Building a new breed of strategic leader for the future.
Cranfield’s popular Director as Strategic Leader programme is evolving as the nature and requirements of leadership move into new dimensions. As organisations struggle to keep pace with the changing business landscape, we talk to Dr John Glen about how this programme supports leaders to make agile and dynamic strategic decisions that are grounded in greater personal confidence.
What is the Director as Strategic Leader programme all about, and who is it designed for?
With the Director as Strategic Leader programme (DASL) I always say, ‘it does what it says on the tin’. Firstly, we focus on the director as an individual, and how they can develop themselves, sustain themselves and reproduce themselves for work. So, looking at their well-being as an individual, and the challenges they face when they move into a leadership role.
We also concentrate on the leadership challenge they bring to the programme, and how they can successfully deliver a strategy for that. So we build the programme around those three core elements; the individual, the challenge and the strategy. To deliver that we bring in aspects not just of leadership and strategy, but also human resource development, personal well-being, mindfulness, diversity and inclusiveness. We also look at executing strategy too, so exploring topics including strategic project management and how to lead organisations with competing supply chains.
Typically our delegates are people who are either already established directors, or those who've recently assumed that position or whose career trajectory indicates they're going to assume that position in the very near future.
What are the key challenges people bring to the programme?
Of all the challenges, first is imposter syndrome. Many people bring an anxiety around the question ‘Am I worthy of the post that I'm in / going into?’ So, there's an element of reassuring people that yes, they are worthy. I think that reassurance comes from presenting them with ideas that will help them be good leaders, that will help them work in a strategic context, and will also help them maintain their sanity whilst doing it. And I think that's really important.
There are lots of individual questions that delegates will ask, or problems that they will pose to the faculty, and on the programme the experience of the faculty becomes vital in answering those issues. But the real challenges they face are often more behavioural, either in terms of mindset or understanding the difference between leadership and management. We emphasise the difference between working on the business rather than in the business, and the importance of making space to do that.
Delegates often come to the programme thinking that they're going to get a vast amount of subject knowledge and be presented with lots of ideas. What they actually get is time to think about those ideas in context and to share their challenges with each other. They learn so much from each other and gain confidence from each other too, as well as from the faculty.
What impact will organisations see when participants return to the business?
The first thing they'll get is probably an increase in confidence. Not in the in the sense that they'll be excessively sure of what they're doing, but they'll be much more grounded in terms of the challenges that they face and the way in which they should address those challenges.
Their understanding of the functional aspects of finance, strategy, project management, supply chain and of their leadership challenge will increase. But also, their understanding of how they should look after themselves and reproduce themselves for work, as well as more confidence and understanding around issues of inclusiveness and diversity. All of these things combined mean they will feel more grounded.
Through the experience of putting a plan together, and executing that plan for an organisation, I believe you immediately see greater confidence bred of a better understanding of what it is they should be doing as leaders. The programme gives them the tools to do it, so they can go back into their organisation and start applying what they’ve learned in an immediate and thoughtful way.
What type of organisation sends people on the programme?
We have a wide range of private sector organisations from the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Europe. Public sector organisations are also represented, for example delegates from government, education and health have attended in the past. And then not for profit as well.
We try to look at diversity in terms of those types of organisations that people come from, as well as ethnicity and gender. So, there's a variety organisations which helps make it a diverse programme that speaks to all sectors.
How does the programme deliver the skills leaders need?
The core skills we address on the programme are around communication, strategy implementation, finance, leadership and people management.
We use frameworks that allow you to understand how to develop, communicate and execute a strategy. We examine the importance of clarity of communication, and the skill of communicating that strategy and persuading people that it's the right thing to. There's a focus on how you develop your ideas and how to put the plan together. These areas are interwoven, because how you execute the plan often relies on inspiring people, empowering people, engaging people to get stuff done.
We also address how the finances of an organisation work. We share crucial knowledge that often non-finance leaders may not have a strong grasp of, such as the difference between gross profit and net profit, between profit and cash, understanding the relationship between the profit and loss account and the balance sheet, the valuation of the organisation, and how to generate value for the organisation and shareholders. So there's an enormous amount of skills that are developed in the finance area.
Are AI and digital technologies demanding a new kind of leadership?
Digital disruption and digital transformation is of course becoming a bigger focus for senior leaders. People at the at the top of organisations understand that one of the key competencies of any senior director is to use their position to execute change, and organisations necessarily change over time.
Directors will change their positions in those organisations over time too, and a function of a good director is to make sense of what's going on and find a role for themselves that adds value. AI potentially could create a step change in the way that organisations are configured and how they work. Directors have a challenge in terms of making that happen and understanding what that means.
But they also have a challenge in communicating to the people who work for them how it's going to change the nature of their work and what they do. Now, if we take a positive view, then AI is going to reduce a lot of the grunt and grind, do a lot of the heavy lifting work, and that will then create time for more creativity and more innovation. Therefore, directors will have to staff their organisation with those types of people. I think there's a big piece of work to be done in terms of developing individuals so that they can work along alongside AI in order to reap the benefits of it.
How does the programme develop your network?
We encourage people to work together collaboratively as we go through the material in class, so you get a chance to work with people from different organisations. But what we also do is allow time for people to meet in the evenings. We keep the taught elements of the programme to normal working hours intentionally, so that people have time to sit down and converse with each other. We also sometimes bring guest speakers into the evening, in an informal setting, and allow conversations to evolve naturally.
During the day, we encourage people to talk to each other. So when individuals bring up points in class, if somebody says something you find interesting it's strongly encouraged that you go and meet that individual and talk about those issues out of class. The programme is designed with the ethos of creating space for people to have those conversations rather than overloading them with input.
What about the wider team that delivers the programme?
The delivery team is exceptionally experienced and are all colleagues who've worked with me at Cranfield, most of them for twenty plus years. But the key things to appreciate is that Cranfield faculty are not only academic experts, but all of them have extensive experience of working in and with businesses over many years through their consulting activities, both inside and outside Cranfield.
The programme brings together a specialist in project management who's worked with many organisations, a Professor of Finance, a supply chain expert, and a Doctor of Social Psychology who specialises in mindfulness. We also have a Professor Human Resources Management, a specialist in inclusive leadership, a Professor of Organisation Psychology, and a leadership coach with extensive experience in leadership development who worked for many years as an engineer.
So we assemble a really interesting blend of people who've got a lot of subject matter expertise, but perhaps more importantly, have applied that expertise in the context of many of the organisations that our delegates come from, be that public sector, private sector or not-for-profit.
Dr John Glen, Programme Director
I'm an economics professional by background, with my first degree, master's degree and then PhD all in economics. I came to Cranfield in 1999, and my first few years were spent teaching and doing research in economics. I taught primarily on the full time and executive MBA, and then directed the executive MBA for two and a half years, and the full time MBA for three years. I was also director of executive education at Cranfield.
I’ve been delivering executive education for nearly twenty years now, in just about every continent in the world (except for Australia or New Zealand). My main area of expertise is in strategy; so strategy development and strategy execution. I've worked in both consulting and training, with thirty or forty organisations globally. More recently I've delivered negotiation programmes for a large global logistics company, and I've also been involved in developing leadership programs and doing coaching for senior executives in leadership.
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