A large technology company wanted to equip 100 directors with processes and tools to better navigate their volatile, uncertain landscape. Duke Corporate Education crafted sensemaking experiences for leaders to engage in the context and challenges facing the organization. For example, participants immersed in different neighborhoods to study developments in the local infrastructure where they engaged first-hand in fieldwork, pattern recognition and insight generation, all driving a stronger understanding of how their products and services can add to a larger ecosystem.
The company reported profound changes in leaders becoming agile and comfortable navigating between chaos and order, as a result of the program. A director of the effort noted, “It gets us out of talking just numbers. It gets us using our right brain, thinking creatively about the current situation, listening differently and asking questions in a different way. We don’t follow a set course, but let the conversation take us.”
How do you initiate a mindset shift among an organization’s leaders? How do you expose leaders to a new way of seeing the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world so that they navigate and respond accordingly? What tools and behaviors – if made a habit – can ingrain this mindset shift in a leader?
Approach
Duke CE worked with a group of the client’s high potential future leaders to address these questions. Key to the process was sensemaking: using the tools of social science to find underlying meaning in the lives of customers. Duke CE provided different sensemaking experiences for the learners to engage them deeply in the content and challenges facing the organization. For example, participants were spread across different neighborhoods to study developments in the local infrastructure. Participants were engaged first-hand in fieldwork, pattern recognition and insight generation. Essentially, they had to reframe their conventional approach to business problems from the outset. After the experience, facilitators helped the participants recognize patterns in the data they had uncovered and turn them into meaningful insights. After the experience, participants used the same sensemaking tools to understand the source of the company strategy and the context within which people work.
Leaders and managers need direct engagement and variety in learning experiences. Duke CE was proactive in formulating working teams during different sessions so that the participants would get maximum exposure to their colleagues in other parts of the business. Structured time was provided for participants to think through how they were going to apply what they learned back at work.
