Leadership Case Studies

Provocative and Personal…
A best-in-class software development company asked us to design a process to help accelerate the learning curve for their emerging leaders. Wroking with their internal People Developemt team, we created a series of learning events that bridge the gap between their current jobs and the evolving leadership needs of the business. This project has become a truly collaborative effort; the People Development team maintains context and connection with the leadership group and we provide a series of custom-designed and facilitated learning events.

The success of this design resulted Bristlecone becoming a long term strategic partner with the business. To help accelerate the orientation and "on-boarding" process of new leaders, we've developed a high-impact team orientation process for them using a combination of experiential learning and interactive team simulations.

Building Best Practices
A best-in-class manufacturing and marketing organization asked us to "do some leadership training" to help fix a number of quality problems, lagging lead-times, poor delivery follow-through and employee morale problems. After doing an initial survey of the company, it was apparent that training alone would not fix their problems, and we told them so. Instead, we embarked on a series of dialogue sessions with employees to identify what brought out their best at work, and what was getting in their way from doing their best in their current jobs. During these sessions, the manager of the group only listened and took notes; the employees did all the talking. We then did the same with two of the company's key clients, except this time the CEO and key marketing executives did the listening.

We then held a three day retreat with the senior leadership team of the company to review the findings, identify trends and brainstorm solutions. Through this meeting, the participants were able to identify their own best practices. After some intensive activity mapping exercises, they re-assigned themselves to the areas they excelled in.

Finally we created a management development program that involved a combination of training, mentoring by senior leaders and improved metrics of each manager's results. Over the course of 14 months, employee morale skyrocketed, lead times were reduced by almost half and deliveries to clients rose to above 90%, on-time - a 45% improvement!

Contact us for more information on designing a customized leadership development program for your company.