I welcome you Matt at SANGKRIT.net, please tell our netizens about yourself.
I grew up up in the US, and as a child was passionate about Korean Tae Kwon Do, where I started teaching all ages as a 9 year old in 1978. I’m now an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist (Ph.D.), and have worked in dozens of countries around the world for firms like AT&T, Motorola, and Merck. For the last 4.5 years, I ran the Infosys Leadership Institute working for the founders of India’s most famous company. My new firm, LeaderAmp, helps leaders accelerate their careers every day through our smartphone app and community based on the latest science. It’s the culmination of all my prior work, and hope it makes gold nuggets that are usually only available to the elite leaders in large multinationals, more accessable.
Tell us more about LeaderAmp? Its brief history and how it works?
LeaderAmp came about after working with thousands of leaders at Infosys where we treated them like Olympic Gold medalists. We measured, challenged, and supported each one to help them achieve their career dreams. But it took highly skilled (and scarce) coaches to tailor a bundle of leadership vitamins, minerals and exercise regimens to support their growth. And coaches could only spend a few hours a quarter with each leader, so leaders would sometimes get distracted and forget to work on their own career development.
When I moved back to the US, I spoke to younger leaders and found that they really didn’t have access to these advanced methods that people at the top of a large multinational get. So I decided to invent a new, engineering worthy approach to measuring, challenging and supporting leaders, making it “come alive” for them every day on their smartphone. LeaderAmp’s app starts with you selecting your goals, and then our advanced measurement technology asks questions about your leadership to you and people you trust. While it’s waiting for others to give you feedback, it shows you early results and recommends a tailored set of actions for you to grow. Uniquely, you can set your report to remind you every day with new actions you can take to accelerate your development. It also has a web/mobile based community that has webinars, tweetchats and community support where you can learn from people like you who grew to greatness. Lastly, it allows you to compare yourself with famous historical leaders. We’re still building it, and the early adopters on IndieGogo (http://igg.me/at/leaderamp) will be able to select the first famous historical leader that we’ll measure.
So how did you come with its concept? How exactly your idea sparked?
It was, in part, looking at the gaps in the current state-of-the-art of leader development; and the “Quantified Self” movement. Quantified Self is a term coined by the editors of Wired Magazine for the tools people are now using to measure and improve themselves. It includes fitness (e.g. fitbit), wellness (e.g. AliveCor), and now leadership development (e.g. LeaderAmp).
How it will improve lives of users?
Many leaders are frustrated with their careers and aren’t quite sure how they can get ahead. Our app will have trustworthy actions they can do to really improve their potential, performance and “promotability”. Unlike other approaches, we have made practical the 70+ years of science of leadership and persuasion in our app and community.
Does it already exist anywhere else? If yes then what makes it different from all other frameworks out there?
There are other apps out there and other approaches to leader development. None of them combine the measurement, challenge and support that LeaderAmp does. They also do not have the latest science for growth. LeaderAmp’s advanced content comes from my latest book, “Leading Value Creation: Organizational Science, Bioinspiration and the Cue See Model”, recently published by Palgrave Macmillan.
How many people got associated for working together on this project?
I’m the founder, and we have an extended team of about 11 people working on various components of the project such as the graphics, the code, or the science.
What philosophy drives you doing this and what makes your endeavours unique ?
We believe in the practical application of science to improve leaders. Just as people over the decades have been able to become better Olympic athletes through better diet, exercise and vitamins, leaders will be able to avoid their frustrations with their careers by developing every day. The fact that our app tailors new actions for the leader every day, and is rooted in science, makes our app unique. Further, it will only recommend actions and provide community support in areas relevant to the leader. Other solutions have a “one size fits all” for leaders, and cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars without much developmental support. In contrast, LeaderAmp’s entry-level solution is about the price of a book on IndieGogo.
How other netizens can help you in this regard ?
If there are people you know who are frustrated with their career and aren’t sure how they can get ahead, we would like to help them. We’re not a magic pill – it’s still up to the leader to work on himself/herself, but if they really want the secrets of what works, we want to help them.
What are your future plans ? Are you working on some other projects also ?
There are some very cool future features we’ll add to make this solution highly useful. All of our leader development solutions are being built around the app, community and latest science. We are completely focused on the launch of our new solution, and aren’t working on anything else.
What is you web address? Do you own a domain?
Yes, we’re currently encouraging people to support our IndieGogo campaign http://igg.me/at/leaderamp and our regular URL is http://www.leaderamp.com
Where netizens can grab latest news feed about your projects?
Our blog is the best way to stay in touch http://www.leaderamp.com/Blog
What is your ultimate message for netizens?
What are you doing with your growth that makes your success unstoppable?
Thank you very much Matt for opting Internet as your place of doing business. I wish you success in upgrading humanity!