Prof. Gervase Bushe discusses the state of leadership training in Metro Vancouver with BC Business Magazine

The leadership training industry is one to watch for in British Columbia, notes a newly-published article in the May edition of BC Business Magazine. Gervase Bushe, Professor of Leadership and Organization Development at the Beedie School of Business and an internationally recognized scholar in organizational development, talked to the province’s business periodical about how Vancouver stacks up against other regions in this growth area for organizations. An excerpt from the article follows:

“Training is big business. U.S.-based Training Industry Inc. tracks the sector and says in 2009 North American businesses doled out more than $100 billion to train employees, customers and suppliers.

Last year leadership-specific training – everything from one-time speaking engagements and weekend retreats to seminar series structured around actual business problems and certifying of in-house staff to deliver proprietary leadership programs – generated revenues of roughly $1.1 billion. In B.C.’s Lower Mainland there are at least a half-dozen leadership-training firms populating this somewhat amorphous realm of enterprise, including mom-and-pop operations like the Aitkens’ and Clear Learning Ltd., run by SFU business professor Gervase Bushe (based on Clear Leadership, a book detailing his academic investigations into the art of leadership).

There are also B.C. outposts for global corporate-training outfits such as Franklin Covey Co. and the more esoteric Landmark Education Corp., whose intense three-day forums exploring personal issues, assumptions and behaviours always culminate in an evening sales pitch for aspiring friends of attendees.

According to Bushe, who teaches leadership and organizational development at SFU’s Beedie School of Business (in addition to his past work with the likes of Telus, GM, and the Vancouver Island and Fraser health authorities), the era of command-and-control leadership is over. Bushe takes a critical look at what he calls “traditional organizations” in which people deemed to be “problem-solvers” predictably ascend the managerial hierarchy. The result is a cascade of problems – division between the so-called problem-solvers and the foot soldiers at the bottom of the hierarchy, resistance from those who had no say in the solution and, consequently, organizational failure to adapt and innovate. In the rapidly evolving digital age, where information swamps managers and decisions need to be made at light speed, such hierarchies are an extravagance that he believes organizations can ill afford.

“Managers get things done; leaders figure out what needs to be done,” says Bushe. “Leaders used to be seen as Captain Kirk on the bridge, and a whole bunch of managers beneath. Now we’re at a place where everyone needs to be a leader – and to do that, we need to create an organizational environment where learning is seen as a sign of strength not weakness.”

But as excited as Bushe is about the topic of leadership, he is tepid in his assessment of the Vancouver business community and its willingness to embrace organizational and leadership development.

“I hardly do any work in Vancouver. B.C. is kind of a managerial backwater. We have really good operational-management culture. You want trains to run on time, great, but if you want to build a world-class company, not so much,” he says. “Here you build a $30-million company then you sell it and go skiing in Whistler.”

Leading the Vancouver business community
Geordie Aitken, who joined his father’s company 10 years ago after graduating from UBC (where he studied, aptly enough, rhetoric, and later neuro-linguistic programming), agrees with Bushe. Though he admits he’s young in the game of leadership development, he also views the Vancouver business community as late adopters on the arc of organizational development: “Companies here tend to be more entrenched and dogmatic and stuck on the way things have always been done. Americans are much more entrepreneurial.”

Bushe and Aitken may be on to something. According to a 2007 Conference Board of Canada report, American employers spent $1,134 per employee on training in 2006, about 40 per cent more than their Canadian counterparts. That may be why most of Aitken’s clients – among them, Texas-based restaurant operators Brinker International Inc., the American Council of Engineering Companies Inc. and the New Jersey-headquartered but globally active Langan Engineering & Environmental Services Inc. – are based south of the border. ”

Read the full article online at BC Business Magazine:
http://www.bcbusinessonline.ca/2011/05/02/vancouver-bc-leadership-training-development?page=0%2C0