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Exclusive interview with David Day

Interviewed by Greg Thomas

David Day is a Senior Management Consultant and President of Incite Leadership. He has over 25 years of experience in Leadership, Human Resources, and Operations management in public, private and "not for profit" organizations across Canada. Most recently David has developed the Leadership Performance Excellence ™ system to identify and measure strategic leadership processes that enable organizations to achieve and sustain high-growth performance. He has led numerous projects with significant measurable value in the areas of Leadership Recruitment, Selection, Development and Retention, while routinely applying his innovative techniques to advance organizations in Team Building Facilitation, Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, Coaching, and Mentoring. David is a member of the Strategic Leadership Forum, Canadian Human Resources Planners, Human Resources Professionals Association of Ontario, and has recently published articles in various leadership publications. His website is located at www.inciteleadership.com where more information can be found about Incite Leadership and their consultative services.

1. Give us a history of your organization offering leadership consulting services. How did it start?

Incite Leadership started as a way of filling an urgent need for top leaders to achieve and sustain at least one strategic, organizational performance lift every year, in any socio-economic environment, and be able to measure it. In current economic conditions like we’ve seen in the last 18 months, there is great pressure for leaders to deliver results on the traditional “hard” measures (revenue, EBITDA, etc.) But often times, leaders lose focus on how these results are achieved, resulting in dramatic strategic shortfalls.

In my 25-years in Leadership, Human Resources, and Operations management, I have led hundreds of projects with significant measurable value. However, I always felt there was a gap in the ability of an organization to measure its results and tie them back directly to leadership behaviour.

When I searched for a definition, principles or even a model that could help an organization to close this gap in a comprehensive, systematic way, there were none available. So, I took on the challenge of creating one, which I believe can be applied in any organization.

Incite Leadership is my way of helping organizations improve their strategic results through leadership behaviour consulting.

2. Dave, tell us about the innovative Leadership Performance Excellence (LPE™) strategy that Incite Leadership promotes? How did it come about?

Well, I think the best way of answering that question is to borrow a practical quote from Kurt Lewin who said, “ If you really want to understand something, try to change it.” To me, it has been an exciting experience in discovery.

According to a recently published study by Fred David, leaders fail to successfully implement effective strategies 70% of the time, even when the strategy is sound. In my mind, this failure to realize results can be attributed to the lack of systems to measure and control leadership competencies. Sustaining the required performance lift then becomes a Herculean task. Leadership churn rates, scores of workforce surveys showing “Dilbertish” cynicism, and a growing set of unravelling socio-economic factors tell the tale of a need that is both pressing and world-wide.

I have interpreted this as a need for leaders to step up to a different type of results-oriented challenge. One where the measure is no longer simply the revenues and forecasts, profits and proceeds of a quarter, but the actual leadership behaviour exhibited on a on a day-to-day basis.

In order for leaders to measure and control leadership behaviour, I have developed Leadership Performance Excellence™ – a leadership system that enables leaders to understand the impact their behaviours have on the results of their organization. It’s a system that operates on both the investment and return levels.

Under Leadership Performance Excellence™ a leader must energize, focus and coordinate the key intentions, actions and communications of all individuals and teams they impact, in order to maximize return. On the investment level the leader must have systems in place, continually measuring the energy, focus and coordination of the organization's strategic mission. This elevates the mission to a higher purpose that not only the leader is passionate about, but also employees are willing to actively support.

On the return level, both financial and operational results improve. Why?

Assuming that selection is pre-potent over training, leaders learn to enact practical decision-power & ability-based measures. By making practical adjustments to these measures, the leader invokes a clear and consistently reliable path, on which each individual can clearly understand and willingly develop the competencies needed to assure strategies-based change for the long-run Greater Good of the organization.

In this kind of environment each individual’s key actions and communications, based on his or her own intentions and skills, can deliver in an energetic, results-focused and coordinated way. Any other kind of leadership will simply not meet the unforgiving expectations of common shareholders, owners, employees and the various other constituencies of any private or public organization.

The essence of Leadership Performance Excellence™ is both captivating and practical.

3. One of the perspectives of LPE is the "personal" perspective. Tell us about the importance of "visioning" for an enhanced leadership strategy?

From an LPE™ perspective, visioning is the key element that allows an organization to clarify its purpose beyond the financial and operational targets – this is what I mean by the Greater Good of an organization. The Greater Good of an organization answers the question, “What is this organization really trying to achieve?” The Greater Good of the organization clearly expresses the expected outcomes of the mission statement. Both visioning and strategies are necessary to execute the organization’s Greater Good, day by day. And, regardless of which you choose to reference first, both strategy and visioning must become functionally enmeshed when they are either derived or changed.

In this way viable strategy enveloped by clear visioning provides a consistent basis for the specific communication choices leaders have to make every minute of every day, at every level of the organization.

But, even when people build this entwined and trusted pathway together, they must allow for all of the variables at play in order to implement strategy successfully and sustain the desired organizational performance lift. While adjectives and action verbs are important in expressing both visioning and strategy clearly, it’s critical to transfer the meaning of these words into each individual’s own context.

Against this factor-rich backdrop things happen instantaneously in most organizations, and trying to develop or change strategy on the fly is difficult enough without having the means to measure and talk about visioning and strategy.

4. On your website, you offer a 7-10 minute, no obligation survey to evaluate an individual’s LPE strength rating and provide organizational size/industry comparisons. What do those who take the survey most often learn about themselves when they complete it?

Top leaders and leadership development decision-makers will learn that:

Their organization’s LPE potential depends on their leadership perspectives.
The urgency of leadership learning and LPE™ measurement in their organization, and
How their leadership style and development practices affect the organization’s ability to implement and sustain strategic performance lifts.

5. What are some of the best books you have read on Leadership and why did they impress or inspire you?

Tough question!

My LPE™ theory is different from most others, in that it resides where, if you can picture it, the “three circles” of psychology, “humanist,” “personality” and “behavioural,” overlap. On the other hand, it is supported by most leadership literature.

In the latter sense, Jim Collins’ National Bestseller, “Good to Great,” 2001, details historical case evidence showing the key determinants of “great” organizations. He theorizes that something called “L5 Leadership” is the key to adding value, by any measure - in all types of organizations. Again, L5 and the other related determinants are remarkably consistent with LPE™’s underpinnings. Certainly, though, some authors have inspired my work more than others.

“Deriving LPE™”: Lyle Spencer's work on superior managerial and entrepreneurial performance entitled “Competence at Work: Models for Superior Performance”, 1993 definitely inspired my first version of the leadership process chart and associated competencies development.

“Measuring the Leadership Function”: I credit Ralph Christensen and C.K.Prahalad for my inspirited leap in this area. Of course, here I cannot overlook Peter Drucker’s practical, “it depends” influence on me over the years. He reminds us in “Management Challenges of the 21^st Century”, 1999 to think of leadership and management as being ‘one’, particularly when it comes to execution.

I should also mention that Fred R. David, whose book “Strategic Management, Concepts and Cases”, 2001, and Michael Porter’s and Kaplan & Norton’s writings which would have leaders focus on strategic matters and measure them, obviously were also central in my thoughts.

Thanks David for a thoughtful interview!

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