The economy and leadership: strategy meetings are happening NOW

I continue to see a lot of activity with inquiries and bookings for senior management / CEO leadership meetings.

This confirms my belief, which I have been posting in this blog, that there are many organizations out there who are determined to stay ahead of fast paced economic trends. Here’s an example of a client request that came through this morning; they are looking for insight on:

• how can an organization succeed given the current world and marketplace realities by thinking and doing things differently relative to the following:
  
• how to use, and deploy and share resources in new creative ways from a variety of places to serve the most critical needs or during the most critical times
• how to employ a a non-traditional structure or organization design that is creative, flexible, different and nimble to support critical business priorities

• how to leverage key capabilities in new and different ways, either through developing them internally, outsourcing them or partnering in a type of hybrid manner

These are all issues I covered off in the Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast book.
They are looking for:

• someone who will provide a thought provoking point of view, with inspiration around new and different approaches to achieving the above
  
• can speak to trends in this topic arena, yet also cite some examples of companies that are acting or behaving in some of these innovative ways to achieve results
• someone who can push the thought agenda yet provide information that is deemed doable, possible, realistic and not too extreme of an approach
• a person who can deliver the information in a small group/ intimate setting with a “working session” format vs a large key note “speaker” address forum

That’s exactly what I’ve been out there doing for the last ten years, and so it continues to be a fascinating time to be out there.

I’m off later today to keynote just such a leadership meeting for a major accounting firm in the DC area; I just returned from Palo Alto where I gave a similar talk to a high-level group of Silicon Valley executives. More on that particular talk later, because I’ve been busy writing a post about “what comes next with tech.”