As a new business owner with a mission to propel organizations to new levels of performance through people, I’m constantly thinking about how we accomplish this goal. A little background…I found my passion in helping people and organizations become the best they can be when I started at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) almost 20 years to the day. CCL has an inspirational mission of advancing the understanding, practice and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. It was that benefiting society worldwide that got me hooked and fueled a new-found passion.
On January 1st of this year, I was able to further feed that passion by becoming a co-owner of Talent Dimensions, an organization my colleague Lynn Cowart and I formed. We were humbled to have the opportunity to acquire Beverly Kaye’s company, Career Systems International, where her life’s work was helping individuals find their passions and reach their full potential through their careers.
A few months later, Lynn and I had the opportunity to add another organization, PRISM International, to the Talent Dimensions umbrella. Again, another successful founder and leader, Linda Stokes, committed her life to helping organizations create diverse and inclusive cultures where people could bring their “whole” selves to the workplace.
We quickly realized that achieving our goals included both preserving Bev and Linda’s incredible legacies and bringing the two together to create a “whole” that was even more impactful than the sum of its parts. So often it seems we focus too much energy on the parts and not enough on integrating the parts into the “whole.” We have one group that is focused on employee engagement, another on leadership development and yet another on diversity and inclusion and the list goes on.
The “whole” that supports individuals and organizations to reach their full potential is one that encompasses opportunities for development and career growth, inclusive leadership with a talent-focused mindset, the ability to bring one’s whole self to work and an organization of which they can be proud …oh, and then there’s that little thing about meaning and purpose. Organizations that get these things right, especially that last one, will have the keys to the kingdom.
We would like to invite you on a journey…one that explores the path to the “whole.” We’ll highlight individuals and organizations that are both addressing many of the parts well, and also moving toward the greater “whole.”