A large services organization was challenged with an IT organization of managers/directors who had never been through formal leadership (or even manager) training. It turned to ISG for an accelerated leadership development program.
Opportunity
Every 8 seconds a baby boomer is retiring. This coupled with the “war on talent,” diminishes true leadership capabilities that drive success in business. There is a wealth of knowledge leaving the organization with baby boomers retiring. The challenge is getting the next-gen leaders (and those that were appointed without any formal development) skilled and ready to lead effectively. The company brought in ISG to design and execute an accelerated leadership development program.
Imagining IT Differently
ISG implemented our Accelerated Management Program (AMP). This multi-modal training program collates relevant and “next-gen” management topics in a variety of engaging delivery formats that serve the various learning styles of today’s workforce, including:
- DISC and EQ Assessment
- eLearning
- Reflections
- Social activities
- Classroom Facilitation and Small Group Work
- Panel Discussions
- Excursions
- Labs
Our templatized leadership development curriculum covered enables a standardized learning covering all core leadership skills as well as custom topics chosen by the company. ISG met with participant managers to review the curriculum and their role in helping the participants apply the learnings in a true setting. We met with participant mangers every 8 weeks to see if they were applying what they learned effectively and helped coach the managers on engaging the participants in daily challenges that would help apply the learnings. The curriculum included:
- Leading with Emotional Intelligence
- Values, Purpose and Vision
- Personal Branding
- Writing in the Digital Age / Creating compelling presentations
- Data Analysis /Presentations
- Business Case Challenge – this was a group challenge to be done as teams outside of class
- Coaching for High Performance
- Effective Delegating and Follow up
- What does it mean to be an effective manager at the client company
- Workflow Planning
- Leading through influence
- Collaborating across the organization
- Anticipating and managing changing priorities
- EAR – Engaging, Acknowledging and Rewarding
- Fostering Innovation
- Creative Problem Solving – Design Thinking
- DeBono’s Six Thinking Hats
- Innovation Challenge – Company challenge
- Bring real situations into the classroom
- Facilitated learning between participants
Future Made Possible
- ISG completed the AMP program over six months to give the participants the ability to follow a best-practice cycle of learn, apply, learn, apply – as opposed to cramming all the training in at once where retention often fails
- We started with the IT directors, then moved to all managers in a phased approach
- HR is adopting the program as the “leadership development” program for the company on an ongoing basis
- The company saw 25% more internal promotions within the IT department
- The AMP program also resulted in better recruitment and retaining of top talent as well as better employee engagement and culture.
- The company's IT increased its overall engagement score by 12%
