(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

Quantum Leadership

The two-year Quantum Leadership Program (QLP) takes participants from the phase of ideas of and techniques for leadership influence, through practical application, to personal customization which results in the enduring use of future proofing Leadership processes and practices on a daily basis throughout their organization.

The Quantum Leadership Program is anchored by three critical philosophies.

The first is to design for the leadership strategy that Indra Nooyi, past CEO and Chairman of PepsiCo, refers to as “Future Proofing” the organization.

The second is to leverage the definition of ‘quantum’ in leadership’s tactical execution – the smallest amount of energy or effort required to create the desired interaction or result.

The final philosophy is that leadership is not synonymous with management. Organizations are comprised of multiple levels of focus, from the technician whose attention is on tactical execution of the activities of the business, to management which plans and steers and problem-solves that execution, to leaders whose focus must be on the higher-level considerations of vision, strategy, overarching corporate systems, complex paradox management, and external opportunities and threats to the organization.

By engaging the broadest range of roles in the organization in the Quantum Leadership Program the organization establishes a culture in which long-term repeatable leadership practices that produce excellent employee engagement and retention along with the cultural responsiveness and stability to last for decades to come.

The QLP fuels company Future Proofing by leveling up Leadership through the organization in a 4-phase structured process that drives better outcomes in employee engagement, performance, and retention.

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Where It All Began

The term ‘Leadership’ is bandied about in daily conversation throughout business and the broader society.

For millennia the term referred to the individual with greatest economic dominance or political, military, or religious influence and power. Leadership was reserved for those in control of wealth and military might.

The leadership style experienced by those around them might be authoritarian or charismatic. There was little need for self-examination and adaptation if it held no interest for the leader.

Thousands of years ago, Plato created his first academy. He believed that leadership must be trained so that it could be embodies in philosopher-kings. Socrates was a lone voice in pointing to alternative considerations of leadership.

The Industrial Revolution gave birth to a production and service sector of society. Individuals in control and influence in feudal systems expanded their control into this new sector. The forces of their power and influence gained traction inside organizations that employed individuals and teams. Added to these forces were systems of control. These three dominating forces were embodied first in owners of businesses be they the wealthy, or the merchants who managed them. While industry expanded, they were delegated down into a new management class of employees.

Throughout recorded history, from the dynasties of Egypt on to the modern era, as work became more sophisticated, the managerial class expanded to steer the work of the technical doers of the work. Emphasis was placed on the management systems and behaviors inside organizations whether organizing the shipment of stone blocks to build pyramids or factory workers filling spindles with yarn. The topic of leadership was only of interest in military matters or rulership.

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The Dawn of Considering Leadership

It was only in the twentieth century that leadership became a topic of general conversation that expanded beyond the military to organizations. University-based professors of human and organizational behavior adopted the topic and sought a deeper understanding that might translate into actionable insights.

Notable among these university-based efforts was Warren Bennis, long-time professor at the University of Southern California. He pointed out that the standard criterial for choosing top-level managers were technical competence, people skills, judgment, and character. However, he judged that effective leadership was overwhelmingly the function of character, followed by judgment. His research showed that subordinates most wished for vision and direction, trustworthiness, and optimism which bred hopefulness.

While many professors, writers and commentators focused on character traits and charisma, Bennis distilled his research on the most effective leaders into four core competencies they embodied: the management of attention, meaning, trust and self. Add to this strong communication skills and clarity that cut through chaos and enabled followers to see a clear path and get into action on it. He considered these leaders’ energy and actions created cultures in which that leadership was felt throughout the organization.

In his most revered book “On Becoming a Leader,” published in 1989, Bennis shook up a generation of executives by casting a spotlight on what he perceived as a growing wave of failed leadership.

In the decades that surrounding his work, many scholars sliced and diced the observed behaviors of leaders and constructed theories and published tens of thousands of pages of research, articles, and books. Some focused on The Great Man Theory, others on Trait Theory, Behavioral Theory, Situational Approach, Skills Approach and Path-Goal Theory. Still others looked at Systems Theory and Thinking, the Theory of Constraints, and Transformational Leadership.

