“Having carried out interventions in over 150 Fortune 500 companies, in 23 different countries, I know that leadership can be developed and that this can transform organisations. However, it is most effective when this work is aligned with organisational change that gets the culture and the leadership supporting strategy execution.”
66% of business strategies never get implemented mainly because of a lack of real alignment between the strategy, internal policies, organizational culture and leadership. To improve business performance an integrated approach is needed. In order to help my clients meet their business challenges, I have combined consultancy, training and coaching in novel ways that help organisations achieve better results.
INTERVIEW WITH SKY NEWS
Watch this brief video of my interview with Hellen Dalley from Sky News to find out about my ideas on what good leadership is and how you can develop it.
MY APPROACH
"Organisational change is only achieved through an integrated approach that includes the following elements.”
The results
“Douglas is an intrinsic part of the Europcar history of the last twenty years and his presence is still felt. His mixture of intellectual intelligence, practicality and his great sense of humour has contributed to give our organization a clear vision with respect to leadership and the path to follow in order to make our company the undisputed leader of car rentals in Spain”.
Mariano Ballesteros Director of Human Resources
Europcar
“Doug was an excellent CEO Coach and did a superb job of managing a major cultural change project at RevTech Media. Highly recommended”.
Lachlan Harris Founder and CEO of RevTech Media, FiftyUP Club & One Big Switch
“Doug McEncroe is a rare blend of talent. Unbelievable insight into leadership development and organizational transformation; senior team alignment; solid change management; and organizational development. In addition to his practitioner skills, I have come to value Doug’s insight, passion for his work, and prowess as an executive coach and facilitator. Highly recommend for executive and senior level work across multiple industries and cultures”.
Keith Caver Former Director North American Customs Solutions CCL.
Presently, American Practice Leader, Tower Watson
“In Hewlett Packard, Douglas made an excellent contribution. His professionalism and his rigor contributed to the awakening of and advancing in the growth, development and personal satisfaction of all the managers who participated in the Leadership Development Project. Through a process of reflection and interior dialogue oriented towards action, he left his mark on all of them”.
Luis Carlos Collazos Professor at ICADE, ex-Director of HR at Hewlett Packard and presently Director of HR at Hispasat
“I have known Douglas for nearly two decades. He was the first person in Spain to work with certain instruments and processes that are today very common, for example, 360º Feedback and Coaching. He has been and continues to be a reference point for me in the field of Leadership. I have had the good fortune to work with him on many projects, all of them fun but also very successful”.
Carlos Pelegrín Fernández López Director of Talent
France Telecom Spain
“In DDI we always focus on improving the business results of our clients. Douglas has worked for us on important projects all over Europe from Geneva to Moscow. His depth of knowledge on leadership and his ability to link leadership development to effective execution of business strategy has been a key asset for us and has added great value to our clients. I highly recommend Douglas for senior executive and senior level work in any sector. Doug is a great partner and excellent faculty and coach”.
Martina Michel European Head of Consulting Europe , DDI
“Douglas McEncroe has worked with various companies in which I have been Director of Human Resources, AT&T and Telefónica among them. His involvement has been important in Leadership Development projects of a very strategic nature and in projects that implanted 360º Feedback and coaching for senior executives, all achieving very good results which were positive for business. Managers who worked with Douglas highlighted his great professionalism, his commitment to the client and his technical mastery of his profession. Without any doubt I would hire Douglas’s services any time I had a project related to Leadership Development and Change Management, above all in organizations going through profound transformations”.
Plácido Fajardo Former Human Resources Director
Telefónica and AT&T
“I had the opportunity of working with Douglas and his team at Cisco Systems when I was Director of Human Resources for the Mediterranean Region. His contribution was critical in Leadership Development projects and in Team Development with our Senior Management Team. His ability to combine a coherent methodology with an approach that is both pragmatic and practical for senior managers is very difficult to find in other Leadership Development consultants. I would not hesitate for a minute to use his services and his vast experience at any time I have a challenge related to the development of management capabilities, leadership or change management”.
Luis Massa Director of Human Resources
AstraZeneca Spain (Formerly of Cisco Systems)
“Douglas McEncroe has worked for Vodafone Spain on various projects of enormous strategic importance for our company:
Leadership Development Programmes for Heads and Managers;
Executive Coach on the Management Development Programme One Way;
Analysis of Senior Managers and Team profiles using Myers-Briggs.
IIn all of these Douglas has demonstrated great professionalism and thorough commitment and innovation and has added enormous value by the way he has contributed to the development of our senior directors and managers. His role was fundamental at a time when the first priority was development of our managers on a project in which more than 500 of our executives took part”.
Pedro Díaz Rodríguez-Valdés Human Resouces Director
Vodafone Spain
Knowing how to manage your time seems like a skill that only junior managers would need to learn how to master. And yet, again and again I work with senior clients who are spending too much time on activities that are not creating long term value.
Important but not Urgent
Covey’s work back in the 1980s with his four quadrants classifying activities into Urgent and Important, Urgent but Not Important, Important but Not Urgent and Neither Important nor Urgent continues to be very useful. I still use it with a lot of my coachees and find it is quite amazing how much insight they get when they realise that they are not spending much time at all with activities that, although not urgent, are indeed very strategic. This, for the type of senior executives that I am working with, is a real problem.
However, the deeper question is the more interesting one. Why are they doing this? Almost all of these executives intuitively know that they are not spending enough time on the most important things and yet they don’t seem able to change things. All too easily they blame external factors:
It’s the organisational culture!
It’s my boss!
The clients are so demanding!
It’s the people from Head Office who keep on asking for things that we don’t really need!
Although the there are elements of truth in all of these utterances, they don’t represent the main reason why executives don’t get to the important stuff. Very often, more assertiveness or a good dose of courage to push back would go a long way in changing their situation.
What lies behind the inability to change?
Even more importantly, I have found that the reason people don’t change their habits is that deep down, they don’t really want to. Harvard University’s Robert Keegan has shed light on why this happens. In his work on immunity to change he has found that although the commitment to change that certain executives make is real, they have an unconscious commitment to a conflicting goal which is stronger. Kegan’s process to identify these opposing goals requires real work, but it is effective. It involves identifying what these opposing commitments are and analysing the assumptions that underly them. Very often these assumptions, under the hard light of logical analysis, prove to be false thus making it easier to reinforce the commitment to change. The very fact of making all of this conscious is, in itself, something that makes change easier.
All of this, of course, requires work and this brings us to the big question. Are you really prepared to do what it takes to change the way you do things?
That is the question I ask all my clients.
“Only a great professional in Human Resources and an accomplished cook like Douglas is capable of showing us the way in such an effective manner, creating an experience that is also pleasurable and fun”Francisco Román CEO Vodafone Spain
Knowing how to manage your time seems like a skill that only junior managers would need to learn how to master. And yet, again and again I work with senior clients who are spending too much time on activities that are not creating long term value.
