From learning to doing
How does the world’s largest Business Software Company decide to accomplish their aggressive goals of doubling revenue and expanding their client base?
We partnered with The Ken Blanchard Companies to provide executive coaching to help senior managers and their teams shift their organizational focus from an engineering culture to one of skilled leadership. Comprehensive leadership development training was supported with coaching that focused on action learning through day-to-day interactions and execution.
In spite of 109,000 client companies in 120 countries generating more than €12.5 billion annually, this company’s future goal was to double its revenue and expand its client base to a billion application users by 2015. They decided to accomplish this aggressive goal by focusing on creating innovative solutions and igniting employee passion. The challenge then became to shift the current organizational focus from an engineering culture to one where leaders were skilled at change management, customer-oriented innovation, and creating a shared leadership vision.
They started with their leadership mantra: Learn it (be a lifelong learner who seeks feedback), Live it (lead by example and put learning into practice), and Love it (be an authentic, inspirational, passionate role model), supporting it by putting in a leadership curriculum to help their leaders take the organization to the next level.
To maximize their goals, this company selected The Ken Blanchard Companies as a partner in their journey to success. Cynthia was invited to participate as a coach on the Blanchard CTSL team for both tracks: Managing People for first-level leaders; and Leading for mid-level leaders. Both utilized content from Blanchard’s Leader Action Profile, Situational Leadership II, Situational Self-Leadership, Building Trust, and Situational Team Leadership solutions.
Since sustainability was key to this company, the CTSL coaching focused on strategies to enhance and reinforce the learning curve from the training, working through real business issues using action learning with the support of CTSL.
I got some very good reflections —some eye-opening–about how I can adjust my leadership style in some challenging key relationships, and I’ve been able to put them into practice with great results. Very helpful! Manager
I got some important, key takeaways that are also very practical. I’m looking forward to practicing my new behavior. Managing Consultant
I have some better ideas now for how to motivate my team in the face of some new bureaucratic challenges, as well as a new angle for getting one of my top performers motivated again and more open to collaboration with the rest of his team. Manager
You’ve helped me realize during this session how trapped I’ve been in my thinking. I need to slow down, step back, and take more time out for some deeper reflection. Director
It’s very beneficial to have an outside view. It helps just to be able to talk things through confidentially, with the coaching steering the conversation in a clear direction toward greater clarity. General Manager