I spent my first Fourth of July as an expat living in Switzerland and now I celebrated August 1 the National Holiday of my new country. As I’m at the end of my first year working as Executive-in-Residence at IMD in Lausanne and have become more immersed in my community of Lutry, I am reflecting on the many ways my personal and professional life have been enriched. While I continue to work on how best to engage internal and external stakeholders, my article “How Deeply Engaging Stakeholders Changes Everything” published by Forbes.com, ReWiring Business and Tomorrow’s Challenges was recently picked up by The Jakarta Post and Mexico’s Inversionista. On la fête nationale, after having supper with our wonderful neighbors, the new mayor of... more

On June 24 I gave the closing remarks at the UN Global Learning Managers Forum (LMF) in Turin, Italy on the social responsibility of learning, training and staff development in global organizations.  It was an absolutely stellar learning platform: the calibre of content and structure was at the very highest standards to allow for a truly great knowledge exchange among 39 Learning Managers from 35 UN Agencies globally. Before I facilitated a discussion on how they each might best engage their respective internal and external stakeholders, I observed as they shared with each other in various modules on a broad spectrum of important topics.  They are at the cutting edge of utilizing new technologies to reach staff throughout the  world. While the politics... more

With deepest feelings of love for Mama Albertina Sisulu, we share with the Sisulu family members, the South African nation and freedom loving people throughout the world in the sorrow of her death at age 92 and the joy of knowing the magnificence of who she was. We can envision her joining her husband Tata Walter Sisulu, as being side by side is who they are in life and death. South Africa was blessed to have such fearless yet humble leaders who always served their nation, community and family. We knew and loved them for a very long time: we will cherish and honor their memory.  Mama served on our Global Citizens Circle International Advisory Board since its inception. Shortly after... more

An airline company sues an online ticket provider. Fishermen from the Gulf pay a visit to an oil firm in London. An investment brokerage is accused of misleading government. Today’s headlines could be quite different if more companies embraced efforts to engage stakeholders.  Why should you care about engagement?  More enterprises understand that a broader spectrum of internal and external stakeholders has a direct impact on their core business. Those that have engendered deep levels of engagement – what I call strategic relational engagement (SRE) – are far more successful in shaping that impact to their advantage. Neuroscience research supports experience that profound relationships with stakeholders are vital to business success. Other studies show how employee and customer engagement are intimately... more

Listening to international musicians improvize at the Cully Jazz Festival  I thought about the “beautiful music” made through the interactions of 28 senior executives from 19 countries representing 15 industries during the IMD program Advanced Strategic Management.  Each ASM participant entered the program determined to design the best solution to a concrete business challenge they faced.  They left not only as individuals each with his or her own finely honed action plan, but also as a team of  executives who indeed made beautiful music together through helping each other.   And, as I led my session first at ASM and then for the full IMD community on the importance of Highly Relational Engagement of Stakeholders – internal and external – for creating long-term value, I also experienced how through our engaged dialogue we too created unique and beautiful music since it is... more

The most profound relationships form and sustain when someone connects deeply and then continues to nurture those connections.  At IMD in this last week 300 international leaders gather for a women’s leadership conference, hundreds of executives from virtually every country participate in executive education modules – Advanced Strategic Management ASM, High Performance Leadership HPL and Program for Executive Development PED –  for several of which I led sessions.  In this same time frame, my school friend of nearly 50 years who has lived, worked and raised her multi-racial, multi-national children, multi-lingual around the world visits our home in Lutry.  We share an evening with two friends we’ve known for over 25 years, now respectively the US Ambassador to the UN Geneva and the UN Indpendent Expert on... more

As Executive-in-Residence at IMD, I am building on my decades of experience facilitating for clients from all sectors globally my trademark process of stategic relational engagement (SRE™) of stakeholders. I am focusing on the strategic position of value creation and competitiveness through SRE. I am distilling and synthesizing key teachable lessons for leaders who participate in IMD executive education programs . I am developing essential guidelines for practical applications in various contexts. These include internal stakeholder applications for boards and senior management whether horizontal across function or vertically in direct reports; external stakeholders whether customers, suppliers or willing partners; and more complex potentially adversarial external stakeholders (i.e.: activist shareholders, government regulators, NGOs and other civic groups, etc). Companies know they... more

With the ending of 2010 making way for the start of a new beginning in 2011, I see as always a strong connection between my personal and professional life. While I work on my IMD presentation “Highly Relational Engagement of Stakeholders is critical for Value Creation and Competitiveness: Bridging Leaders as Key Catalyists” and I am sending holiday season missives around the world, I am aware of all the many ways I continue to sustain connections.  Today’s entry simply is to say how much I value being connected with you!

As we approach Thanksgiving, I have so much to be grateful for.  As I think about family and friends throughout the world, I am touched by how warmly we have been welcomed by so many in our village of Lutry, colleagues at IMD in Lausanne, and in the larger region of Lake Geneva and the Jura Alps.  Last weekend we went to a house warming party for Nane and Kofi Annan where we saw old friends and met new ones.  We had dinner with our neighbors Christiane and Jacques-Andre Conne civic leaders in our community.   This weekend, we spent a wonderful day with the entire extended family – Janine and Rancois Foucher, Regine, Olivier, Camille, Estelle and Clement Rouge, Marine, Tessa, Nathalie and Phillipe Pilet – from whom we are renting our apartmentat at... more