Why The Leaders Club?

Why do we so many businesses pay lip service to training and development? Not true? Well why then when times get tough it is the first thing to be canned from the corporate budget?  “They can learn on the job”. “Chuck them in at the deep end”. “It will toughen them up”.  All the excuses I have heard in 30 years of running a training and development business.  All inevitable and predictable responses – so what to do about it?

In 2008/9 the ceiling fell in for training – the infamous banking crash or credit crunch.  Everything ground to a halt.  But this time was different from any previous mini recession.  This was cataclysmic. Budgets vanished overnight as the concentration was keeping financial heads above water.

But then the idea grew.  Never was the need actually greater to pool experience and knowledge.  To define, dissect and display leadership.  There was a never ending pool of knowledge and experience to be tapped and also a ‘next’ generation to be encouraged and helped.

Who could I get to test the idea?  Liverpool John Moores University as a starter. Vice Chancellor Michael Brown and Chairman of Governors, Sir Malcolm Thornton are old friends so the perfect people to ask. But ask what?

The idea was to get together leaders of businesses large and small, private and public, covering commerce and industry, the services, the military, academia, the faiths and the 3rd sector.  What a rich and varied tapestry of people, all with knowledge and experience but all facing similar problems.  How about calling it “Bringing Great Minds Together”? But how do you then provide an environment where people could be frank and honest about their problems, issues and challenges?  The Chatham House rule would be beneficial – “what is said within the room stays within the room”.  The next thing was to aim high and identify key people within organisations.  It needn’t be the CEO; it might well be the HR Director struggling to look at developing people on ever shrinking budgets but with more pressure than ever in identifying who’s who in succession planning terms.

LJMU were very supportive of the idea and through them it was possible to identify senior sponsors and supporters of the university who they felt fitted the bill to invite to an inaugural event.  From all those years in training and development I had come across people I really admired within the ‘business’. People, who often I may have been unsuccessful in selling to but also people whose life experience and path to their current position was rich, varied and really interesting. I was keen to involve those in charge of training officers in the 4 branches of the military – Royal Navy, The Army, Royal Air Force and the Royal Marines.  In each case the commanding officers of each of the key establishments (Britannia Royal Naval College, Sandhurst Royal Military College, RAF Cranwell and Lympstone. All gave the venture their enthusiastic backing. So as 2009 was ending we knew we had something special.
What happened next?  That’s in the next blog

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Steve Fletcher:  Founder of The Leaders Club; life-long networker; steam-train enthusiast;  JP; Fellow RSA,