centers of the business – human as well as digital, customers as well as employees.

Leaders are now under pressure to bring together all of these different centers, in the midst of a rapidly transforming and unpredictable world, which is being further fueled by a perfect storm of factors:

1. The need to adopt digitalization more rapidly.
2. Leadership readiness and capability for the challenges of the modern workplace.
3. An organizational culture that is fit for purpose.
4. The changing shape of the workforce and ways of working.
5. Broader equity, diversity and inclusion lenses that require active leadership.

There is a need, for some leaders, to unlearn 20th Century thinking and practice, and to go on a new learning journey: acquiring the mindset, knowledge, and skills for success in the 21st Century.

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The journey from ‘what’ to ‘how’

The program will balance the need for leaders to adopt digital, in line with the evolving needs of the business and stakeholders, and the essential human-centered leadership dimensions critical to bringing an engaged, mobilized and motivated workforce on the journey.

It will take leaders on a mindset shifting, active transformation journey. It will be action-oriented and will enable them to develop their own successful digitalization strategy and implementation program, paralleled by their personal leadership development journey and growth.

It will challenge leaders to unlearn old habits and relearn the knowledge, skills and behaviors most suited for tomorrow’s workplace, today.

This program will equip leaders with skills in: data-driven decision making; agile, hybrid or remote leadership; enabling digital ecosystems; and empowered working. These are just some of the new capabilities that are now required at all levels, not just for executive leaders. This is already narrowing the skills gap between executive leaders and employees who are more ‘tech and touch’ savvy, reflecting the need for flatter structures that facilitate greater empowerment and leadership at all levels.

This more modern approach of distributed leadership ensures that more people are contributing more of the time to business health and growth.

The Digital Leadership program will be made up of five parts, representing a 13-session learning journey:

1. Mindset and transformation journey

The program begins with a focus on vision and strategy, supported by ways of modeling and thinking about digital transformation. These first modules will give leaders the foundation for stepping back and assessing the wider context, their organizational readiness as well as personal readiness, and how to create their strategic change roadmap for digital implementation and leadership.

2. Digital leadership – adopting digitalization

Next comes a focus on implementation. We will cover strategies for dealing with digital disruption and change both within and externally. We will encourage leaders to reflect with their peer group on the deeper purpose drivers for their business, and to reflect on themselves personally as a leader for the digital era.

Using the Ticking Clock implementation model, those on this program will plan and workshop their digital strategy implementation roadmap with other leaders, gaining valuable peer feedback.

3. Human-centred leadership for a digital, distributed world

The paradox of digital transformation is that, at its heart, it is not about technology: it is about people, and the cultural change that is necessary for the whole business to transform. The human component of leadership is now firmly under the microscope. This program will equip leaders with the skills and tools needed to model the values and behaviours expected in business today, for example:

• Putting equity, diversity and inclusion at the heart of the organization.
• Doing more than paying ‘lip service’ to physical and mental wellbeing.
• Demonstrating greater empathy and humanity.
• Being able to balance purpose, profit and people.
• Authentic leadership, including the ability to demonstrate compassion, vulnerability, resilience and courage in an increasingly unpredictable landscape.

4. Empowering leadership: Unleashing leaders at all levels

Everyone has the potential to be a leader in a digital world. In these modules, we will cover new tools and techniques for unleashing the power within people at all levels, driving meaningful collaboration and innovation, supported by leaders and managers who are committed to a growth mindset, powered up by a coaching culture. The foundations for this include:

• Creating the conditions to make distributed leadership a reality; enabling a new age of empowerment across the organization.

• An organizational assessment to identify leaders at all levels.

• A 90-day roadmap for empowered individuals, measured from Day One, and supported by line management coaching to accelerate success.

5. Leadership for a digital world

Leading in a digital world is not just about technology, or just about culture, or just
about people, or just about customers: it is about all of these.

We will look at best-in-class leadership journeys and aim to bring experts and leaders who have been through the journey to our session. This will facilitate experience share and help us consolidate the entire Digital Leadership journey.

