How is Leadership Development Like Netflix and Amazon?

The Marcus Buckingham Company announced the launch of StandOutM, an algorithmic leadership development tool that capitalizes on individual strengths to provide managers and executives with personalized leadership advice anytime, anywhere.

“The concept of leadership development, still heralded by many corporate universities, lags a decade behind the challenges facing today’s businesses. In order to be effective, today’s leaders cannot base their management style on best practices or general, formulaic trainings,” said Marcus Buckingham. “This is the end of leadership development as we know it.”

In this current era of extreme personalization and mobility, leadership development must offer authentic advice based on each individual’s skill set and strengths, rather than on traditional corporate training and performance management systems. StandOutM operates much like the successful content recommendation systems used online.

StandOutM is a cloud-based management tool that enables leaders and employees to assess their own strengths and manage in a way that caters to each team member. Twice a week users can “bank” or “pass” new tips drawn from the world’s best managers. Banking a tip allows users to save an idea and come back to it when a relevant situation arises. These suggested ideas — ranging from food for thought to specific ways to handle difficult situations — are compiled from leaders with similar strengths, so that managers can supervise in an authentic manner that aligns with their personality and style.

To learn more about StandOutM, visit the website or see the June 2012 Harvard Business Review article “Leadership Development in the Age of Algorithm.”

About The Marcus Buckingham Company

The Marcus Buckingham Company creates strengths-based leadership development offerings to help organizations build a winning workforce. Leveraging expertise in strategic consulting, psychometric measurement, cloud-based software and strengths coaching, The Marcus Buckingham Company delivers tools and training programs that challenge everyone to pinpoint, sharpen and apply their unique competitive edge. For more information, please visit: www.tmbc.com.