Ashridge Leadership Centre

Ashridge Leadership Centre

The Ashridge Leadership Centre (ALC) is a self-funded research unit serving as a catalyst and showcase for creative thinking, dialogue, research and writing about leadership – particularly the types and models of leadership needed in these times of substantial complexity, uncertainty and change. The ALC strives to bring rigorous insight from the frontiers of many domains into all aspects of our leadership thinking and work.

We promote research and dialogue that adds value to the discipline and enhances the leadership capability of our organisational partners in the private and public sectors.

The ALC is particularly interested in fostering collaborative learning and innovative thinking about leadership across a range of sectors and domains. The Centre has a global outreach and networks with international academics and practitioners in the field of leadership. It interlinks with the Ashridge Public Leadership Centre, and works in close collaboration with our other research centres, CRED, ACBAS and the Centre for Coaching.

Living Leadership in Tough Times

Living Leadership when first published in 2004 dispelled some of the myths that had built up around heroic, transformational leaders.

The second edition has been published at a time when the scale and speed of the recession and accompanying uncertainty is throwing up a request from some for a return to ‘heroic’ leadership. Author Colin Williams and colleagues argue that this is not what organisations need and are researching the views of managers and would like your views.

Read more about the Living Leadership in Tough Times research here.

You can find the self-assessment inventory here which consists of seven short questions based on the Zone of Choice research from Living Leadership.

Making Strategic Leaders

Much has been written about leadership, as well as about strategy and the strategic process. However, there has been relatively little focus on the individual in a strategic leader role, and the particular challenges of shaping strategic direction and change in organizations.

‘Are you suggesting that Bill Gates did a strategic analysis of the software industry when he was building Microsoft?’ An insightful question from an incredulous MBA student, and a growing belief that managers are being seduced by overly simplistic analytical frameworks, led author Narendra Laljani to consider if there is more to strategy than planning and analysis, more to leadership effectiveness than self-awareness and team-work, and more to effective executive development than a high-impact classroom experience.

Motivated by a desire to improve the effectiveness of the development of strategic leaders, this study unites the domains of strategy and leadership. It offers a new and insightful model of strategic leader capability, and explores what it is and how it may be developed and deployed effectively. In the process, Making Strategic Leaders challenges much of the received wisdom of the leader development industry, and offers new approaches.

Narendra Laljani is a director at Ashridge with responsibility for the Leading Strategy and Change executive education group, graduate programmes, and research. He teaches on the Advanced Management Programme and the MBA. In addition, he has worked on numerous customized executive development engagements, and has also served as a consultant to a number of leading international corporations. Prior to joining Ashridge, he had an international general management career in the chemical industry.