At the end of this journey, leaders will have developed strong digital leadership know-how, ensuring they and their teams are equipped with the most appropriate knowledge, skills and behaviours for success in the Industry 4.0 era. The digital era. And the digital leadership journey starts here…

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Curriculum

Digital Leadership – Part 1 – Year 1

1. Part 1 Month 1 Leading in a digital world: Embrace a transformational mindset
2. Part 1 Month 2 Your digitalization strategy: Benchmarking for successful transformation
3. Part 1 Month 3 Your strategic digitalization journey: The Ticking Clock© and the 3 strategic stages
4. Part 1 Month 4 Implementing digitalization (part i): Ticking Clock© implementation steps 1-6
5. Part 1 Month 5 Implementing digitalization (part ii): Ticking clock© implementation steps 7-11
6. Part 1 Month 6 Digital leadership – Your digital leadership journey and actions so far: Measuring organizational and personal progress
7. Part 1 Month 7 The resilient leader: Building resilience in self and others in the hybrid workplace
8. Part 1 Month 8 Enlightened leadership for the digital era: The new leadership superpowers for the decade ahead
9. Part 1 Month 9 Putting yourself out there: Building your expert, human-centered personal brand (internally and externally)
10. Part 1 Month 10 Leading a multidimensional workforce: Broader diversity. Borderless working. A fit for purpose culture
11. Part 1 Month 11 Leading with a growth mindset: Creating a strong coaching culture to underpin success
12. Part 1 Month 12 Making distributed leadership a reality: Leading a new age of empowerment in your organization

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Digital Leadership – Part 2 – Year 2

1. Part 2 Month 1 Leadership reimagined: Balancing the ‘tech and the touch’ in the modern, fast-paced, unpredictable workplace

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Program Objectives

The following list represents the Key Program Objectives (KPO) for the Appleton Greene Digital Leadership corporate training program.

Digital Leadership – Part 1 – Year 1

Workshop 1: Leading in a digital world: Embrace a transformational mindset

Objective: This workshop will enable leaders to embrace the transformational mindset necessary for the journey ahead. By the end of the session, leaders will be equipped with a solid framework for developing a transformational mindset, key actionable points, and a game plan for you to put into action.

Workshop content:

We live and work in a world of unprecedented change and disruption. Transformation is happening in every area and aspect of our lives. To be able to navigate the challenges ahead, leaders must possess a transformational mindset: a mindset that enables them to embrace uncertainty, make agile data-driven decisions and implement strategy effectively and efficiently. Leaders must, at the same time, retain a strong human touch, with empathy and the ability to engage and empower others to work towards a common purpose.

This workshop will establish the rationale for a leadership mindset shift in the against a background of the changing market dynamics above. Leaders attending will be equipped with the know-how to blend strong digital skill-sets with an unparalleled human touch.

This workshop will, therefore, further outline what human-centered leadership means, in the context of a changing workforce and changing ways of working.

Leaders will complete the Digital Maturity Assessment which will enable them to pinpoint their Leadershift / capability and relative speed of transformation action in both digital and human-centered terms.

By the end of this workshop, leaders attending will have an appreciation of the relationship between the challenges leaders face today and the unquestionable need for a transformational mindset to navigate tomorrow. Leaders will also learn the attributes and traits of successful leaders who have embraced a transformational mindset and are leading the way, now.

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Workshop 2: Your digitalization strategy: Benchmarking for successful transformation

Objective: This workshop will enable leaders to compare the current state of their organization through a comprehensive best-in-class benchmarking exercise with up to 40 corporations worldwide. This will enable each leader attending to build a strategic change map of where they are now, where they need to be and how to get there successfully. The workshop output will be a step-by-step change execution process which attending leaders will lead and implement throughout this digital leadership learning journey.

