Exceptional Leader
A Difficult Time to Lead!
Engineering leadership is not for the faint of heart. Answering to senior executives for late projects, budgetary overruns, and customer quality issues causes all of us to lose a little sleep. Holding our teams accountable while simultaneously delighting our customers and engineers is a delicate balancing act.
Would you like peace of mind? Would you like to know that when your team makes a commitment, it’s their word? Would you like to know that quality is built into the product and not dependent on a successful test run? If you’re like most leaders, these questions have been a source of stress, and you’re not alone.
There is a better way…an exceptional way
At Exceptional Difference, we’re committed to empowering elite engineers, teams, and leaders for success. By instilling a Culture of Excellence, you can lead your teams to consistently deliver quality with speed to value in an energizing environment. Innovation is both personal and cultural, and enabling the Obligations of Engineering of value, quality, speed, commitments and leading with data are accelerators to the innovation you need.
Exceptional Difference Offerings
Talks and Tools
Talks for the Exceptional Leader include Lead with Speed: Creating Your Expectations of Excellence, Unleadable: Transforming Troublesome to Tremendous, Unleadable: Remove or Improve, and more. Any of our talks can be brought to your organization and customized to your audience.
Free downloads include 100+ Questions Field Guide, Essence of Systems Engineering Field Guide, and Building a Mindset for Exceptional Leadership Field Guide. These downloads are great introductory materials as well as solid complements to any of our talks or workshops.
We also have the books, Lead With Speed, Leading the Unleadable, and Leading the Unleadable 2nd edition, which were written by Exceptional Difference’s award-winning author, Alan Willett.
Workshops
Our series of workshops will help you master the mindsets and tools required to make commitments you can consistently meet or beat.
Lead with Speed: Creating Your Expectations of Excellence will help you start by setting better expectations – for yourself and for others. By starting with better expectations, you learn how to obtain a better understanding of the time you have available, how to better estimate, using historical data where available, and ultimately how to delight your customers by consistently meeting or beating commitments.
Unleadable Radar: Your Early Warning Systems helps leaders know, understand, and look for the yellow and red flags that are given by our most difficult employees. It enables leaders to sense and address potential trouble before it impacts the teams.
Unleadable: Giving Feedback that Leads to a Positive Difference helps leaders turn those difficult discussions into transformational opportunities that benefit the employee and the team.
Unleadable: Dealing with Trouble from Above helps leaders tackle the all-too-common issue of “anti-help” and engage in honest, meaningful discussions that produce the desired outcomes.
Experiential Learning and Training
Leadership Growth Cycle – engage in a transofrmational leadership journey! LGC is a 12-module immersive experience designed to elevate both new and experienced leaders. It includes cohort-style learning, interactive dialogs, hot seat exercises, on-the-job assignments, and expert mentoring guaranteed to provide next-level experience and confidence.
Plan Review Boot Camp leverages our free download, 100+ Questions Field Guide to help leaders ask better questions that ensure projects are properly planned and track.
Exceptional Mentoring gives leaders the tools, tips, and tricks to confidently mentor their teams in ways that promote growth, confidence, and value.
Lead with Speed, Leading the Unleadable, Exceptional Engineering Leadership, and Executive Transformation and Engagement are other experiential learning and training opportunities that Exceptional Difference offers. Contact us for more information.
Comprehensive Consulting and Mentoring
Our sweet spot is consulting with organizations who need help with what we call the fundamental Obligations of Engineering: Value, Quality, Speed to Value, Data, and Commitment.
First 100 Days is a highly personalized program that helps leaders navigate the first 100 days of a new job in ways that bring immediate value while preparing for long-term success.
Mentoring Subscription is an opportunity to mentor with one or more of our principles, all of whom have over 30 years as leaders and technologists in high-stakes, safety-critical, high-tech environments across the industry. We offer mentoring subscriptions for one-on-one or small group coaching sessions.
Co-Author a Field Guide: work with best-selling author, Alan Willett, to co-author a field guide of your choosing. See some of our sample work at exceptionaldifference.com/resources.
Custom Consulting: Wherever you need help, Exceptional Difference is here to bring decades of expertise and problem-solving skills to you and your team.
Exceptional Engineering Experience
An exclusive program that enables leaders and engineers to master the X-Factors of Commitment, Quality, Value, and Culture.
Quality Deep Dive
Gain a deep understanding of quality management for high-tech systems development and an action plan to successfully implement them for immediate impact.
Technical Debt Deep Dive
This is an immersive and highly collaborative workshop and training experience for elite engineers and team leaders looking to tame technical debt within their organization for good.