The Ulthule Story
Achieving the Highest Level of Performance Attainable
The Ancient Romans believed that building and maintaining an empire required leadership at the highest level attainable. We may surmise that for many of their most noteworthy leaders, being good enough was never good enough. The thinking of these visionaries far surpassed the vision of modern corporate leaders who see most things in corporate life through the restrictive lens of competitive justification and profit potential. Something much more substantial and dynamic ignited the desires of Ancient Roman leaders.
As an historical body of path-finders, the Ancient Romans did not think in terms of sustaining competitive advantage, or have much use for trends, fads, and experiments. Rather their vision was more broad and expansive, with the drama of life or death often hanging in the balance. Consequently, their visions were at times both fierce and noble. Ancient Roman leaders more clearly believed in sustaining the quality-of-life of their citizens while growing their empire to ensure the continuity of leadership for those yet to follow. Just as Roman citizenship was held as a great honor and was the aspiration of many, a secure Roman existence and its preferred quality-of-life was believed to be the outcome of performing at the highest level attainable.
Today, two Latin words crystallize this ancient and proven commitment to leadership - "Ultima Thule," an ancient Roman expression meaning the highest degree attainable. Inspired by these Ancient visions, Dr. Raymond Newkirk has derived a more concise expression for 21st Century leadership urging us to achieve the highest level of performance attainable. His term for this is Ulthule. It is achieved by integrating advanced knowledge, wisdom, and experience in such diverse areas as Group Work, Group Dynamics, Human Systems, Systems Thinking, Psychology, Ethics, Learning, Performance, Communications, Diversity, Social Cognition, Mindfulness, and Design Inquiry.
Ulthule leaders are persons who master this transdisciplinary view of leadership to achieve Group Work performance at the highest level attainable. Ulthule Group Work is the outcome of Ulthule Leadership. It is the result of team effort at the highest level attainable, or Ultima Thule, to meet the requirements of performance for customers, managers, workmates, and others. Ulthule leaders attain performance well beyond the effort that sustains competitive advantage and Information Technology leverage.
Most issues faced by leaders are of the human performance kind. Over the last half of the 20th Century, management thinking had adopted the evolutionary reductionists view of self-regulating structure in which impersonality in corporate human systems became the preferred approach for improving organization performance, especially at the top. In this morally unimaginative view, people became merely a means to an end in which individuality is sacrificed to profitability. This thinking, however, has led to a more coldly, dehumanized work environment in which many people are left feeling empty or otherwise dissatisfied with leadership. Even in situations where people-centered programs came to the forefront, they merely served to maintain current leadership approaches, or technically speaking, maintain asymmetrical relations of power.
In many instances, this perspective has resulted in the proverbial mess which is perpetuated by really empty leadership. What Dr. Newkirk discovered in these situations is that management practice has become very trend-centric, often abandoning solid principles of human behavior and Ulthule Leadership to grab the competitive advantage without regard for the community of workers who make all success possible. The force of corporate took a life of its own in which the distinctiveness of ethical persons became irrelevant. Thus, conscience reduced to the lowest common denominator of ethical standards through the evolution of meaninglessness at the top.
The Newkirk Group is aware what this thinking means to the future of your organization, its people, and level of Group Work performance. Now that businesses and their employees are reeling from the logical conclusion of such management reductionism and unimaginative morality, something more substantial is needed to meet the call of leadership for improving Group Work performance. Dr. Newkirk has designed the Ulthule Leadership and Group Work approach to form genuine leaders who can tap the reservoir of advanced knowledge, management wisdom, and experience needed to build meaningful visions for the future and who are willing to participate in their own self-design.
Ulthule is a powerful, interactive leadership approach that empowers all levels of an organization. For executives, Ulthule provides a dynamic leadership approach that integrates each domain of the business environment. For Information Technology managers, Ulthule identifies and enables the prerequisites for succeeding in a Virtual Commerce, high performance environment. For end-users, Ulthule presents a high performance process for participating with technical groups while achieving business performance at the highest level attainable. For business partners and stakeholders, Ulthule provides a leadership approach that ensures a safe and effective business relationship. For everyone, Ulthule provides an effective approach for transferring wisdom about leadership and Group Work performance from one group in the work environment to another.
The Ulthule Leadership approach offers what you need to guide your own visions in a world forever changed by the challenges of the evolutionary reductionists view of management. Ulthule Leadership is the result of more than 3,000 years of development! While many trends and fads of leadership and management practice have their day and then rapidly disappear, lasting about two to three years, Ulthule Leadership is perennial and has already built great empires.