Overview

This overview is an orientation to Banff Executive Leadership's team model, mission, learning environment and work.

Where the practice came from

Banff Executive Leadership Inc. was established in 2001 in Banff, Alberta. It began with its founder, Doug Macnamara, who had spent the seven years to 2001 running a residential management education division in the same town before leaving to set up a private firm. The new practice carried across the same subject matter, the same senior audience and the same conviction that the mountain setting was a working part of the learning environment rather than a backdrop for it.

How the practice was structured

It was small at the centre and wide at the edge. The core was a handful of people: a president and lead faculty member, a programmes manager responsible for learning material, environment and logistics, and a personal learning advisor who handled participant needs assessment and helped senior people choose the right programme. Everything beyond that core was drawn from a standing network of faculty associates, assembled per engagement rather than carried as payroll. The note on the associate network explains why that structure suited work at this level.

Sections

• Vision and mission. The practice's own framing of what it existed to do, together with the three tenets and the critical success factors it set itself. See the vision and mission page.
• Board Governance. The larger of the two service pillars: the real work of governance, the distinction between governing and managing, models of governance, and board effectiveness evaluation.
• Executive Leadership Development. Work with vice presidents, general managers, deputy ministers and heads of organizations on strategy, collaborative leadership, creativity and innovation, government relations and complex change.
• Programmes, retreats and coaching. The delivery formats: public and customized programmes, strategic retreat facilitation and keynote sessions, and coaching for board chairs, board members and executive team members.
• Our Work. The shape of the engagements and the sectors they were run in, described generically.
• Leadership Acumen. The publication and the practice’s most enduring material.

The learning environment

Three things defined the learning environment. First, the cohorts were small and uniformly senior, so that nobody had to translate downward and nobody had to perform; peer networking among people carrying comparable accountability was as much of the value as the curriculum. Second, the design was active rather than expository. Programmes were built on competency-based research and active learning processes, on the principle that participants should leave with tools, models and insight applicable to their own circumstances immediately, not with a binder. Third, the mountain setting was used experientially. The natural environment around Banff was worked into sessions to develop empowerment, teamwork, collaboration and problem solving, and local artists were engaged to help develop creativity and innovation in a group of people whose careers had rewarded analysis far more than imagination. The same thinking shaped the retreat and keynote sessions the practice ran.

How the collection is arranged

The main sections separate the practice overview, programme descriptions and the Leadership Acumen publication. The article index divides the writing into governance and executive-leadership themes so readers can follow an argument across related issues.

Two points of external context may help. The setting is documented by Parks Canada in its guide to Banff National Park, and the director-development field this practice worked in is now served in Canada largely by bodies such as the Institute of Corporate Directors.