Offerings
C-Level Coaching
Executive coaching engagements range from a minimum of five months to multi-year relationships, and always include a comprehensive front-end diagnostic workup and well-timed 360 feedback generated through validated instruments and interviews. Though coaching is provided primarily to CEOs, Mark has successfully worked one-on-one with multiple members of the same C-Suite simultaneously.
His approach to coaching relies on evidence-based research and is always tailored to the client’s learning style, urgent issues, and longer-term capacity-building goals.
As a result of his university-based five-year action research initiative investigating the sources of “Founders Dilemma,” Mark has developed a particular set of insights and interventions for Founder-CEOs, in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors.
Motivated by research findings, Mark no longer offers standardized “leadership training.” Rather, he has developed customized solutions that scale leadership capacity up to three levels below the C-Suite.
CEO Assimilation Program
The one-day CEO Assimilation Program is designed to provide a forum for a new leader and his/her team to develop an early understanding of their respective operating styles, communication patterns, and business priorities to “jump-start” their work together. The program has been proven to be equally effective with internal executives taking over a new team or assignment, or with senior executives arriving from the outside. Mark has adapted the program to most C-level or executive roles. It is highly cost-effective and provides results that last.
Attitudes and Beliefs
In the Beginning
Stepping into the consulting role in the 1970s, I saw the frustration— and, at times, the pain—people in organizations often experienced. From first-line supervisors to C-level executives, managers were looking for answers to problems often rooted in complex social dynamics. They were led to believe highly promoted magic-bullet solutions could solve their problems.
Over many decades, I also observed the number of formal strategic planning efforts that resulted in slick PowerPoint decks stuffed with hopes for the future. But equally frustrating was the realization that these futures would rarely be realized. At the same time, I was amused to notice how most management books and training programs could not survive a five-year life cycle. With the promise of creating ways to strategize better, innovate more, give clients and customers higher quality, communicate more effectively, and more fully engage staff, why did the solutions that offered so much actually deliver so little?
These questions drove me to start, and then accelerate, my doctoral studies in management at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst while maintaining an active consulting practice. After three years in Amherst, I created a base at The New School in New York where I was asked to design, lead, and teach in graduate management programs full-time. I straddled one professional world as a consultant to vibrant, complex organizations while simultaneously thriving in another world characterized by research and data.
Turned out, these two worlds are actually quite complementary.
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To this day, I continue “the straddle.” My clients, often intellectually inclined, experience me as a trusted partner. Rather than pitch advice, I am more inclined to ask questions. While still averse to universal and simplistic fixes to most organizational dilemmas, I manage to keep my engagements short, effective, and memorable. Clients feel greater confidence to assess and diagnose their organizations’ needs and find the best answers themselves. If you want to go deeper, you can get a glimpse into my research and opinions on client relationships here and here.
I believe the success of each consulting engagement requires careful management of the client relationship to promote trust, accelerate change and discourage client dependency. When clients build management and leadership capacity and learn how to effectively facilitate change, they are far more confident to own their change initiatives and more competent to successfully implement them.
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Even with a concept so mom-and-apple-pie as “vision,” my skepticism prevailed. In fact, it took five years of research data to convince me of the important of vision. It took another five years of beta testing strategies and techniques to understand how a vision can realize its full potential. The research data were not merely convincing—they blew me away—transforming me from a vision atheist to a born-again proselytizer. In 2003, Harvard Business School Press published my book on vision, Guiding Growth: How Vision Keeps Companies on Course.
Cynicism and skepticism, balanced with optimism and confidence that most executives can develop into highly effective leaders, suit me. Over time, these attitudes have brought rigor and cost-effective services to my clients.
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Organizations must have a clear, distinctive, and potent vision to move toward the desired destination. A vision story, one that addresses key themes uncovered from my earlier empirical research, becomes the basis for our work. I use this vision story to help identify the most essential organizational levers and “measurable milestones” that will move the entire organization closer to its articulated aspirations. Through this process, we align people, processes, and organization design, the focus turned to weave the vision into the warp and woof of daily organizational life.