For many organisations the focus on developing leadership potential is focused entirely on the top rung of management. In this podcast Rob Balmer, Managing Director at Executive Central, explains how leadership needs to be developed throughout the company, with a different focus dependent on the role and the individual. It’s not something that can be effectively achieved with off-the-shelf training.

Every organisation needs a performance culture – achieving the best outcomes by having your team working well together and, importantly, focusing on what matters. In this podcast Phil Dobbie asks Rob Balmer, Managing Director at Executive Central, how you create a culture where the focus is on what counts, rather than what’s urgent.

Is it possible to coach your workforce into innovation? Can you actually teach people to come up with innovative ways of working? It’s a question Phil Dobbie puts to Rob Balmer, MD of Executive Central, in this latest edition of the Executive Central Podcast. Rob suggests that innovation comes through a blend of attitude, time and diversity. Coaching, and in particular its focus on the practical application of knowledge, can dramatically impact the degree to which both incremental and radical innovation is developed, survives and thrives in any organisation.

To many people innovation relates to creating something new, such as a new product or a new way of promoting your services. In this edition of the Executive Central Podcast Rob Balmer, the Managing Director Executive Central, explains that innovation needs to relate to the three horizons of growth within your business. As he explains to Phil Dobbie, once you understand those horizons the opportunities for innovation become much clearer.

In this second edition of the Executive Central Podcast Rob Balmer talks to Phil Dobbie about controlling your corporate immune system. When we make big changes to our body – like a heart transplant, for example – our natural self defence system kicks in. The same thing happens in business when we try and improve on the way we do things. Rob suggests the problem is not that companies aren’t innovative, it’s that they haven’t prepared their organisations for change.

Is your organisation getting the returns it expects from corporate training? In the first episode of The Executive Central Podcast, Phil Dobbie talks to Rob Balmer about why companies are failing to achieve the outcomes they expect. Often, he suggests, it’s because the emphasis is on the wrong people. Attention is paid on developing senior executives, whilst under investing in front-line managers who are charged with putting strategies into action. The solution, says Rob, is to ensure you provide front-line staff with a coaching solution bespoke to your company and geared to their role. But how can you do that without costs spiraling out of control?