Not everything was a glowing success for a new leadership development program at Heinz, but lessons learned helped to improve future program designs.
"Well I am proud of my husband. He has a great job," I said. "But I'm the VIP for Heinz."
He sputtered a little, but I helped him through the awkwardness with a laugh and change of subject. Two weeks later, I was settled in Pittsburgh, surveying the city from my 60th-floor office.
My charter as the new head of executive development was to build a mini version of GE's leadership university—Crotonville—for Heinz globally. The Heinz CEO counted GE's CEO at the time, Jack Welch, as a mentor and wanted to ensure we were developing our far-flung executives to be prepared for growth.
Headquarters was a relatively small group of executives focused on corporate strategy and portfolio. The CEO wanted to create a more cohesive, skilled top leadership team. I was asked to propose a leadership training program and a budget for the few hundred senior executives.
I felt on top of the world. What I learned from the experience was an important lesson in the balancing act between truth telling and inspiring hope.
The solution
In my prior role as head of people and organization development for an aerospace division of Lockheed Martin, I had the opportunity to develop numerous comprehensive programs. My experience had taught me that one of the biggest actions we could take to ensure good management started with selection. Any program we developed at Heinz would not only help develop existing leadership, but also provide information to help us make promotion decisions.
After several consultations with a wide variety of suppliers, we developed our keystone program. Among its components was a one-week custom-designed program held regionally. Central to the program was a highly configured simulation embedded within an assessment center.
Prework consisted of a 360-degree evaluation, various psychological assessments, online learning, and readings in preparation for the simulation. Each participant spent up to two hours with a psychologist to interpret results and create a development plan.
The program also included leadership training, team building activities (sheep shearing in Australia was one of my favorite team building events), and a set of action learning programs selected by the CEO with a coach for each team. Action learning team results were presented to the CEO and his staff upon conclusion six months later.
In addition, we compiled a report of capabilities for division heads to survey overall leadership strength and developed an annual leadership review, in the style of the GE "Session C." To track the results of the assessments and succession plans, we purchased succession-planning software and set up a visual talent pool room in a spare conference room. Whenever promotion or replacement decisions needed to be made, the CEO could walk through the room to be reminded of talent available anywhere in the world.
In the spirit of keeping a lean headquarters staff, we only added one person on an international fellowship assignment to help with the program. Everything else was done through a supplier or hands-on by me.
What worked
Overall, the program was deemed a success. Here are some of the key elements that made it work.
Networking. Part of our goal was to create new networks so that executives could share ideas, and this turned out to be a big plus for them. Our sessions were held at somewhat remote locations so that people would not be tempted to go back to the office. We had dedicated cozy bar space that remained open as long as people stayed, and that turned out to be very long. There always were a few red eyes after a 2 a.m. closure the night before.
Coaching. The coaching to interpret assessment results and the coaching for the action learning teams was particularly helpful. Since the action learning teams were cross-functional and a first-time event, the participants needed the nudging to stay on track.
The leadership review. These are fairly typical in most organizations now, but at the time, were somewhat new. Simply creating a conversation led by the CEO with his key teams around the world ensured a greater focus on the importance of developing talent. The conversation was what mattered most.
CEO buy-in. The CEO was completely supportive and in agreement with the whole plan, including providing the budget to make the program happen.
Executive summary reports. I personally met with each of the top executives to show a summary of their own team's capabilities, all in a one- to two-page format. One of the most telling reports showed that all of the executives' direct reports were strong in strategy and creativity, but short on execution skills.
Indeed, they had some of the cleverest advertisements of all the brands, but were missing their numbers. The top executive decided to exchange some of his staff with another executive who had the opposite problem, which created rotational assignments that benefited everyone.
What needed work
The difference between successful enough and extraordinary success lay in some of these elements:
WTMI. There was way too much information for the participant to absorb, even with the help of the psychologist coach. Most participants needed a stiff drink afterward just to tolerate the feedback and rebuild their confidence.
Instead of feeling motivated, they felt deflated, which was far from our intent. Yes, they were supposed to pick two strengths to focus on and one area for improvement, but when you have dozens to pick from, it's overwhelming.
Top management buy-in. I had come from a defense company culture, so I was naïve about the need to socialize the program through all the top management team, not just the CEO. It wasn't until they had seen some of the reports and results that they got fully on board in supporting the program.
Price tag. Although the cost was less than sending everyone to a third-party program, the price tag per person was significant. The assessment and coaching was a big part of the expense and could have been scaled back.
Follow-up. The program was six months long, but after the teams completed their action learning, that was the end of it. We did not build a plan for following up on their development plans or for continuing communication post-program.
Training downstream. Participants had their elevator speech, but we did not prepare a plan on how they would flow down learning through their organization.
The visual talent pool room. I was in love with this idea, but it was an incredible time sink and the waste of a conference room. Software is now much better than it was then, enabling the CEO presentation and sorting into talent pools.
Inspiration. We didn't pay enough attention to inspiring people to want to become better leaders. I'd come from an engineering-driven culture before, and their tolerance for motivational touches was quite low or nonexistent. Heinz was more of a marketing-driven culture, and I failed to design enough inspiration in the program to keep them motivated to become better leaders.
What I learned
Leadership is not an easy role, and anyone who chooses it deserves a great deal of respect no matter her skill level. To some degree, every development program has a moral balance between truth and hope.
How much do we let people know about their current performance and capabilities versus build hope about what they can become? I definitely focused too heavily on the truth-telling end of the spectrum. I don't think we need to avoid feedback on the one or two areas that might be preventing people from achieving greatness, but hope is stronger than truth when it comes to motivating change.
Two jobs later, I got nearly the same chance to develop a program for the new CEO of Sun Microsystems. I spent far more time getting alignment and agreement throughout the organization for the new program. Our per-person cost for the program was nearly half of the prior program, but delivered more elements. Some of the differences in the design were:
- a shortened version of the program for top executives that let them experience it and to motivate them to shore up attendance
- the use of high-level executives as team evaluators
- minimal psychological assessments and more team evaluations
- flow-down tools and online training to pass to teams
- more coaching sessions, with a pre-event call to set learning goals, the same coach at the live event, and another call post-event to continue the learning
- predesigned evaluation methods.
The design matters, but we also designed for inspiration. Besides the comments and measurable follow-through after the program, we also measured intent to stay with a simple question with a five-point scale response: If you were offered a similar job at a different company, would you take it? The score on that one question improved dramatically from pre- to post-program. People got hope, and hope matters.
