This regional Tele-communications Company developed a new market strategy and began the transition from a utility company to a high-tech, communication service organization. In preparation for this strategic shift, IT leaders wanted to prepare their mid-level managers to take on a leading role in executing a new strategy that would double the size of the company and put it on a national scale.
Goal
The goal for this initiative was to provide mid-level IT managers with executive management skills, greater leadership perspective, and capabilities needed to take on critical new responsibilities, change management initiatives, and new technologies. Specific goals for emerging leaders and new managers included:
- Managing technology expansion programs with high levels of efficiency, effectiveness, and quality in a cost effective manner
- Identifying non-IT opportunities that impact the company's bottom line and increase managers’enterprise-wide understanding
- Balancing strategy execution with tactical challenges
- Communicating IT’s value proposition at all levels and roles within the organization
The Leadership Development Program design needed to address the following challenges:
- Managers had little reason to change the way they worked for a very long time; now they needed to innovate and drive value
- Participants were only used to traditional training with little accountability to learn. Now they would be on the hook to not only apply their learning, but also to produce tangible business impact
- Provide a learning experience that was relevant to participants' current and future roles within the company
- Get significant levels of senior executives’ participation to link action learning experiences to current and future IT initiatives
- The company’s hierarchical organizational deisgn and structure discouraged mid-level managers from taking risks and innovating
- Balancing IT innovation with the rest of the company’s desire for IT to remain consistent and conservative
The program combined traditional executive and leadership development approaches with an action learning format for executive development. Once a month for half a day, we provided traditional training on topics such as communication skills, problem solving, conflict management, motivating employees, risk management,and others. For the remainder of that day and in between sessions, participants worked in cross functional teams, with a goal of providing a significant contribution to the company's bottom line or competitive position.
Teams progressed through the phases of a major project while they received just-in-time training, coaching, mentoring, and the tools necessary to succeed. Four teams of 4 participants went through the following steps over a twelve-month timeframe:
- Identify opportunities to either drive new revenue or decrease operational costs
- Select one high potential opportunity and create a business case to present to senior executives for implementation approval
- Lead the project implementation, engaging and influencing targeted areas within the company
- Measure results from the project
- An executive coach who provided knowledge and input on project scope, organizational politics, and how to keep on track
- A shared Executive Sponsor, the Chief Technology Officer, who met with teams between
sessions to provide strategic guidance - A senior operations manager who helped provide subject matter expertise to the program, the facilitators, and the teams
While initial leadership development program objectives and metrics did not include specific dollar goals and bottom line impact, the action learning framework evolved to incorporate this focus as part of the implementation process for opportunities identified that could potentially produce bottom line results.
- Roughly, $150,000 in bottom line impact was realized in Year One with a conservative Year Two estimate of $500,000 in impact
- Four of sixteen participants were promoted immediately following the program as a result of their performance and executive visibility
- Two participants made lateral moves as a result of interest, performance, and new relationships with non-IT executives
- Results also included the development of new critical processes and identification of marketing opportunities
- At the end of the two-year growth and acquisition period, several program participants were
acknowledged for their contribution to the successful execution of the company’s strategy
