Work / Leadership development
Leaders leave with something they built
Every program starts from a real problem a leader brings from their own organization, and ends with a prototype or a plan they own. Executives, education officials and new CEOs have all worked this way.
NuVuX, across the UK, Europe, MENA and Australia, and United Way Worldwide.
Executives
Design thinking for executives
I led the development of this program so that executives test their ideas before they build anything. In Problem to Prototype, leaders start with many ideas for the problem they brought, then critique each one from other people’s points of view. Each leader builds the one worth keeping into a prototype for their own organization.
Choose a phase to follow a leader through the program.
Why the program asks executives to draw happiness
Ask a room of executives to draw a house and you get one house. Ask them to draw happiness and every person gives a different answer. Business problems work the same way. “We need an AI chatbot” gets one answer. “Customers can’t get answers fast enough” gets many, and some beat a chatbot. The program makes leaders restate their problem one level up before they choose what to build.
- Taken by
- Leaders at Plexus, Peak Scientific, Balfour Beatty and Rolls‑Royce
- Participants
- 95 technology and business leaders
- Format
- Five parts
- My role
- Led its development, at NuVuX
Education systems
Design thinking for education leaders
Creative Leadership Lab is a modular design-thinking program, adapted for each of its 14 clients. In Scotland, I ran a multi-month engagement with the Minister for Education and a ministerial panel, and Education Scotland made a case study of our programs.
- Taken by
- Denmark’s Ministry of Children and Education, the Scottish Parliament Education Committee, the Council of British International Schools, the Heads’ Conference, the EdTech World Forum, MIT Morningside Academy for Design and 8 other clients
- Participants
- 879 officials, academic leaders and educators
- Format
- 12 modules, adapted for each client
- My role
- Co-developed with three other learning specialists, at NuVuX
New CEOs
Onboarding for new CEOs
The new CEOs each run an independent organization, and none of them report to headquarters. Good ideas stall without support, so when I led this program at United Way Worldwide, I made a finished first-60-day plan the measure, ahead of satisfaction, and grouped each CEO with peers who run organizations of a similar size.
new CEOs completed it
of them finished a first-60-day action plan
Net Promoter Score
These results come from the five-week version. The newest version takes the peer grouping further, with separate tracks for small and mid/large organizations.
- My role
- Led it, at United Way Worldwide