A history of interviews with leaders by The Creative Leadership Forum and articles from the CLF
Sunday, May 10, 2009 at 08:02PM Ralph Kerle, Executive Chairman of The Creative Leadership Forum, explains the how to lead an organisation to business transformation.
Download the podcast here
Interview courtesy of ThinkXchange.com.au
Sunday, May 10, 2009 at 07:56PM Australia, Creativity, Education, Future, Innovation, Leadership, Management, Podcast Saturday, May 9, 2009 at 08:20PM 
Creative Leadership: leading your staff out of the box
Innovation – in 2009 it’s not just a word to be bandied about. The economy is forcing us to get creative. Innovation could be just what we need and it could be very good for business.
What exactly is creative leadership? It’s not an easy question to answer, but Ralph Kerle is one person who is well qualified to offer an answer.
Ralph is the Program Director of the AGSM Executive Programs Leading for Creativity and Innovation program. He is also the Executive Chairman of the Creative Leadership Forum and Founder of the Creative Skills Training Council, Asia Pacific.
If asked to define creative leadership, Ralph can conjure 1001 different definitions off the cuff. When asked to pick just one, he chose the following:
Creative leadership is the ability to lead others into a new, innovative and unknown future.
Ralph compares creative leadership to the process of sculpting or playwriting.
The artist begins with an idea. Through reflection, revelation and the capacity to let go of things past, the artist is able to navigate challenge and move beyond the limitations of precedent.
Creative leadership is centered on gaining insight through reflection, exploration of new techniques and tools, and an aesthetic approach to situations and challenges.
Creative Leadership versus Traditional Management
As a specialist in the field, Ralph Kerle suggests that the global economic crisis is a perfect example of where creative leadership and traditional management are very different.
Ralph posits that at the core of the crisis is stasis in global thought. While traditional management theory might not have been the catalyst of the crisis, it’s likely to have been a root cause. The crisis has made it impossible to deny the obsolescence of the way that many of us approach business and leadership. We’re risk averse and we overtax the left sides of our brains. And it’s not working anymore. The simple truth is that our business paradigms have failed.
How can we become more creative and innovative as leaders?
It’s difficult to imagine creativity being taught. But when teaching leaders, Ralph practices what he preaches. He is constantly thinking of innovative ways to help leaders tap into their creativity.
Just last week, he completed the development of the Creative Leadership Index. This index is based on his findings from a national study that reached over 30,000 people and explored the question, ‘Is Australian Management Creative and Innovative?’
The purpose of the Index is two-fold. Firstly, it’s a diagnostic tool to help leaders understand the creative and innovative components within their organisations. Secondly, it draws out themes about industry and workplace practice.
The Creative Leadership Index will be available to all participants of the AGSM Executive Programs Leadership for Creativity and Innovation program.
Where will you be when the worst is over?
It can be difficult to see the silver lining of an economic crisis. After all, we’re terrified of failing. This is understandable, until you look at the grand scheme of human endeavour. Innovation, progress, ideas and leaders that have truly shaped the world have very often been born of ‘failure’. Artists are much more attuned to this reality than we are in the business world. At the essence of art is curiosity. It’s no coincidence that this is at the core of innovation too.
As recently as early 2008, words like “creative leadership” were good for instantly glazed-over pairs of CEO eyes. But finally everyone’s sitting up and listening. Ultimately, it will be up to you what you make of the recession. You can hold on for dear life, or recognise the crisis as an opportunity.
Words to the wise
Ralph had the following advice for leaders.
“I’m frequently told I work with the soft stuff – the people, the behaviour. This is just not true. I work with the hard stuff. Focusing on the measurements, the numbers – this is what has failed us. In the vast majority of cases, once you get the people and the behaviour right, the rest will follow suit.”