Each model tried to reduce Leadership to a streamlined understanding, and each had their own strength in sharpening attention on particular areas of leadership involvement and influence.

Simultaneously their colleagues were examining the topic of motivation for insights on how influence was experienced. Considering the complexity of individual needs and motives, various theories were used to explain the concept of Motivation. Among such theories were Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory/ Motivator-Hygiene, McGregor’s X and Y Theories, David McClelland’s Human Motivation Theory, The Equity Theory, Value – Percept Theory, Vroom’s Expectancy Theory and Porter-Lawler Model.

These motivation theories, though they apply to individuals, also apply to groups as individuals come together to form groups. The reality is that motivation becomes more complex within teams because individuals in the group often have differing personal needs that will motivate them to give their best to their endeavors. If this is not well managed by leadership, some members of the team underachieve while others excel. It became the responsibility of leadership to ensure that every team member was well motivated to contribute to achieving the team’s objectives. Even if leadership did not come from the official leader, some members of the team would assume the leadership role of ensuring that other members of their team would be well-motivated.

The Shortcomings and Blind Spots of Theories Revealed

The challenge of theorizing is that is has always been after-the-fact retrospective analysis looking for cause and effect from an observer stance. None of these authors developed the practical tools and applied them for themselves in complex culture and ongoing operations of a business.

Ideas and theories in and of themselves are a distillation and simplification that misses the complexities of organizational life that a leader must solve. They need to have relevance inside organizations and be made practicable. For instance, Transformational Leadership is a style of leadership that creates focus throughout an organization by communicating a clear vision of what needs to be accomplished. Vision becomes the driver behind leadership efforts and underpins efforts at motivating people throughout the organization to accomplish the activities and improvements needed. A useful element, but insufficient in and of itself for the fullness of what leadership requires.

As Indra Nooyi pointed out, great leaders and their business need to be prepared for transition events regardless of the circumstances.

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4 Forces Changing Organizational Circumstances

The External Force of Technology

In 2000 the topic of ‘tele-commuting’ was being tentatively raised by a few professionals with their bosses. The idea that some portion of an employee’s work could be done from home rather than at their ‘place of work’ raised issues around how to evaluate if the productivity of that employee met the levels obtained when they were on-site.

The choice was at the discretion of the management of the organization, with performance criteria set and agreed to between the manager and their subordinate. In fits and starts various professions experimented with and used technology to enable part-time and full-time remote or virtual work.

By December 2019 the following trends were in place in American corporations:

• Before the 2020 start of the pandemic, only 6% of the US employed worked primarily from home and about three-quarters of workers had never worked from home
• In May 2020, over one-third of the employed worked from home due to the pandemic – a close match for pre-pandemic estimates of ‘the share of work that could be done remotely’, theoretically, in the future
• Office-based business and professional occupations were most likely to implement remote work, with three-quarters of such employees working from home early in the pandemic

By 2022 there was a distinct shift in work-at-home trends:

• Most workers and employers report they expect to permanently implement more flexible remote work opportunities after the pandemic
• Increased remote work will negatively affect businesses that support commuters and business travelers, especially in transportation and leisure and hospitality
• Remote work will be available to the services sector industries and employees, but not to manufacturing line workers

As politicians forced as much as of the workforce to be sent home and kept there for an undetermined duration it was only in 2022 that the newest trends could be considered.

The turmoil of 2020-2022 created stress fractures in the relationship between employees and their managers and teams.

Existing and novel technology enabled continued communication, and the political decisions forced internal adaptation of technology for both communication and for the remote execution of work overall. However, some industries thrived, and others suffered through recurring crisis-based pivoting and redesigning of entire business models.

Use of time changed radically as leaders, managers and employees struggled to make the new models work.

Despite that increase in meeting interactions, research by Gallup and PEW uncovered one of the most important risks to corporations:

Leaders were immediately challenged to rethink their use of technology in order to maintain influence of employee morale, motivation, stress management and organizational productivity. Simultaneously, employee concerns about health and safety are delaying any permanent decisions about ‘where’ work will take place.

