Zig-Zag Leadership Lunch-and-Learns (and more)

Life throws us unexpected twists and turns. So do clients, suppliers, partners, team members, even the universe itself. Some of us are better than others at charting a path that zig-zags in unexpected ways. When a full-speed-ahead approach leaves you stuck and frustrated, you’ll need to draw on another way of thinking, behaving, and doing your work. You’ll need to zig-zag rather than make a bee-line.

We’ve discovered a set of ten leadership skills necessary for successfully guiding our teams and organizations toward strategic outcomes even when the path ahead is unknown and unpredictable. We call this bundle of skills Zig-Zag Leadership. Scott Hutcheson teaches these skills to his students at Purdue University and has also shared them in professional development training with over 4,000 leaders from 143 different countries. Normally he covers these skills in 16-week semesters and multi-day workshops. Recognizing that these longer formats do not work for everyone, we’ve developed a set of bite-sized learning experiences: The Zig-Zag Leadership Lunch & Learns.

The content comes from Scott’s book, Strategic Doing: Ten Skills for Agile Leadership (Wiley, 2019). The book debuted at #1 in six different categories: Business Management, Strategic Business Management, Strategic Business Planning, Systems & Planning, Strategy & Competition, and Project Management.

Lunch and Learns. Our one-hour Zig-Zag Leadership Lunch & Learns can be offered to your team onsite at your location or virtually in just one hour. In these sessions we can cover one of the following topics, each provides evidence-based insights and practice-proven tools.

• Creating and maintaining a safe space for deep, focused conversations
• Framing strategic conversations with the right question.
• Identifying strategic assets, even “hidden” ones.
• Linking, leveraging, and aligning assets to identify new strategic opportunities.
• Identifying and prioritizing the “Big Easy,” the strategic opportunities that will have a big impact but be relatively easy to execute.
• Converting ideas into strategic outcomes with measurable characteristics
• Putting into practice the concept of “starting slow to go fast.”
• Drafting series of short-term strategic action plans and gaining ongoing strategic commitments from others.
• Setting and leading “30/30 Meetings” to review, learn, and adjust.
• Effectively nudging, connecting, and promoting to reinforce new habits of collaboration and strategic agility.

And More. Of course, we would love to work with your group for longer than a lunch session. We also offer half-day and full-day sessions. In these longer sessions, we work with you to select from the topics above. We can cover 3-4 half day and 7-8 in a full day.

You can schedule one or several lunch-and-learn sessions! If you are interested, please complete the form below. We’ll be back in touch soon with more information.