ABOUT

McWade Group helps clients improve and integrate leadership practice, organizational structure, strategic direction and message deployment – systemically, creatively and with intentionality. 

There has long been a frustrating gap in how the leadership, organizational, strategy and messaging disciplines are undertaken, with various aspects of these functions shaped piecemeal by CEOs, boards, managers, strategic planners, HR staffs, management consultants, recruiters, sales staffs, marketing and communications professionals, freelance writers and even designers who spend insufficient time and energy working in any connected, systematic way. The result sometimes finds the whole of an organization’s vision, mission, strategy and message reduced to less than the sum of its parts and potential.

Our services were once viewed as independent silos. Of course, the lens traditionally used to separate these otherwise naturally integrating functions has hardly been that of a CEO, board member, customer, investor or donor who often view the organization holistically and in interdependent terms. Instead, this self-limiting perspective arose, in part, to serve the needs of internal departments, external vendors and other specialists. These much-lamented silos often impose unnecessary barriers to effective development, communication and implementation of vision, mission, strategy and message across all audiences and influencers. This is all changing – fast!

Organizations increasingly value working on leadership, strategy and messaging in an interdependent manner. That’s why we take a multidisciplinary approach to our work, drawing from psychology and sociology as well as the art and science of leadership, organizational development, learning, change, culture, complexity, creativity, language and communication. After all, the unrelenting demands of competing in complex, global environments require a revolution in how these practices are undertaken. That revolution has begun.

In a multidisciplinary systems approach, for example, strategy development forces difficult trade-off decisions about direction, resource allocation and the structure, culture, talent and even word choices needed to achieve and sustain the strategy. Too often, traditional strategic planning misses this point. In a truly systematic framework, as is the case with our Languageship™ Leader-Message System, leaders and organizations develop and deploy compelling, integrated and evidence-based vision, mission, strategy and messages that appeal both cognitively and emotionally in the face of constant ambiguity and uncertainty.

Organizations are complex adaptive systems working in environments that are dynamic, non-linear, highly interactive and often unpredictable. Organizations that embrace systems thinking amidst great complexity understand the value of liberating employees to lead and follow, build and revise strategy appropriately, develop and own messages in ways that capitalize on fast-moving, ever-changing events beyond the limits of any one leader to control let alone predict.