Workshop content:

Leaders will have the opportunity to complete an organizational benchmark assessment (against 40 best-in-class companies) and learn from a case study of an organization that has navigated digital transformation successfully; from an executive leader’s perspective and from employee and customer perspectives. Leaders will then build their own strategic change map, defining their own context, journey, and outcomes.

The case study and benchmarking activity will enable each leader attending the program to select the new and best practices most appropriate for their own business, in line with their own needs and change required. This will be enhanced through a collaborative workshop to help each participant define their plan, stress test each change item, refine their action roadmap and establish next steps to implement following the workshop.

The output from this workshop will be a comprehensive process map for actions going forward, for each leader attending, in parallel with the Digital Leadership learning journey they will continue.

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Workshop 3: Your strategic digitalization journey: The Ticking Clock© and the 3 strategic stages

Objective: This workshop will ensure that leaders are prepared for the digital transformation journey – and are clear on their digitalization roadmap outcomes and their critical success factors. This will provide the foundation for the journey to follow in process terms to help all participants keep the big picture goals in mind, as much as the operational must-haves.

Workshop content:

This workshop details strategic steps 1-3 of the Ticking Clock© Digitalization roadmap for business transformation. These are:

– Stage 1: Future thinking
– Stage 2: Customer and operational centricity
– Stage 3: Future ready

The workshop will cover digitalization myth busting and explore critical leadership questions to answer at strategic level, as preparation for success in implementation terms. We will introduce the unique Ticking Clock© digitalization implementation model for leaders and start the journey for all participants.

The workshop will further be an opportunity for a stress test a leader’s digital change map and consider a leader’s journey to adopt digitalization. This will be deepened through encouraging the development of clear vision for a digitized, yet human centered future; by understanding the main operational components that must be in place to enable successful execution of the strategy at all levels; and by encouraging all leaders consider the importance of being data driven, in order to ‘future-proof’ the organization.

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Workshop 4: Implementing digitalization (part i): Ticking Clock© implementation steps 1-6M

Objective: Now that the 3 strategic stages have been completed and actioned, workshop 4 with help leaders fast-track their initial operational implementation journey. This will be achieved by developing a rolling 90-day execution road map, which will include actions at leadership level and with others, specifically for steps 1-6 of the Ticking Clock© digital leadership implementation model.

Workshop content:

This is an action learning workshop which covers implementation steps 1-6 of the Ticking Clock© Digitalization roadmap for leaders.

– Step 1: Establish your digital vision
– Step 2: Development your leadership digital mindset
– Step 3: Build your architecture and evolve ecosystems
– Step 4: Restructure to a data-first culture
– Step 5: Protect your customers’ trust
– Step 6: Become customer obsessed

This will move from the strategic stage to build operational detail into all participating leaders’ digital transformation journeys. Leaders will lay the core foundations including digital architecture and ecosystems within their organization, establishing a “data first” culture, and placing customers at the heart of the business in an era of digital transformation. This is achieved through first creating a vision which is suited to a digitized world and the implications for leaders, the existing business model, forward strategy and the all-importance implementation plans that will be actioned following the workshop.

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Workshop 5: Implementing digitalization (part ii): Ticking clock© implementation steps 7-11

Objective: Now that the 3 strategic stages and first 6 operational execution steps of the Ticking Clock© model have been actioned, we will share each leader’s journey so far and complete the 90-roadmap, through creating action plans for operational execution steps 7-11 of the Ticking Clock© digitalization model for leaders.

Workshop content:

This workshop will be highly collaborative and will cover Ticking Clock© implementation steps 7-11.

– Step 7: Adopt Agile
– Step 8: Learn to experiment and co-create
– Step 9: Empower employees
– Step 10: Measure digital value
– Step 11: Prescribe your future

This includes a focus on how to enable agile working, and how to create a culture where employees can be empowered experiment (and fail) at digital innovation. Critically this workshop will introduce leaders to the power of data analytics, cyber considerations, data-driven decision making, which will all help participants to measure more accurately digital value, and navigate the future more clearly.

