National Retailer Embraces Champion of Innovation and Change

Our client is the nation’s largest retail cooperative providing quality outdoor gear and apparel, and has been honored seven consecutive years as one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For^®.

Client Need

“I have probably used this training more than any other training I’ve had at the company, and that’s in 18 years.”

—Store Manager

We were asked to conduct a seminar session to enhance the skills of the Retail senior staff and all store managers to lead and communicate change.

There was no universally shared approach that focused on the role of the leader at the store level. The client asked that we introduce the Retail senior leadership team and all of the store managers to leadership skills that focused on leading and communicating change, and that we have them to apply the leadership skills directly to a current mission-critical initiative during the seminar. Our client was making a substantial commitment of resources and time to provide each of the 75 managers with this full-day of professional development, and they wanted to be confident that the learning would take firm root so that the managers would continue to apply it well after the finish of the seminar session.

Our Approach

We began, as we do with every one of our clients, by forming a collaborative relationship with an internal client partner to stay aligned on expectations and deliverables for the seminar.

In designing the seminar session, we started from our belief that in order to apply the art of leadership, you must first explore your own truth as a leader and address your fundamental beliefs about yourself as a human being, your role as a leader, your work, and the work of your company. With that in mind, we drew on our seminar materials to plan a one-day session that was equally introspective, and instructive and interactive. The first seminar of the session asked each manager to reflect on and share their personal convictions and beliefs about themselves, their work and their role as a leader. The second seminar of the session, Champion of Innovation and Change, engaged all of the managers in working together in small groups to both learn and apply a Framework for Leading Innovation and Change to a specific mission-critical initiative that was chosen by the Retail senior staff.

Implementation

We facilitated seminars sessions in sizes of 8-18 managers, each at different regional locations across the United States.

Since the managers were all working on applying the materials to the same mission-critical initiative, we conducted each seminar as a real-work session focusing on learning and application. We recorded the output of the sessions, and prepared and distributed summary documents to all of the managers in order to safeguard the collective thinking of the Retail managers for immediate and future action.

Following the seminars, many of the store managers shared, taught and applied the Framework for Leading Innovation and Change with their store staffs in the interest of addressing store-specific initiatives, and in an effort to develop the skills of the individual contributors in the stores.

In subsequent Retail leadership strategic planning meetings, the leadership skills and tools for leading change have been used regularly to stimulate a broad dialogue about mission-critical strategic initiatives, and then diagnose, plan, and communicate actions to move the initiatives forward.