Miriam Cha
Monday, February 2, 2009 at 08:12PM 
Back to basics is the mantra I keep hearing from senior leaders and business owners as they prepare for an indeterminate period of turbulence and uncertainty. However, it is not possible for us to return to the basics as the basics we know no longer exist. Our reliance on measurement and technology as a prediction for the future has shown to be false and often misleading as companies keep re-adjusting their revenue and profit projections, downwards in nearly all instances, and job layoffs start to take hold. The craziness is compounded when world trade collapses by 45% in a quarter; investors in super funds see their savings reduced by 35% and investors rush to invest in gold as it climbs beyond US$1000 an ounce as other commodities crash. Against these facts how can we make economic sense? The only certainty seems to be the media who keep perpetuating the doom and gloom.
In January 31, 2009 the leading article in the Sydney Morning Herald Weekend Business Section uses a pictorial metaphor of several old fashion galleons armed to the teeth carrying flags from America, UK and Australia rushing rapidly toward a giant waterfall created by melting icebergs with the caption "Drop the anchor, we're going over the edge!!"
Here we stand in a moment in time where everything we have taken for granted economically; everything we considered secure and certain about our assets and our ability to earn and grow those assets seems to be in question. Our reality is now contained in a miasma of ambiguity, paradox and uncertainty waiting for signals suggesting the economic order has either completely imploded or landed safely.
Just this weekend at the top end of town, the World Economic Forum 2009, Niall Ferguson, an economic historian from Harvard, named this coming period the Great Repression comparing the global situation to what happened recently in the Argentinean economy.
It is against this backdrop of systemic economic breakdown, the Creative Leadership Forum has recorded its best monthly revenue on record and goes into 2009 with an unprecedented number of bookings for leadership programmes, consultancies and for me, keynote speaking engagements.
It is not by chance this has occurred.
Senior leaders and managers know we are in a crisis of extraordinary proportions and as a result are keen for deep and meaningful dialogues devoid of posturing, propaganda and proselytizing. This week the World Economic Forum Davos 2009 has shown the importance and power of open dialogue at the highest levels. Leaders seem to be seeking different opinions, listening with new intent, not eager to make decisions necessarily; more to reflect, to gather their own thoughts; to try and understand what it is that is emerging globally and nationally. This is a scary uncomfortable place to be in especially for leaders in organisations who have relied on what they considered once reliable measurement and information systems.
What a time like this calls for is authentic dialogues devoid of any hint of rhetoric or status as leaders seek signs of new emerging conditions and directions. Open-heartedness, open-mindedness and an open will to live with the current darkness of uncertainty and to make hard decisions requires extraordinary personal powers of balance, perseverance, patience and resilience.
These are the philosophies and practices that great creative leaders such as Nelson Mandela have embodied - the ability to apply those values and concepts in times of darkness for the benefit of their constituents and stakeholders..
Are our business or organisational leaders equipped to embody those practices as we move forward in these times?
Friday, December 19, 2008 at 08:00PM The last five years of global surveys by the big four professional service firms confirmed the main concern of CEOs was in the area of business model innovation. As our chairman writes, the US auto-industry is in complete disarray - one of the main reasons is their leaders inability to be able to conceive and implement business model innovation fast enough to adapt to clear indications consumers and markets were seeking change.
More than ever, business model innovation will be the driver that turns the economic conditions around. The upturn in the world economy will not come through the paradigms we currently know and work with; it will come from leaders capable of applying creative thinking to risk, acting boldly to implement new business strategies; combining intuition, emotion and technology to rapidly prototype new opportunities; developing truly collaborative communities of practices within organisations, markets and stakeholders supported by good governance and regulation, working locally, virtually or cross culturally; committed to sustainability and the development of the common good for humankind.
Gone is the era of individualism at the expense and cost of all else!
The Creative Leadership Forum's research and programmes for 2009 in the main will be devoted to developing the creative leadership skills needed to think and act confidently in this turbulent and vital evolutionary era of business model innovation.
OurExecutive Coaching Programmes
Our in-house Training (Contact us for more information)
Our Research
The Roundtable in association with AGSM on "Leadership, Creativity and Innovation".