It is self-evident that the work that could be remotely located is found among the professional staff roles rather than line production.

The result – a permanent Hybrid work model of work-from-home combined with on-site work is here to stay and will need to be grappled with by leaders of every generation.

If this were a single generation being affected, it would be enough to contend with. In fact, it is a deeply complex issue due to the forces of demographics.

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The Internal Force of Technology

Various technologies have had between forty and one hundred and sixty years to transform the expectations of roles in organizations.

As technology advanced, the practicalities of work changed. A perfect example was experienced in manufacturers and professional service firms alike. In the 1950s through 1980s, managers had a secretary to manage inbound and outbound communication and mail. They took down their boss’s dictated communication and turned it into type-written materials. With the invention of electric typewriters and word processors, the secretary’s process sped up and time was freed up for additional responsibilities. As the manager started typing their own communiques the secretarial role evolved into one of assistant and business analyst.

As desktop computers became widespread, the manager often did much of their own analyses. The desk outside their office was vacated. As a result of technology’s next evolution, managers added handling their own inbound and outbound communications and meeting calendaring and email management to their daily load.

Simultaneously, four types of organizational teams developed, namely ongoing project teams, ad-hoc project teams, ongoing production teams and ad-hoc production teams demanding manager attention.

In the public arena, technological advances accelerated communication from postal transmissions that took a week or more in transit to delivery at nearly the speed of thought.

However, as communication has become accelerated, one critical side effect has been the loss of thinking time, analysis and problem-solving which remains the responsibility of organization management and leadership.

Today, many organizations of hundreds of team members have managers and leaders acting as their own secretary day in and day out.

Internal technological developments have instigated changes in roles throughout organizations in remarkably short spans of time.

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The External Force of Demographics

In 1996 the Lockheed Corporation was confronting the fact that a majority of their expert workforce was reaching retirement age, and in a few short years would be walking out the door. In addition to the high cost of replacing a worker, there would be the significant problem of losing the experience and information uniquely possessed by that person.

When replacing retiring, experienced workers with younger, inexperienced ones, a company is losing an incredible amount of knowledge and experience, known as “knowledge capital.”

Looking at the demographic curve even a decade ago provides immediate insight to the magnitude of pending knowledge loss across industries.

Even those people entering the work force the past decade cannot make up for the brain drain and experience drain that is creating tight labor markets across industries.

Experienced employees have inside knowledge of how an organization works, including how to deal with both complex problems that arise and the internal, institutional bureaucracy. They have developed versions of leadership skills. They have detailed knowledge of customers and prospects. These experienced Bay Boomer employees have contacts and relationships they have developed and built over the course of their careers. They have product familiarity and knowledge.

While to some degree Gen X employees would bridge the gap to Gen Y, there would never be enough of them with enough sheer experience to do it fully.

A new era of ‘knowledge transfer’ became a critical topic for corporate leadership that spanned more than twenty years across industries as the Boomer generation’s oldest members stepped out of the workforce. Leaders must create an environment in which this cooperative knowledge sharing can exist.

Replenishing talent was more than just a numbers game. Leadership was suddenly confronted with needing to lead FOUR separate generations of employees with completely different psychographic composition and values and motivations.

Unless a company is a solo-preneur shop, all work happens through relationships between the staff of organizations.

The intermixing of 4 generations who are motivated entirely differently triggered continuous stress on the company’s stability.

Their work ethics differ enormously as well.

Leadership was forced to undergo a radical change out of any remaining command and control attitude into one of hyper-communicator, shepherd, and pied piper. Leaders reported needing to keep changing hats depending on which generation they were communicating with and being stretched thin in trying to craft single messages that aligned everyone’s attention and motivation.

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All of this points out the radically different values, social attitudes, and motivations at play in public and in the workplace between the four generations.

Leading such a diverse group is unprecedented, and leaders need to understand the demographic realities as well as the generational needs of each cohort.

The recent United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund report summarized research findings from around the world.

