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The Marcus Buckingham Company |
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Interview Conducted March 12, 2013 Issue |
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The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information |
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The Marcus Buckingham Company is focused on Creating Strengths-Based Leadership Development Solutions to help Managers become more effective in the Workplace |
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Charlotte Jordan
Prior to joining The Marcus Buckingham Company, Charlotte was Director of Coaching for The Anthony Robbins Companies. In addition to running the day-to-day operations of this large division, she recruited, trained and managed 70 coaches in the delivery of professional coaching services across the US and Europe. Her passion for the coaching profession grew from her earlier work at Coaching.com, a division of Ken Blanchard Companies, where she was responsible for research and the development of knowledge management systems.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, a Master of Law degree, and several professional coaching certifications.
Founded in 2006, The Marcus Buckingham Company creates strengths-based leadership development solutions to build winning workforces. We deliver tools and training programs that challenge everyone to pinpoint, sharpen and apply their unique competitive edge. |
Leadership Training
The
Marcus Buckingham Company
323-302-9810
The
Marcus Buckingham Company
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Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, March 12, 2013
Ms. Jordan: When the company started, Marcus had been a bestselling author for a number of years and a very well known and renowned speaker. He had a wonderful time running around the country, speaking, inspiring people, and helping people understand the value of leveraging strengths in the workplace, but he came to a point where he felt he wanted to do more. He wanted to be able to create sustainable, behavioral change for individuals within organizations. He formed The Marcus Buckingham Company with the idea that there were learning and development solutions that we could create to take his work further. The vision was to create a strengths-based leadership development company. Our mission is to really help managers become more effective in the workplace.
CEOCFO: How? Ms. Jordan: How depends very much on the organization and what they are looking to do. Our expertise lies in consulting, developing customized training and development solutions, executive coaching, and company culture. We work with organizations to help them define the kind of culture they want to create and how strengths play into that culture.
CEOCFO: When a client or a potential client comes to you, do they have an idea of what they want, or is it more, “We are not happy. Things are not going the way we want to. Help me!”? Ms. Jordan: Typically, when people come to us, they have an idea that helping individuals within their organization to identify their strengths is going to drive success. They want to be able to figure out a way of implementing a strengths–based solution into their organization. Do they come to us with an idea of what that already looks like? More often than not, no. Someone might come to me with packs of samplers made five years ago and say, “Hey, we want to develop a management onboard program, and we would really like your help in architecting what that looks like.” They may have a lot of ideas in what needs to be included in that program, and they may have a lot of content that they want to leverage, but in terms of really keeping that together and insuring that it stays in perspective, they need help to craft that vision and craft that kind of content.
CEOCFO: When you are working with a client, are there some common areas that are relatively simple to identify for you? What might be some of the more unusual problems or strategies or ideas you might come up with that people would be surprised about? Ms. Jordan: Most of the time when people come to us, they are really interested in helping their managers become better managers or leaders. Certainly the most common issue organizations are interested in is, “How do we drive engagement? How will we leverage our leaders to help drive engagement?” All organizations want to drive performance and engagement, and they are trying to figure out the best way of doing that. Certainly, I think one of the greatest challenges that organizations face today, especially in relation to their managers, is that managers have a huge responsibility to help people get work done, and yet managers do not have the time. Time is a real issue, and scale is a real issue. How do you scale learning and development across the organization, and how do we help leaders lead better, knowing that they have no time? Those are the problems that a lot of our clients are faced with, and one of the things that we specifically have been interested in for the last two years is: how do we scale leadership and development? How do we provide leaders with a solution that enables them to better manage their teams? Probably what would surprise people the most is that we want to make leadership development resemble using Netflix and Amazon.com. We are very interested in leveraging technology and personalized technology. If you look out in the world today, you see a lot of newspapers and media that have figured out a way to create customized, personalized content for you. When you go on Amazon, they give you a “recommended for you” section based on some of the information that you have given them. It makes you feel as if the Amazon site knows you; it is very personalized. It is the same with the New York Times. If you go online, the first page of the New York Times has the core news along with a segment that is filled with content specific to you, based on information that you have given the New York Times. If you look at learning and development, leadership, and performance solutions today, they are not personalized. They do not take into consideration who is the individual. Who are you? What is the best way of helping you explore? We have been extremely interested in these questions. And we create scalable, technology-enabled leadership solutions that take into account the individual leader and what their particular strengths are. That is what is really interesting to our clients right now- the fact that we look at the trends in the marketplace and work to apply them in a performance development space.
