Scott Snook

This is a fast-paced, highly interactive session. Based on two short written cases, a series of powerful video clips and heavy audience participation, ‘A Tale of Two Coaches’ encourages participants to explore their most basic assumptions about human nature, motivation and leadership style. As participants compare, contrast and react to Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski – mentor and mentee – they discover for themselves the fundamentals of effective leadership and development. Drawing from the latest research in the field of positive psychology and leader development, this session ends by challenging participants deeply held, but often unconscious beliefs about what really drives performance and development.

By comparing two successful coaches with dramatically different leadership styles, the participants are encouraged to confront their basic assumptions about human nature and how these theories influence their approach to leading and following.

Anchored by the classic case study of Jan Carlzon at Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), this session is a tour de force in the fundamentals of leading change. Don’t let the date fool you, when it comes to leadership, what Carlzon did at SAS in the 1980s still contains everything you need to know about vision, alignment and motivation. How do you get 20,000 employees on the same sheet of music, moving the same direction? Supplemented by a series of powerful video clips, participants are encouraged to struggle with the central question: What kind of person does it take to do what he did?

Comparing Jan Carlzon at SAS with Frank Borman at Eastern Airlines adds a layer of depth to the puzzle: How is it that during challenging times, why do some companies in the same industry thrive and survive, while others crash and burn?

Scott Snook’s presentation is centered around the tragic friendly fire shootdown that took place in Northern Iraq on 14 April 1994. It is a compelling case study of a complex organization where both leading and organizing failed in a big way, resulting in the unfortunate deaths of 26 peacekeepers. While the case emphasizes leadership and accountability, it does so while covering a wide range of important topics such as: coordination, cross-functional teams, human machine interface, risk, systems leadership, causality, training, inter-group conflict, culture, and integration. In the end, it’s all about alignment – getting everyone on the same sheet of music, moving in the same direction, every day – and, what can happen when leaders fail to recognize the enormity of this challenge.

The format for this developmental experience is multi-media interactive. By using a sequence of short video clips, I present the case real-time, gradually revealing a string of causal factors contributing to the shootdown – each one revealing a different leadership challenge in its own right. Audience members participate actively throughout as they struggle to make sense of this tragedy. In the end, I ask folks to tell me whom they would hold accountable and then reveal how the case actually played out.

Executive audiences around the world have found this experience to be both moving and useful as they struggle with the challenges of leading in complex organizations.