The workshop will further enable leaders to develop a “never settle” mindset to ensure that their organizations are prepared for the ever-changing future. The workshop will also include a review of implementation actions arising and commitments to progress following the workshop.

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Workshop 6: Digital leadership – Your digital leadership journey and actions so far: Measuring organizational and personal progress

Objective: This crucial workshop will enable leaders to consolidate learnings, wins and actions so far to ensure all process steps have been completed to date or worked through to find more appropriate ways forward (for those encountering challenges or roadblocks). Each leader will present a full review of actions, outputs and experiences in order to secure feedback, help and feed in rapid action following.

Workshop content:

This workshop will be an opportunity for learning reinforcement, adaption of plans and as a sharing clinic for all leaders to collaborate, raise questions and secure feedback.

Leaders will present their journey, actions, and outputs so far, establishing best practices, learning points and actions to date. They will evaluate their return on experience and investment and raise any points for discussion, in confidence, across the group participating.

They will review their actions to date considering all component parts of the journey and their process implementation steps so far

(i) Their strategic change activation plan and actions
(ii) The three strategic stages of the Ticking Clock©
(iii) The 11 implementation steps of the Ticking Clock©.

There will also be a group question-and-answer session to reinforce any learning or process components to date, prior to continuing the forward learning journey.

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Workshop 7: The resilient leader: Building resilience in self and others in the hybrid workplace

Objective: Leaders will parallel their ongoing process implementation as detailed in workshops 1-6, with the development of their own personal capabilities and human-centered leadership skills.

This workshop will specifically develop the leadership mindset and toolkit needed to enable an open culture for physical and mental wellbeing (for self and others). Leaders will leave the session with a toolkit to support themselves and others in managing stressors and building resilience in the workplace.

Workshop content:

This workshop will cover the science of wellbeing and mental health for leaders themselves and others they collaborate with. They will develop their own self-management toolkit which will enable them to model resilience and wellbeing for those around them and learn how to advocate an open and safe culture for physical and mental wellbeing. This interactive, three-part session underpins the management of stress and the building of greater resilience with solid evidence base of scientific fact. It will also invite the sharing of experiences in a safe and confidential space. This will lead to a toolkit to help participants consider both personal mindset orientation and action orientation.

There are 3 parts to this workshop:

– In part one, we will define stress and how it can impact us – both in positive and negative ways.

– In part two, we will uncover the science and actions to help you deal with stressful situations with a strong mindset shift and action orientation.

– In part three, we will explore what being a resilient leader means going forward, and how to manage it for yourself and with others.

The workshop will be complemented with examples, case studies and group activities to bring out the most beneficial learnings.

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Workshop 8: Enlightened leadership for the digital era: The new leadership superpowers for the decade ahead

Objective: This workshop will equip leaders the human touch which is more important than ever in the digital world. Leaders will uncover new research and understand the new traits, skills and behaviours most in demand of leaders for the modern workplace. Each leader attending will define a clear roadmap for their own development, to support the digital leadership implementation steps they will be continuing in parallel.

Workshop content:

In this workshop leaders will learn the human-centered leadership traits and skills that are having the greatest impact on the evolution of global businesses. This will be supplemented by case studies, interviews and examples of the best human-centered leaders operating today and how this approach differs from a more traditional leadership blueprint.

The workshop will help leaders attending build their unique leadership DNA for themselves, their team and their organization as a whole; in a way that is most appropriate for the modern, ambitious businesses of today. This means balancing human-centered, community-centered and business-centered leadership through greater empathy, emotional and social intelligence, critical thinking smarts, personality, realism, authenticity and trust.

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Workshop 9: Putting yourself out there: Building your expert, human-centered personal brand (internally and externally)

Objective: This workshop will enable leaders to connect socially with their people, with communities, with their industry and with customers through personal branding, storytelling and developing their thought leadership expertise and credentials. At the end of the workshop, leaders will understand the importance of being socially connected through platforms like LinkedIn, as a blend of both digital and human-centered leadership.

Workshop content:

Leaders will have the opportunity to develop