Living Leadership’s Value-Add and Remarkable Results!
While it’s great to know a little bit about the history of Living Leadership (see further down this page), executives are more interested in the tremendous value-add that we can deliver today. Delivering remarkable results and measuring value have been front and center of what we have Delivered during the past 28 years.
The numbers speak for themselves
Living Leadership transcends business and national culture to help you deliver duplicatable, consistent, and remarkable results. It’s not just abstract theory, but it has been refined in the real-world fires of working with individuals, teams, organizations, and Executives. These results were achieved in organizations and areas other than just IT – it has delivered exceptional value in Manufacturing, Banking, Insurance, Telecom, Retail, eCommerce, and AI (to name just a few).
Here’s a quick overview of some of the results delivered by Living Leadership-based teams during the past 25 years (this includes results delivered by Ted, Dan, Brian, Jay, Jeff, Patrik, Bob, Robert, Aric, Matt, and me along with hundreds of team members during the past 25 years – our success with Living Leadership is highly duplicatable):
Living Leadership’s Origins and History
The origins of Living Leadership go all the way back to 1972, when Ted Kallman found a pattern, while he was studying at the University, for working with individuals that encompassed the mental, physical, and social areas of people’s lives. This is what Ted originally called “the Model.”
In the early 80s, while Andrew Kallman was studying at the University, he also learned about another pattern included in the first 3R’s of the 4R Model; and those were Right Truth, Right Values, and Right Actions.
In the center of these three areas is the individual’s vision and/or spirit, but that portion of what is now called the 4R Model was added by Andrew in the late 90s along with the fourth R, “Right Results.” At the same time, he updated the second R to include not just Values, but “Values & Attitudes.” The 4R Model is the mirror image of the 4D Model and it is used at the individual level.
Basketball also played a part in contributing to what we now call Living Leadership. It was Dr. Charles Tucker who first introduced the concept of individual flow (to our family), based on Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work with professional athletes in the early 1970s. Dr. Tucker is best known as the personal coach, trainer, and mentor for Earvin “Magic” Johnson Jr. (one of the best NBA players to have ever played the game). Not only was Dr. Tucker a former professional basketball athlete, but he also did much of his work for his PhD in Criminal Psychology in our dad’s courtroom in Lansing, Michigan.
The Flow Leadership Framework is continuously being Distilled and improved … the latest iteration is now Living Leadership
The starting point for Living Leadership was during 1995 when Ted, Andrew and their brother Dan worked together on the implementation of a sales force automation project. The previous attempts by another consulting company to deliver that platform to the organization had gone down in flames.
Not only were we able to deliver the platform to the organization, we achieved an unheard of 70% conversion rate for the number of salespeople using the software daily. That was so stunning that CIO magazine did an entire article on the success achieved by the team.
The value-add, net-net, to the bottom line of the organization during the first 12 months after the launch of this platform was over $29 million. Due to the original failure of the project (our team was brought in to fix the disaster), it was under continuous observation and scrutiny by the finance department. They are the ones that conducted the post-launch audit of the project that determined this value at. The overall contribution during the lifetime that this platform was in use was easily more than $58 million.
There are now over 115 distinct elements to Living Leadership.
Those are sorted into (and used in) Living Leadership’s 18 Principles, Mindsets, and Tactics that we use to win asymmetrically.
Living Leadership has had several names during the past 25 years. It has been known as:
- Guerilla Leadership
- The Flow Leadership Framework
- The Simply WoW! Model
- The VSPT Wow Model
- The Unified Vision Framework, and
- “The Model.”
We recognize the contributions of many, many people along the way. For example, it was my brother Dan who added the fourth D to the 4D Model – “Drive.” Without everyone who has been with us on (and contributed to) our journey, none of this would have been possible.
Thousands of people, worldwide, have been trained in how to use Living Leadership in their daily work. Some received this training in combination with PMP Certification Boot Camp and/or PM 4.0 training. Others received Living Leadership-based Agile training. And several hundred people have discovered our Leadership certifications and successfully completed the requirements for those.
On the surface, Living Leadership can look deceptively simple. And, simple is not easy. Based on all the elements and Leadership Mindsets included in Living Leadership, it is anything but simple. It’s very much like the plate spinner at the circus. It takes skill, time, and experience to achieve the Living Leadership Mindset individually, as a team, as well as for the entire organization.
Living Leadership is methodology agnostic
It doesn’t matter if you are using things like traditional project management, lean methodologies, Kanban, change management methodologies, Agile, Scrum, and/or any other way of working (to get stuff done), Living Leadership will help you, your teams and your organization excel and deliver the results that every Executive desires. Living Leadership is methodology agnostic at the individual, team, product, program and management levels.
Here is the latest iteration of the Living Leadership Guide 2024-2025: