by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®
“You can have the greatest vision and positioning in the world but, if you don’t have the right leaders or staff in place you may end up spinning your wheels.”
Can you possibly imagine the personal qualities and capabilities required by a leadership crusader who can spearhead our desire to secure a much needed World Leadership Campus – and corresponding National Leadership Academies? Reality suggests there’s someone out there who can fill this bill. Our challenge is to find that person – this writer already has more than one person-option in mind that may be up for the challenge. Perhaps you do too?
Take a look at the adjacent enlightened leadership (EL) paradigm, which potentially provides us with a useful starting-point framework. It itemizes the five EL role “phases” along with five complementary conventional management (CM) “steps” normally associated with our traditional way of organizing ventures. We can now examine these requirements in a little more detail before finalizing our thoughts on target candidates. Our choices should be based on five leadership foundation stones –Vision, Integrity, Courage, Humility and Wisdom.
» Enlightened Leadership (EL) Capabilities – Everything suggests that we’re initially looking for a Strategist-Catalyst person. Someone who can take our visionary notion of challenging UN leadership to initiate a World Leadership Academy and national leaders associated with at least our top 10 economies to initiate complementary National Leadership Academies. These should all be capable of producing highly effective people-leaders going forward.
Why do we particularly say people-leaders? Because there are plenty of expert and political leaders, but so many of them are clueless when it comes to effective people-leadership.
From there our Strategist-Catalyst should focus on Positioning-Pathfinding (starred) an optimum people approach, by means of option-solving from Phase 1, and utilize Strategic Positioning – in Phase 2 – as a means of reaching their key targets in short order. That will likely mean unearthing sub-option possibilities as well; to produce insightful strategies for making the right progress with the right targets.
Beyond that, assembling the right strategist team – initially as volunteers, as outlined in future Phase 3, Part 2 – as well as many other collaborators will be crucial. They will then be ready for vital teamplay in Phase 4 (starred). Assuming he/she chooses and engages the right volunteers in a quiet, inspiring way, they will all collaborate with him/her into Phase 5 –Orchestrate and Build Momentum (also starred).
Such five-phased activities will constitute CYCLE 1 of EL’s continuous self-renewing cycle of venture building. Whatever progress they make in that first cycle will now be reinforced and propelled into CYCLE 2, where an ongoing Strategist Team can now envision its next moves starting with Phase 1A and moving on through to 5A. By the time it reaches 5A, this team should either have the ears of UN and top 10 national leaders or be well on the way toward reaching them.
» Conventional Management (CM) – Complementary to our Strategist-Catalyst EL requirements, we should expect him/her to be a capable Planner (starred), in order to produce materials that will convince more bureaucratic sponsors to “buy-into” what’s required to establish their academies. Associated financial executives will be particularly anxious to have everything projected in some detail to give their blessing for such new investments, despite the obvious need.
Once the initial support ball starts rolling, our Strategist-Catalyst and Strategist team – orchestrated from Phase 4 – should provide pretty clear Direction (starred) on how academy funding should be applied and controlled to keep executive manager types and auditors satisfied.
Similar CM thinking should be applied in other cycles to keep more bureaucratic minds happy that everything will turn out as initially envisaged and everything will be paid for. Once the academies move into full operation, hopefully concerned “managers” will be content with the outcome; even if those academies promote a leadership philosophy somewhat at odds with their own usual way of thinking.
Apart from pursuing these important objectives the Strategist team should pinpoint its means for raising sufficient funding – both private and public – so that it can become fully funded sooner rather than later. Once that happens it will be regarded as a Start-up Venture Team (SVT) positioned to engage, collaborate and orchestrate a significant groundswell of support and momentum toward accomplishing its intentions – that is, World and several National Leadership Academies; all with high quality international faculty.
This SVT will eventually morph into a full-fledged Venture Growth Team (VGT), with supportive teams, that will focus on nudging and educating the embryonic academies until they’re fully in flow. In the meantime, the VGT can commence laying the groundwork for effective selection of future academy “students,” along with affirming enlightened leadership (EL) operating principles and values to guide both faculty and support staff. Student “report cards” will be made public so that voters and employers will know more about the leaders they’re voting for or hiring. The VGT will also be influential in attracting outstanding faculty, with minimal political interference, that can be rotated throughout the whole network of academies – both UN and National.
By this time, our VGT will have moved on to CYCLE 3 and beyond and then either morph into another important international role or disband, especially once its initial objectives/destinations have been met.