No amount of planning or preparation assists with events on the scale of the recent disaster in southern Asia. We remain shocked and saddened by the enormous loss of life and express our care and concern for the families, friends, and survivors of the devastation. Little compares to this tragedy; we encourage everyone to support the victims and their families.

In some ways, the effects of the recent tsunami remind me of the September 11 tragedy in the US, which also brought enormous loss of life and destruction of property. Many organizations, in disaster situations, have to come to terms with the loss of key executives. In the September 11 terrorist attack, for example, these were among the organizations severely impacted: FDNY, Cantor Fitzgerald, AON Insurance, 3Com, Raytheon, BEA Systems, Cisco Systems, AKAMI, Marsh & McLennan, and Oracle. While we can not plan for disaster on the magnitude of the recent tsunami or September 11, there are specific actions organizations can follow to prepare for the unexpected, and to plan for the future.

Without a succession system, organizations are thrown into chaos and confusion. Best practice organizations don't use succession planning as an annual check-off requirement; they rely on succession plans in the event of disaster. The process of succession planning yields insight into how a specific organization reacts to changing environmental conditions. Identification of top talent may be the easy part of the succession planning process; leadership development is always the challenge.

Within client systems, we recommend several courses of action, based on best practices. First, organizations need to be ready for "today," the normal operation of business. This requires development and maintenance of a strong leadership pool. Next, best practice organizations "keep pace" with industry and environmental changes. These organizations aren't satisfied with replacement strategies. Rather, these best practice organizations focus on developing stakeholder value for the long-term. Lastly, best practice organizations know that leadership development creates focus on organizational excellence.

What trends will affect your organization this year? Innovation, a leadership accountability, drives growth and sustainability, important considerations affecting organizational leadership development. Consider a few areas of potential concern to your organization:

• Economy and Business - will you be impacted by the growing defense sector or globalization and the concentration of wealth?
• Science and Technology - will the pervasiveness of the internet or the doors opened by stem cell research change your organization?
• Government and Politics - is there an emerging need for global leaders or will growing nationalism or political apathy impact your organization?
• Health and Environment - will the increase in certain cancer rates affect your organization or the costs of medical care impact your bottom line?

Rather than present you with another "how-to" approach relative to leadership development, we're continuing to recommend an action-learning approach to leader and leadership development. There will always be a time and place for skill development in management and leadership education; however, an emphasis on environmental conditions can successfully fuel and ignite leadership development programs in 2005.

Choose a few trending or focus areas that are most likely to create significant challenges and opportunities for your organization. Those areas might include some of the suggestions above, or might be entirely new areas that are relevant for your organization.

By creating focus on the forces driving your organization, you may also contribute to solving important social issues. Leadership education and development isn't simply about doing good (a worthy aspiration); it remains about building a competitive advantage in the market place. Frame your leadership education this year by engaging learning capacity to deal with complexity, and in turn, support new organizational outcomes.

The evolution of work and life continues today, evolving from programs and initiatives formerly titled "Work and Family" or "Work/Life." We are witness to a shift from attempting to balance work and life to an approach that suggests blending work and life. The blend approach acknowledges that work and life, or leadership and life, are not distinct commodities that can be balanced on a beam or pivot point. Contemporary thought is to reject the balance approach and to move towards a blend approach that creates success for you, your manager, and your organization.

In the increasingly digital and diverse environment, blending our human drives (in work and in life) requires an enlightened leadership skill. For example, if your meetings are more likely to occur online rather than on-ground, new leadership abilities that align performance expectations and outcomes may be required. The need? Leaders need to seek and to provide more feedback. Those who are successful at blending personal needs and professional accomplishment emphasize personal and organizational well-being.

Accomplishment in this arena requires skill development and recognition that we are the CEO of our own life. Skills acquired, for example, in performance management easily transfer between our personal and professional lives. We build takeoff momentum by actively engaging others - not solely by solitary drive. Success is measured not by where we end, but by the distance we travel from where we began. What are you doing to achieve a blend this year?

Strategic executives connect performance to defined outcomes for customers, employees, investors, and the organization. When outcomes are out of focus, performance management is ineffective. Have you considered differences between results and outcomes in your leadership development work? Our preference is to sharpen the focus on outcomes. Why?

When leadership development focuses on results, deviation from expected results frequently results in fault-finding activities. Fault-finding contributes to now rampant correction or improvement approaches, to development. When we focus on "deficiencies," we help to create enduring cynicism regarding leadership development, ultimately contributing to the windfall shortage of leaders. Successful leaders and organizations focus on continually clarifying desirable short and long term outcomes. Unfortunately, when the focus is on correction, we fail to mine undeveloped sources of talent that contribute to positive outcomes for customers, employees, and investors.

Success in any given position requires skill and talent in communication, efficiency, motivation, strategy, and other factors essential in attaining desirable realities. Leading executives demonstrate skill and talent in directing others, motivating others, and championing change - to name a few. These same successful leaders recognize that human performance isn't a scientific experiment with predictable measures and results. Instead, these successful executives experiment and take fresh approaches to improving personal and organizational performance. They take intelligent risks with themselves and others, remembering the adage, "nothing ventured, nothing gained."

Progress, and outcomes identification, sustains drive and motivation. Intentional leaders engage in comparing personal accomplishments to plan, enabling themselves and others to revise goals. The process of reflection embedded in this process can be incorporated into development discussions with direct reports. Consequently, there can be huge dividends in terms of affecting organizational performance and culture. There is also a bonus for the outcomes approach to development: increasing accountability! Join us in our January tele-seminar for further consideration of these issues.