What does your organization specialize in?
Prospective clients come to us when they are facing a significant organizational performance challenge.
Can you give me an example of a challenge that clients come to you with?
Clients come to us with a variety of performance challenges. Some are externally imposed by increasing competition and changes in the marketplace, while others are internally imposed by visionary leaders who are committed to taking new ground and achieving the unprecedented. In either case, they need to implement critical strategies that require a cultural change and breakthroughs in results. They might be trying to turn around a weak performing area, their business might be underpinned by a strategic relationship that is not working and needs to be transformed, or they might need to develop new leadership capabilities that are more consistent with the direction their business is heading.
What is JMW's approach to the situation?
We encourage organizations to start thinking ahead and positioning themselves in the future. A lot of organizations get stuck in the "here and now" when they should be preparing for the future. We help organizations that need to look beyond the predictable, organizations that are looking at the unlikely or even the unattainable. We work with them to shape that future challenge and help them find ways to achieve these goals even when they seem unattainable.
Describe the process that you take a company through?
Generally when companies are faced with a business challenge of this magnitude, they need to reshape their entire business. There are three general areas we ask companies to focus on. Firstly, they need to shift their relationship with their business from a past to a future perspective. In other words, they have to draw a line from how they have conducted their business in the past and step out from that and conduct their business in a way that is consistent with the future they are aiming for.
Secondly, they need to identify the key areas of their business where they can realize dramatic results now—this will demonstrate to the rest of the organization that something positive is happening here and will help create buy-in.
Thirdly, they need to begin developing a new leadership capability throughout the organization. This will create the champions of their new future. These changes will inspire others to produce results and it is those results that will drive the organizational change.
Is this a customized client-by-client approach?
Yes. When people buy our services, they are buying JMW's commitment to helping them achieve their goals. We really get behind and partner with the client to deliver the necessary results. They are also purchasing our distinctive knowledge, expertise, and the benefits of a proprietary technology designed to generate breakthrough performance and organizational transformation. The technology consists of principles, methods, and practices that get transferred to the client and help them build sustainable new capabilities.
Tell me more about your program.
The program really centers around five areas:
1. We work with the client to recognize and break up the current performance paradigm that is limiting their growth. We challenge their current paradigm and help them invent a new one.
2. We provide them with practices designed to transcend the limits of what they know to be possible and what they are able to commit to. A practice might be based on a principle, such as "Employees' actions are correlated to what they see possible and if they do not think that it is possible then they will not work to effectively achieve it."
In most organizations people are cynical about targets that come down from the top because they have not been full participants in that dialogue. Their reaction will be to accept the targets and do their best, but they do not believe that you can really expect them to deliver. We help the client to see that you cannot ask people to work on something that they do not view as possible.
Let us say that people in your organization have a very narrow view of what is possible to achieve and you will not be successful if you set your targets according to their vision. Part of what we want to do first is have key leaders realize that it is their responsibility as leaders to expand what people see as possible for themselves and the enterprise. This is essential to being able to enroll and engage the organization in a more compelling future than they have been operating in to date.
3. We then provide the organization with new capabilities. To be successful at a new level, people need to make clear commitments and promises. Before working with JMW if I asked you what you were working on you might respond with, "I am responsible for this project, or I'm managing this activity." After working with us your response would be something like, "I have made the following commitments—here are my promises and my due dates." Accountabilities and deliverables would be far more specific and explicit.
4. The next step is transforming the way the leaders think. As strange as it may seem, most corporate leaders are more comfortable with being managers than being leaders. They do not know how to generate context, think strategically or effectively mobilize an organization.
5. Finally, we design long-term client engagements with a dedicated team who works intensively on that assignment. We are not there all the time but rather for designated times, either in work sessions, leading an educational program, or dong on-site consulting.
So the program is cost-effective as well?
Yes. Our goal is to leave the company with a sustainable new capability.
We have talked about your leadership principles; do you ever offer leadership development as a stand-alone product?
It can be. We can either adapt one of our standalone products or start from scratch with a client. The key qualifier is that the company needs to have a challenge that in their view is a significant performance leap.
The difference here is that there has to be a specific issue that the client is trying to address.
Well, there has to be a performance context. Let me give you an example. With one of our current clients, we are doing an in-house customized leadership development program for high potential leaders. They have identified a group of their leaders that they consider high potentials and we have developed a program called, The Leader of the Future®. We supported the senior HR manager in making a bold promise for the level of incremental revenue that would be delivered to the corporation by participants as a direct result of their work in the program. To date, each individual who has completed the program has delivered on average between 5 and 10 million dollars, which is far above the original promise. We are talking about approximately 2 billion dollars of value for the company by virtue of the program's explicit design and focus on performance.
Our consulting can stand-alone as can our education programs. Many corporations have asked us for both because the challenges have been so big. They have asked us to help them deliver the performance challenge that they are facing, position them for future performance delivery and lastly to help them build a sustainable leadership capability so that they can continue to do it themselves.
About JMW
JMW was founded in 1982, based on the premise that people in organizations could defy the common wisdom and do things that had never been done before. We work with leaders and organizations to transform
their individual and collective impact—and at the same time, address real-time business issues and deliver significant performance gains. In our experience, effective leadership development creates
economic value in both the short and long terms and yields leaders capable of delivering on the company's aspirations for the future.
Harvey Dubin, Vice President
Harvey not only has managed many of JMW's organizationally complex client engagements, but also has been instrumental in the crafting and delivery of leadership development programs for over one thousand
senior executives across the globe. Harvey works with our clients to customize the right blend of JMW's multilevel leadership programs and high-leverage consulting services to achieve significantly
enhanced organizational performance.
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