“As I sit and reflect this morning about this week’s historic event, I am truly speechless. There are no words elegant enough to describe what we as a team achieved.” That’s an incredible statement from the Vice President of Leadership and Development for a major pharmaceutical company.
The statement is even more remarkable when you consider that—just six months before—the company did not have any leadership development programs in place for the 3,500 managers of its mission-critical R&D team. But the CEO firmly believes that growing leaders within the organization will yield better results faster than the competition.
“As I sit and reflect this morning about this week's historic event, I am truly speechless. There are no words elegant enough to describe what we as a team achieved.”
-Vice President of Leadership and Development for a major pharmacuetical company
The Challenge: Leadership as a Business Differentiator
“If the intent was to start a revolution from the ground up, I think you might just have succeeded,” enthused an R&D Manager after going through the BTS program.
But how do you create the foundation for a revolution? It was progress in biotechnologies that made possible the “green revolution” in agriculture. Similarly, digital advances in communications, new learning technologies and methodologies can drastically accelerate learning, behavior change, and business results. Introducing highly customized and relevant business simulations, as well as the use of interactive engage maps and groups small enough in size yet diverse in composition, create an exceptional learning dynamic.
In just one week 2,000 Frontline Leaders from all parts of the client organization, including Europe, the Americas and Asia Pacific, experienced a carefully orchestrated leadership development program.
“While the scale was immense,” said one director for Supply Chain Systems and Information, “it never felt overwhelming, and struck an effective balance when we broke into our smaller ‘lab’ groups.” Over time a total of 9,000 leaders from across the broader global company working in 12 languages will experience the program.
Such an ambitious roll-out can succeed only if the tools and techniques deployed are precisely crafted to meet a company’s very specific agenda. For example, to expand and deepen leadership capabilities, the client is building out long-term development opportunities:
- Creating a new kind of leader through the BTS Essentials of Business Leadership core program
- Providing leaders with deep curricula of experiential learning “electives” to build and sustain the core experience while diving into specific skill areas
- Closely connecting learning to results and engaging the leader of the learner in the process
- Executing flawlessly and leveraging top global facilitation
“Through this entire journey we became much more than a team. From design to planning, logistics to communications and to data management/LDT management,” said the Vice President for Leadership and Development, “everything was flawlessly delivered with such overwhelming commitment from the BTS team.”
An Investment in Leadership
But here’s how you know all that work pays off. “I cannot remember attending a similar event,” said one manager, “where I felt so enthused about my role as a leader. I am committing myself to being a better leader.” Or from a UK participant. “Thank you for the investment that you have made in each one of us. Thank you for your personal energy, passion and commitment and for kickstarting the journey to a new leadership culture.”
While 12 top Leadership Development companies vied for this global frontline leadership development contract, only one company offered best-in-class experiential learning solutions, blended and global delivery, engagement of leaders, trainer certification and more. That company is BTS.
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Pharma Case Study
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