Ben M. Bartlett is a master strategist, coach, speaker and author who helps business leaders, teams and individuals to excel at the most important leadership and life skill. Which is? Strategic management.
Based in his home country of New Zealand, Ben shares his expertise globally. And he does so with a portfolio of consulting, coaching and education services specialising in high performance strategic management.
Strategic management defined? In simple terms, strategic management is the overarching leadership skill of planning and executing a strategy to achieve a big goal and vision.
Established as a discipline in the 1950s, strategic management is the most-valued business leadership skill. So much so that strategic management is taught as the capstone – or most important – course in programs such as the MBA.
However, strategic management is not just the key business skill. Strategic management is a multi-domain skill and process that is required for success in all performance-driven domains including business, elite-level sport, health and fitness, family success and relationships. Put another way, strategic management is the #1 life skill.
Here are three keys to Ben’s work. .
1.Master Strategist
In terms of roles, Ben is first and foremost a master strategist.
The Collins dictionary defines a strategist as “Someone who is skilled in planning the best way to gain an advantage or to achieve success.” And, in the Merriam-Webster dictionary we read that a strategist is, “a person skilled in strategy: a person who is skilled in making plans for achieving a goal: someone who is good at forming strategies.”
As a master strategist, Ben’s role includes:
- Analyzing situations and problems using both traditional and proprietary strategy models such as SmartSWOT and performance scorecards. Applying probability and risk/reward analysis to evaluate strategies. Identifying strategies with the best risk/reward profiles.
- Conducting human capital audits to assess team values, culture, human behaviour and performance.
- Designing strategy models such as business models, visual strategic plans and strategy systems.
- Researching and developing intangible assets including productised IP, strategic brands and integrated marketing systems.
- Advising business owners and boards on best-practice investment strategies to improve ROI on intangible assets/intellectual property and other human capital assets.
- Formulating strategies to improve values, culture, relationships, team performance, personal performance and overall human capital value.
- Coaching business leaders and teams to improve human capital performance
- Teaching the art and science of human capital strategic management
- Researching and writing investment reports, position papers, business cases, brand stories and traditional strategic plans.
In his role as a master strategist Ben combines significant commercial experience with a strong theoretical background that includes a Masters Degree in Business Administration (MBA), specialising in strategic thinking.
Central to Ben’s approach to strategy is his Planning With Pictures system and his use of strategy models.
Strategy models are the tools needed to perform strategic management and include strategy templates, process models, business models and complete strategy systems.
In terms of importance, strategy models are to a strategist, what a hammer and nail is to a builder. That is, they are essential.
Ben attended his first strategic planning course in 1994, where he learnt strategy modelling techniques used by organisations such as NASA. And, since that time he has been dedicated to strategy model research, design and development.
Underpinning planning with pictures and strategy models is design thinking for strategy, a strategic thinking discipline that prioritises the use of creativity and intuition in the strategic management process.
Due to its focus on creativity and intuition, design thinking for strategy is fundamentally the opposite to traditional planning approaches taught at business schools and used by mainstream consultants. Nevertheless, design thinking for strategy is practiced at leading companies including Google, Apple and PepsiCo. And it is now taught at major universities including Stanford and Harvard.
2. The Strategic Framework
The Strategic Framework is Ben’s proprietary portfolio of models, tools and services designed to help teams and individuals to excel at strategic management.
The foundation in the portfolio is The Leadership Skill Set and The High Performance Formula, which are applied to services including:
- 7 Ladders Leadership Development
- The 10 Diamonds
- The Champion Team Blueprint
3. Blended Coaching For Superior Learning and Development
When it comes to developing skills and improving performance, there is one approach that stands out as being the fastest and most effective. It’s called Blended Coaching.
Blended Coaching is used extensively in military training and elite-level sport, and it forms the basis of apprenticeship training programs that are used in trades such as building and plumbing.
Ben’s work applies the blended coaching model.
Three Decades in the Trenches
For three decades Ben has been in the trenches helping business leaders and teams to optimise human capital and to excel at strategy. He has worked with senior executives at large organisations such as Marley, Red Cross, AIG and Honda…managing directors, boards and team members of multi-million dollar a year privately owned companies, government department leaders, and the owners of small businesses.
Ben’s work has been recognised and featured at industry conferences in both New Zealand and Australia, and has been the subject of legal action taken against others who have stolen his – and his clients’ – intellectual property. He has helped firms in a range of sectors including investment advisory, accounting, fast moving consumer goods, building and construction, food manufacturing, insurance and wellness.
And it’s all a far way from where he began.
Ben grew up poor, the son of a solo mother and a largely absent father who had a love for alcohol, drugs and wild parties. And so, his early life was affected greatly by a dysfunctional environment.
Academically Ben was an average student and actually dropped out of high school, before returning again.
Ben’s improvement process began in earnest when he returned to high school and was introduced to the teachings of the late Paul J. Meyer. Not well-known to those born after the 1980s, Paul J. Meyer is the world’s largest-selling personal development author (US $3 billion dollars in sales), and a world authority on goal setting, planning and performance.
Ben listened to Paul J. Meyer’s cassette tapes and studied his courses, and this sparked his interest in the science of strategy and performance. Furthermore, this was the genesis of the change in his life’s trajectory.
Ben has been married for more than 33 years, and has three sons and a daughter in law. His family has an international mix of ethnicities including Maori, English, Filipino, Indonesian and Spanish.
As a church and community leader Ben has headed small and large teams spanning a diverse range of ethnic, socio-economic, family, religious and occupational backgrounds. And he has served more than 30 years as a youth sports/fitness coach (rugby, cricket, touch rugby), outdoor education instructor and life skills mentor.
Ben is a health and fitness advocate and masters athlete. Leaner and fitter than most men half his age, Ben’s wellness strategy includes adhering to a plant-based diet and intermittent fasting. He also runs 5-6 times a week, has previously run marathons and shorter distance events, works out with weights, and plays the sport of touch rugby to national and international level.