Faculty
Carol Martin
IBM business Development, Business Analytics
Since graduating from the MAOL Carol Martin has brought back to her organization the ability to look at a business challenge from many different perspectives and see the opportunity for change. She says that new tools she collected during her MAOL studies help her work more effectively and understand what her points of leverage really are and what she brings as a leader.
“I saw more clearly my own strengths, but also the barriers I set up for myself. I saw how I was inhibiting my own progress and self at work through my devising. The big breakthrough for me was being able to unlock, change and realize my potential in a fuller way.”
Martin’s ability to adapt and see challenges through a broader lens allowed her to incite breakthrough change in her organization. Her initiative entailed creating a culture of “reference-ability” that transformed how her company sees customer references. The project changed practices and behavior within her organization to organically build a reference pipeline that invited communication with the customer base while affording her team usable feedback for future processes. Martin reports that the initiative gained great momentum and achieved excellent results through applying the techniques she learned during her studies.
“You find your way through the breakthrough using MAOL materials and by interacting with the faculty and your colleagues. It’s challenging, complex, rewarding, it allows you to try things that you haven’t necessarily seen or done in the organization, and that’s all part of the learning that you take away; it’s very different from learning something from a textbook and walking away with knowledge.”
Since Martin’s initiative her organization has built a broad database of references, collecting more than 60 new success stories within Martin’s MAOL year alone. She says that her organization has become more customer-centric, leading to positive feedback from referees. The organization has also developed a common vision, a common approach and gone through an aggregate behavioral change that increases output.
Martin has shared with her entire organization the experience she gained through orchestrating her breakthrough initiative. She is also now a member of MAOL faculty. She offers current MAOL cohorts frameworks for applying the tools and learning gained in the MAOL, which she says allows her to uphold her commitment to generating leadership and continue to learn and grow as a leader herself. Martin says that the MAOL offers professional growth entirely unlike any other training program through which she has ever been, keeping her doubly invested in its future and interested in staying linked through serving on faculty.
“The conversation around organizational leadership is never static, it moves in different directions,” Martin explains. “And the beauty of it is that this material is highly focused on practical applications—what you do as your day job and how you can transform the organization and get breakthrough results. You take theory and bring it back to your role in the organization while enhancing your own leadership and understanding better where your own role is.”