And as the generation that is rising through the organization it’s important to understand what Gen Y values:

Gen Y is very individualistic and does not believe that “one size fits all.” They more likely feel “my size fits me.” They are tech savvy, diverse, and understand the global marketplace in ways that generations before them did not. They understand their company’s customers and think globally. They have strong self-esteem, are ambitious and look for ways to contribute, not sit on the side-lines. They are research-oriented problem-solvers.

With all of that said, Gen Y also values collaboration and teamwork. Some of the same tools discussed previously also allow Gen Y to communicate and collaborate with others instantly.

Surveys Neil Howe and William Strauss conducted show an overwhelming majority (72 percent) of Gen Y wants to be on a productive team. Most responded that collaboration produces a better work product. Even when working alone on a project, many Gen Yers (62 percent) will reach out to their network for input when appropriate.

All of this makes them a potential powerhouse resource for any organization and simultaneously increase the ongoing management stresses as the make rapid exit decisions when feeling bored or under-acknowledged.

When previous generations took their first jobs, they were looking for a greater degree of job security; they could envision working with that company for ten or more years, and possibly assumed they would retire from that same company. However, because of their increased freedom and lack of familial responsibilities, Gen Y has a different mindset about commitment to an organization. They do not sign on for life. They have a much shorter horizon and would be happy with a one- or two-year work experience. Many of them view multiple jobs as a badge of honor! Gen Y is not worried about a long-term commitment. They are ‘leasing’ the job, not buying it. They are more or less taking a long test drive and plan to check out the job before they make a serious commitment to it.

Research found that 74 percent of Gen Y respondents do not plan on staying in their jobs for more than three years.

This makes it an enormous challenge to manage the organizational costs of turnover AND continual loss of knowledge capital and leadership their departure triggers.

So, what does the up-and-coming Gen Z mean for an organization? Several issues are worth being aware of which Tom Koulopoulos explored in The Gen Z Effect.

First, much more important, and significant than with previous generations, to Gen Zers community is a sense of belonging, purpose, meaning, and acceptance—and their community, of course, is very much online. They will most support the communities they’ve decided to belong to. It’s their decision as opposed to it being thrust upon them.

They feel more empowered than any other generation. They know that they don’t have to wait until they’re eighteen to vote to have an impact. They know that they can have an impact now.

Second, it’s not about trying to simply market to them. It’s about starting a conversation with them to make yourself part of their ‘community,’ whereby they can actually have a conversation about the business and their ideas and opinions about it.

Third, is the influence that they have with their parents. The reason this is relevant is that they’re more tech savvy, they’re more knowledgeable, they’re more likely to speak up, they’re more empowered. And they expect to be listened to in their workplace.

These people feel themselves to be on a level playing field with their parents because they have had access to information and to technology their entire life, and they know technology better than their parents do. They became used to their parents deferring to them as kids because the parents do not have the same level of comfort with technology.

Fourth, they are used to consistent and constant feedback almost in real time. “They have been raised with an expectation of instant feedback in the way they game and socialize. If they don’t get the feedback, they think there’s something fundamentally broken in the model.

They are going to influence the reshaping of company culture and operations. Considering the constant learning that Gen Z expects, even annual reviews will undergo redesign in coming years. A hint at what will shape the performance review process involves many of the mechanics of gamification to take constant micro-measurements of the working relationships among employees, managers, and a far wider network of participants.

Fifth, work will be less about a hierarchy of power and more about joint learning, exploration, and discussion. They are likely to change the traditional top-down power–knowledge transfer of teacher to student into a very different, hyperconnected model where the lines between teacher and student, and technician and manager are viewed as partnership.

For this generation, mastery is not simply about receiving information and just reading, writing, or talking about it, but about applying the knowledge.”

As Harvard Professor and Author, John Kotter, pointed out that under these circumstances:

After a century of theories converted into treatises, at the turn of the millennium the shepherds of business recognized that while ideas could be spread among their peers these topics in a siloed manner, they did not address the external and internal challenges faced by organizations themselves.

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The Internal Force of Demographics

The numbers of available employees based on birth rates are creating a perfect storm pressing on organizations.