The Exec-Ed Zone

I was commissioned to write a book for a UK daily newspaper on family finance a few years ago. I knew a fair amount about personal finance but these projects always require one to do further research. So for the six months before I actually started to write the book I pored over all the personal finance supplements of the national newspapers gathering together the current thinking and issues. It became clear after about six or seven weeks that there were only  six topics involved and that to create these weekly supplements it was necessary to rehash  one of the topics on a six-weekly cycle to fill the space.  (For those of you interested they were pensions; mortgages; debt & credit cards; savings accounts; investing and personal tax - read next weekend's personal finance columns and see if anything falls outside those categories!)

Summer is a time for doing some calm reflection and it has occurred to me that all disciplines are probably founded on about six core topics - and executive development is certainly no different. This thought was sparked by an article in Booz Allen's quarterly journal strategy + business that once again was beating the drum about the lack of HR expertise in company boardrooms. You will find few CEO's standing-up to proclaim that the core strength of their business is the robustness of their Treasury, or their warehouse stock or their marketing collateral - no, to a man (or woman) they say their core strength is their people. And they are all right. So why do we repeatedly have to read that people development is an area that gets plenty of talk but no walk?

A second recurring theme is closely related - development programs, as a rule, do not succeed unless they are supported (championed even) from the top down. If the CEO or Chairman is on board with the program corporate cultures will change, re-organisations will work, everyone will see that it is in their interests to make the effort to make the programs succeed. If it is just being driven by Joe from HR it will most likely die a quiet, unannounced death some six months down the line.

Over the next few weeks I am going to complete the list of exec-ed recurring themes - any assistance from other summertime thinkers will be gratefully received.