CEOCFO: When you are working with a client, are they typically working with one person at your company or a team? Where does technology, gut feeling and experience come together? Ms. Jordan: Typically, an organization will come to us. They may have read one of Marcus’s books. They may have seen one of his keynotes. They may have been referred by one of our clients. Our top ten clients have been with us since we started the company; we really do maintain client relationships. New clients usually come to us with the idea that we can help them create leadership development or training and development performance solutions. We talk to them and understand what specific challenges they are encountering at their organization; in other words, “Why are you coming to us now? What is happening right now that you need help with?” We try to understand what success looks like, the audience that we are reaching, and the best learning and development techniques or mediums that have worked really well within their organization. This helps us understand the organization, their culture, and what works well for them. Then we work with them to develop a solution. Typically, it is going to have a number of different components to it. It may have a technology component, training component, and/or a coaching component, so it is pretty comprehensive. It varies from client to client. But we work with them to design and then implement it. Whether they work with one source or multiple people, there is always a client team. There is a client account manager and there are designers, content developers, and other support staff, so it is multiple people working on one account.
CEOCFO: You do a great deal of outreach. What are some of the basic ways that you reach clients, and why are they choosing you? Ms. Jordan: We are very fortunate in that our founder is really well known and well respected in this space. He is known as being a management and leadership authority, and all of his books are on the bestseller list. So we are very fortunate to have an immediate visibility and credibility in the work that we do. In terms of reaching people, most of the time it comes through his keynotes, his books, feedback we have received on the work that we are doing, and by word of mouth through our clients. We do very little marketing; next to no marketing at all. It is really word of mouth and his visibility and credibility in the marketplace. In terms of what we do differently, we are very lucky because I feel that people know our underlying philosophy: we believe that individuals are unique, they have unique strengths to offer, and if you can figure out how to leverage those then you are going to be able to generate greater results in the marketplace. People who come to us know that this is our philosophy, and they do not come to us if they do not share that philosophy. We are very lucky that people come to us already knowing what we are about and what we do.
CEOCFO: How is business these days? Ms. Jordan: Business is great these days. We were fortunate to maintain the clients that we have throughout the downturn in the economy, and we were able to move through that, but certainly in the last couple of years we have seen an upturn in business. People are really focused on answering, “How do we create an engaged workforce? How do we drive performance?” Especially in relation to Generation Y, because of the new generation coming into the workforce. These millennials have different expectations, different motivation, and different goals; they want more and they want different. It is tough, it is new, and it is different than what most leaders have experienced before. A lot of clients are really looking to figure out how to harness the power of each generation, and how to manage that in a world of diversity.
CEOCFO: Why should The Marcus Buckingham Company stand out for investors and people in the business community? What makes you a special company?
Ms.
Jordan:
What makes us special is that we are
very clear on who we serve, and how we serve them. We know that we are
a strengths-based leadership development company. That means, first,
that we serve organizations that are looking to capitalize and expand on
their leaders’ potential. And second, it means that we are guiding them
through the most efficient way to develop that potential, because strengths
are the path of least resistance to performance. It is all too easy to slip
into old and ineffective patterns of development: find where you’re weakest,
and work on improving it. All of our research shows that that approach is,
bluntly speaking, a waste of everybody’s time. So we ensure that our clients
focus on the clearest way to win: using the strengths of the people you
have, rather than trying to remake those people into something they’re not.
Our track record speaks for itself. We have grown aggressively over the past
six years, and we have maintained close client relationships in that time.
Our track record in terms of the services that we deliver is really
excellent. |
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“Probably what would surprise people the most is that we want to make leadership development resemble using Netflix and Amazon.com.”- Charlotte Jordan |
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