Case Study: Leadership Training & Development

Client Description:

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is a Fortune 100 global technology company.

The Situation:

In January 2002 HP faced extraordinary challenges: - HP was adjusting to a major reorganization, which reconfigured over 80 separate business units into just 4 global business units. - The company was completing and implementing its merger with Compaq. - The backdrop was a weakened economy following September 11 and the dot-com downfall, forcing the first largescale layoffs in the company's history.

The Challenge:

The company's situation presented a huge challenge to its leaders at all levels. Leadership approaches that had been effective in more stable, autonomous business units were not effective in this new environment. The new strategy demanded integrated solutions that would provide both ease and incremental value to customers.

Through an employee survey, the following concerns were identified: - Line managers did not support priorities for action. - Decision-making was slow. - Cross-boundary cooperation was weak. - The changes in processes, metrics, rewards, and behavior to support the shift to a customer-centered business strategy needed to be accelerated. - Accountability for measurable results needed to be increased.

The Solution:

Together with HP's central function for workforce development, Conversant developed the Dynamic Leadership training program to train all managers. The program provided a common and effective set of tools to accelerate collaboration and contribution. A 10-week follow-through program designed by Fort Hill ensured that goals set during the program were destined for completion and that the return on investment (ROI) of the program could be accurately measured. Early results drove additional demand to also train individual contributors.

Results:

The Dynamic Leadership program produced a 15:1 ROI, a dramatically better result than most training programs. Nine thousand managers and individual contributors worldwide have been trained to date. Ninety-four percent (94%) of participants reported that they had used the Dynamic Leadership tools to advantage in the first three months after training. Participants identified specific, measurable benefits from the trainingtime and money saved by reaching decisions and gaining alignment more quickly.

Comments from Dynamic Leadership participants:

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"While working on the requirements for the new Peer Review tracking automation tool, the Dynamic Leadership skills helped me remove needless discussion and 'arguing' time from the meetings. The team was able to move quicker to specifying requirements and get the project moving faster."

"In a series of conversations on pricing, I kept pressing an issue to get to authentic communication in the teamclearly articulating everyone's position in the teamuntil we understood what unified and what separated our positions. We made considerable progress toward agreement on pricing strategy. If I persist in this vein and get my team to adopt a similar position, we will incrementally gain the company hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars." {modulebot module=Case Studies and Services Sub Menu}

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