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James Bolt

July 2009 - TD Magazine

Headlines, such as "The Global Economic Crisis," "Inside the Financial Meltdown," "Housing Market Heads for Bottom," and "No End in Sight for Layoffs," have dominated the news and our psyche lately. For many organizations, survival strategies and tactics are the order of the day. It would be easy, and perhaps...

Harvesting Tomorrow’s Leaders: Lessons From the Front Line

Explores the importance of executive education. Integration of classroom learning with on-the-job development; Broadening the scope and profile of the manager; Need for specialists in executive education to combine general business acumen with an ability to work well with top managers.

Ten Years of Change in Executive Education

Discusses methods for the education and training of executives. Costs associated with management education; Experiential learning; Feedback on management style.

How Executive Learn the Move From Glitz to Guts

Examines the benefits of executive development to improve organizational competitiveness. Development of executive-development courses and curriculum; Conditions influencing executive development; Objectives of executive-education programs; Driving forces of executive and management education.

Executive Development as a Competitive Weapon

James F. Bolt

Reviews the book "The Future of Executive Development," by James F. Bolt.

The Future of Executive Development

James Chisholm started his career with a bold idea: that the intersection of technology and education could fundamentally change how people learn and grow. That idea became ExperiencePoint, a company that—nearly three decades later—continues to empower people to think and act in new ways. ExperiencePoint's award-winning, experiential workshops help clients center their efforts on people—whether driving change, designing products or services, or improving collaboration and communication at work. James is grateful to lead a company that not only teaches human-centered practices, but strives to live them every day.

James Chisholm

I just finished reading The Boys in the Boat, a fantastic underdog story about the University of Washington’s Crew Team and their quest to win Gold at Nazi Germany’s 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. Written from interviews, diary entries, and memories of the crew members, Daniel James Brown captured what it was like to beat the odds through trust and teamwork. While I read this powerful story of nine young men embarking on a personal and spiritual journey, it amazed me how often I was jolted by the similarities of what these young men faced and what most organizations face on their journey to reach best-in-class status on employee engagement.Here are five of the key takeaways that should prove helpful to your spirited glide up the river of engagement.#1: Employee Engagement Is the Toughest of Management Sports“Rowing is the toughest of sports,” said George Pocock, the man who built the crew team’s skulls. “Once the race starts, there are no time-outs, no substitutions. It calls upon the limits of human endurance. The coach must therefore impart the secrets of the special kind of endurance that comes from mind, heart, and body.” Just like rowing, reaching the finish line of employee engagement and winning gold is not easy. It’s truly an endurance sport.Your call to action: Make sure you have the right coach/manager to inspire your employees’ minds, hearts, and bodies so that they are able to endure the pain and win.#2: Many Companies and Employees “Come from Nothing” As Americans, we love a “come from behind” story. The majority of The Boys in the Boat takes place during one of the darkest chapters in American history, beginning in 1933 and through the Great Depression. This remarkable crew team had a wildly different upbringing than their heralded counterparts on the east coast at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. They were the sons of loggers, dairy farmers, and ship and mine workers. Not from families of privilege, they had no idea how they were going to manage earning one year’s university tuition to the next, but they did. They knew how hard they would need to work to come out ahead, but they were deeply motivated, largely because of their coach. He regularly reminded his team of how meaningful their journey was, and how they could achieve anything through determination.Your call to action: Focus on meaning and purpose as key ways of engaging your team. Make sure they know how they are contributing to the success of the organization as a whole.#3: Persevere—Don’t Give UpAll of the most engaged companies with whom I worked during my twenty-six year consulting career were as deliberate in their strokes as The Boys in the Boat. They realized that the journey to the finish line would not be easy and that their goal was to get better and better in anticipation of the next finish line. They were fervent believers in continuous improvement. None expected to achieve excellence overnight. When faced with myriad obstacles along the way, they hunkered down and either rowed through it or used their engagement to create new workarounds.Your call to action: Keep moving! In hard times, momentum is a manager’s best friend.#4: Teamwork and TrustCultures of great employee engagement are ones in which team members trust one another and aim for the best teamwork possible. There were two unforgettable passages about teamwork and trust. One is when crew member Shorty Hunt, who sat directly behind the book’s main character Joe Rantz in the skull, says “I got your back, Joe.” That kind of reassurance, especially from peers, is extremely strong, and adds core strength to the team, as it did for Joe Rantz in nearly every race.The second passage is when Joe Rantz realized that he would never achieve his full potential unless he trusted the other men in the skull. It was only after Joe proffered his full trust to all of them that he realized his full potential as the anchor of strength in the skull.Your call to action: Support employee comradery and teamwork. An “every man for himself” culture won’t enable your organization to perform better than the competition.#5: Synchronicity and Rhythm“By and large, every rower in an eight-oared shell does the same thing—pull the oar through the water as smoothly as possible, as hard and as frequently as requested by the coxswain. But there are subtle differences in what is expected of individual rowers dependent upon which seat they occupy…. When working well, the entire boat operates like a well-lubricated machine, with every rower serving as a vital link in a chain that powers that machine forward.” The same can be said for a well-run company with highly engaged employees. In fact, when I first read this passage I thought back to one of Jim Collins’s seminal messages in his bestselling Good to Great, with each seat on the bus identical to each seat in the skull. To win gold in crew, you need to have the right person in the right seat of the skull.Your call to action: Hire the right people for the right seat, move the people who are in the wrong seat, and remove anyone who is rowing in the wrong direction.Final WordWhen I began reading The Boys in the Boat, I thought I was reading a story about a crew team. By the end, I realized the book is about something much more personal and meaningful. Hard work, engaged behaviors, mutual respect, trust, teamwork, perseverance, and consistency of rhythm not only work well in a skull, but work equally as well in a workplace.

