27. Scanning for Signals with Dr. Brett Jacobsen, President SAIS

Executive Access

In this episode, Jamie speaks with Dr. Brett Jacobsen, President of SAIS, long-time education industry leader, and futurist. Dr. Jacobsen highlights the importance of leaders making time to “scan for signals” externally as they plan their businesses. He discusses the increasingly important need to develop an “experience strategy” for customers and also team members inside the organization. Dr. Jacobsen shares the role mission, vision, and values play in creating a common language for organizations and how innovation is accessible to any organization, in small incremental ways or in large transformational ways. Dr. Jacobsen recently published a thought leadership piece about “10 Shifts in Education” and we had a fascinating conversation about one of them: the Workplace Shift. Dr. Jacobsen asks a thought provoking question, “Is your employee value proposition still relevant?” and offers some ideas for assessing that. Dr. Jacobsen is an excellent leader and gentle agitator; I always leave our conversations challenged to grow my strategic impact and I know you will as well.

During this episode, Dr. Jacobsen refers to the following work:

• STEEP Analysis, a framework for assessing how external factors impact a business/ organization

• Polarity Mapping, a tool for decision making

• The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins

• Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky

• University of Edinburgh Reflection Toolkit

Executive Access is produced by The Ideal Life, a platform that provides coaching, community, and content for people to grow both personally and professionally.