Leadership In FastTime: Bio of Leadership Expert, Leland Russell

Leland Russell Bio

LELAND RUSSELL delivers innovative, custom solutions to the challenge ranked #1 by CEOs worldwide: Excellence In Execution. For over a decade, he has been designing and deploying cutting-edge Execution leadership practices, processes and online collaboration tools that drive faster, smarter Execution across functions, levels and locations.

Leland has served the leadership of a wide variety of Fortune 500 organizations. His typical clients are CEO’s, heads of business units, corporate functions and leadership teams who face tough strategic and tactical Execution challenges. He works hands-on with senior leadership teams in the three interdependent phases of Execution: strategic thinking, operational planning and tactical implementation. He also helps leaders organize and implement strategic initiatives and large-scale organizational transformation programs.

Leland has been an innovator in accelerating senior leadership team effectiveness and fast-cycle collaboration. He has designed and facilitated numerous technology-enabled strategic sessions for organizations such as HP, Warner-Lambert and 3M. The FastTime® Collaboration Center he developed has been licensed by multiple organizations, such as Agilent Technologies, CibaVision, FlowServe and Weyerhaeuser. The global intranet architecture he designed for Texas Instruments, TI Tomorrow, was a finalist for the prestigious Computerworld Smithsonian Award, which recognizes “the most important applications of information technology to society” each year.

In addition to his Fortune 500 work, Leland has served non-profit organizations like Health Forum, The International Leadership Association and the Society for The Science and the Public. He currently serves as strategic advisor to the EastWest Institute, a ‘think-and-do tank’ focused on pressing global security concerns and the Project on National Security Reform, a bi-partisan, non-profit organization that is focused one of the most comprehensive security reform initiatives in American history.

Leland’s book, Winning In FastTime®, which provides a method for leadership to accelerate strategic thinking and implementation, has been enthusiastically endorsed by many Fortune 500 and non-profit executives, best selling authors and senior military leaders. He has also written and narrated several widely-acclaimed video programs on leadership and change. His leadership model for mastering change—The GEO Paradigm, as been licensed for use in leadership development programs by over 1000 organizations around the world.

A Sample of Leland’s custom LEADERSHIP PROGRAMS

EastWest Institute engaged Leland to design a special one-day ‘horizon thinking’ event for The Worldwide Security Conference, which was held in Brussels, Belgium and co-sponsored by Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, World Customs Organization and The EastWest Institute. Leland designed the third day of the conference, which explored ways to accelerate solutions to some of our greatest human security threats. He also co-authored the white paper that set the context for the event, A Day in the Future, with Dr. Greg Austin, the Director of the Global Security program at The EastWest Institute.

BellSouth Leadership Institute engaged Leland to design and produce three video-supported learning programs for its executive education series, "Our Competitive Marketplace". The programs included interviews with the BellSouth’s Chairman and other top leaders, as well as the top five analysts on Wall Street. The program Russell produced was used to cascade a strategic change message throughout the BellSouth organization.

General Motors engaged Leland to create a customized version of his leadership video, "Tearing Down The Walls", for use in a company-wide change initiative. This program was delivered by in-house staff in a series of workshops which reached 57,000 GM managers.

Hewlett-Packard engaged Leland to design and produce a large-scale, interactive meeting for its top 350 executives. The meeting utilized 120 networked laptop computers to gather in-depth information and facilitate audience-presenter interaction, remote presenters via satellite from Europe, and a variety of media (audio, video, panoramic scenes of HP's history).

The Health Forum, a leading-edge healthcare think tank, engaged Leland to collaborate on a national leadership study sponsored by Eastman Kodak Company. This research resulted in a widely distributed leadership learning program written and narrated by Leland, "Bridging the Leadership Gap", which was used by hundreds of healthcare organizations in their internal leadership workshops, board retreats and stakeholder meetings.

Texas Instruments (“TI”) engaged Leland for four major projects over a two-year period. The projects included:

A "media immersion experience" to introduce TI’s new vision at their annual global leadership conference
A strategic communications cascade program for world-wide distribution with leadership video interviews conducted by Leland with TI’s Chairman, CEO and other top leaders in Dallas as well as in England, Japan, France and Germany;
A series of fourteen “Innovation Insights” video modules, which were the foundation of a year-long series of leadership workshops with TI’s top 300 leaders
An online knowledge navigation system for leaders, “TI Tomorrow”, which was a finalist for the prestigious Computerworld Smithsonian Award, which recognizes “the most important applications of information technology to society” each year.

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Testimonials

“Leland is always the visionary, always the leader, always the dear and trusted friend.”
—Frances Hesselbein
Chairman and Founder of the Drucker Foundation, Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the United States of America’s Highest civilian Honor), Former CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA, Hailed as an outstanding leader by Peter Drucker, Fortune, Business Week and the New York Times

“Leland has been a trusted strategic advisor to me and the Project On National Security Reform for the past two years. With his advanced ideas and powerful insights, as well as his energy and enthusiasm, he has made a tremendous contribution to our cause. I am personally grateful that he is my friend and for all that he has given to me and to the nation.”
— James R. Locher, III
President & CEO of the Project on National Security Reform, primary architect of the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 and the Cohen-Nunn Amendment that established the U.S. Special Operations Command and former Chairman of the Defense Reform Commission of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“The Health Forum worked closely with Leland on our national study, BRIDGING THE LEADERSHIP GAP IN HEALTHCARE. Leland added enormous value at every stage of the process and helped us advance a national strategy for improving healthcare leadership. He is a marvel to work with and remains a valued colleague and friend.”
— Kathryn E. Johnson
Retired Chief Executive Officer of Health Forum; Former Board Chair of the American Society of Association Executives and Institute for Research on Learning. Currently serving on the Boards of Friends of the World Food Program, the Global Women’s Leadership Program, the Health Technology Center, the International Leadership Association, Omni Med and RENEW.

“I am truly amazed by how
much we accomplished in
how little time. We met some
very aggressive goals.
—Hardy Wentzel
Fmr. Leader Weyerhaeuser Canada

“This process has changed the way I work…my attitude,
my perspective and my
behaviors.”
—Mike Roberts, Fmr. President,
McDonald’s Corporation

“These principles were at the core of the transformation at Motorola. We used them to launch fast, fundamental change and they worked!
—Sandy Ogg
Frm. Director, Motorola

“In my 21 years in HP / Agilent, this is the best business plan I’ve ever seen rolled out.”
—Glenn May
Frm. Agilent Technologies
SPG Corporate Account Manager

“Things are buzzing within LG Electronics Mobile Phone Division thanks to your tireless guidance and efforts.”
—Bernard Lieu
Senior Strategy Manager,
LG Electronics

“A very big personal thanks for all that you did for me and my team. The FastTime® Mentoring process has proven to be a turning point in the Execution of our business."
—Barney Saunders
Fmr. VP Agilent Technologies

“The FastTime® process helped us rapidly develop a superior strategy that not only produced short term-results, but also helped establish an Execution culture, which gives us a significant competitive advantage.”
—Ed Jones
Director of Industrial Planning
Weyerhaeuser Corporation