Five Key Lessons on Employee Engagement from The Boys in the Boat

Every once in a while, when I am out in the wilderness, I do something stupid that gets me into trouble. That happened recently when I decided to take a quick kayak trip near St. Augustine, Florida. My mistake is that I didn’t check the tide chart before I departed; something you should do in a place where ocean tides create strong currents. St. Augustine lies along the intercostal waterway, with a narrow opening leading to the ocean. During outgoing tides, all of the water from the harbor and surrounding waterways are squeezed through one tiny channel, creating a deceptively swift current.  To make matters worse, the water eventually collides with the waves from the ocean, creating some very turbulent conditions. It’s not advisable to navigate such waters in a small boat. I was in a kayak. It was just before noon, and I was making my way across the St. Augustine inlet to reach a sandy beach on the other side.  The tide was heading out to sea, but it wasn’t until I was halfway across that I realized the current was flowing faster than I had anticipated. The closer I got to the other side, the more I could see that I was caught in a current that was carrying me out into the open ocean. The surf coming in from the Atlantic was getting ominously close, and I knew I had to reach the beach before it was too late. I picked up my pace, but the closer I got to shore only showed me how fast I was being carried out to sea. Finally, when I was within 30 yards of the shore, I realized was about to hit rough water. I haven’t felt a sense of life-threatening panic for quite some time, but there came a moment where I realized I was in real trouble. I thought for an instant to jump out of my kayak and make a mad dash for the shore, but something inside me advised against it. After a quick but intense prayer, I began repeating this phrase over and over again: STAY IN THE BOAT AND PADDLE HARD! STAY IN THE BOAT AND PADDLE HARD! STAY IN THE BOAT AND PADDLE HARD!    I don’t even know where it came from but I kept repeating it over and over again. It was like some part of my brain decided to take over operations and gave me two simple marching orders: STAY IN THE BOAT AND PADDLE HARD! Nothing else mattered. With the beach only 10 yards away and my adrenaline pumping, the back end of my kayak began slipping into an oncoming wave. While I expected this to be a bad thing, I actually felt the wave lift my kayak and push me back upstream and toward the shore. Now, with only a few feet to go I jumped out and pulled the kayak out of the current and up onto the safety of the beach. I sat there for a few minutes on the hot sand recovering, which is where I took the picture you see above. I was kicking myself for getting into the situation in the first place. As humans we can make some pretty poor choices, but its also amazing what can happen when we get really focused on what matters most. In those few panicky moments it was STAY IN THE BOAT AND PADDLE HARD, but most of life is not so intense—so focus becomes more of a choice than a necessity. But it’s actually focus that helps us reach our goals and create results. In fact few other things will get you to where you want to go as a laser-like focus on the things that matter most. I, like you, am extremely busy. But one thing that helps me is a simple system I rely on to keep me focused. It has made all the difference, and I want to share it with you. In fact, if you put this simple method into practice, I guarantee you will make more progress on what’s truly important in any given month than you did before. I call it the “Three Big Steps Method.” Here’s how it works. Every morning Every Monday I get super clear on what I need to accomplish that week. Then each morning before I get going, I write down three things that must happen that day in order to move toward my objectives. I call these my “Three Big Steps”—and I only pick three. While my to-do list is much longer, I isolate three things that matter above all else. They also need to be three things that are taking me towards my larger objectives. I do this same exercise each day of the week, ending on Friday. Every evening At the end of each day, I review my three things list. Did I get them done or not? If not, I want to know why. It’s usually one of three reasons:I didn’t schedule it. If you need to get something done, you need to schedule it. Your most important things on your to-do list must become calendar items. Even though I know this and teach it, there are still times I forget to schedule one of my big three. If you don’t make room for what’s most important, it will get squeezed out by other items that appear urgent. Guaranteed!I wasn’t realistic. Sometimes I didn’t get my big three done because I underestimated the time it would take to complete them. To me this is a failure in planning. Whenever this happens I remind myself to think more realistically when picking my big three for the day.I was derailed. Sometimes things beyond my control invade my day and I’m unable to get to my big three. This is usually rare and when it happens, I don’t let myself get down about it. I simply reload for tomorrow. Friday afternoon Friday is judgment day. I quickly look back on my week and give myself a score out of a total of 15 (three big steps a day for five days equal 15 big steps). For me, a successful week is determined by how I did on my Big Three Score. A 12/15 is pretty good; 13/15 is even better.   Recently, I had two weeks in a row where my Big Three score was only 47 percent. I wasn’t happy and I made sure I found the problem so I could turn it around the next week. Bad weeks can happen, but using this system ensures that I catch myself early when I begin to become unfocused. An added benefit is that it gamifies my focus, which gives me something to shoot for each week. Moving forward So try implementing the Three Big Steps Method for a couple of weeks and see how it goes. You may need to take a few weeks to tweak it, but it works. When you stay focused week after week, those steps begin to add up—and soon you find yourself making great progress, achieving goals, and posting amazing results. It all comes down to creating a monomaniacal focus on the things that matter most. In other words, STAY IN THE BOAT AND PADDLE HARD!

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