100 leaders, 36 hours, 12 leadership competencies – what could possibly go wrong? Arla’s leadership Bootcamps have ignited engagement with our leadership culture.
Now the fire’s lit, how do we keep it burning?
“This learning session ranks among the best I have attended during my time at Arla Foods.”
“An exceptionally impactful event. The high energy and interactive nature of the session made it a truly valuable learning experience.”
“Fun, challenging, creative, insightful and extremely well organized.”
Issue/Challenge
Arla Leaders work in a fast-paced, consumer-driven environment with an emphasis on quality, safety, and innovation. Additionally, significant external pressures faced within food manufacturing mean that strong leadership and culture are now more important than ever before.
Arla’s leadership development team needed to prioritise getting development to more leaders and faster, whilst linking it to business strategy, values and culture.
We set out to evolve the entire development offering; engaging and revitalising leaders at a larger scale with greater impact.
Solution
At the heart of this refreshed Leadership Development portfolio is the ALP26 Bootcamp. This was a deliberate move away from traditional training to a 100% immersive, 2-day experience for 100 Arla Leaders at a time, that brings to life Arla’s leadership culture.
We worked with a UK-based partner, INVOLVE, who helped design and produce the Leadership Bootcamp. The bootcamp is a unique mix of activities and dilemmas, designed to challenge and put Leaders’ personal, team and organisational skills to the test, while also creating the opportunity for them to build a cross-functional leadership network.
Day 1 of the Bootcamp explores Arla’s leadership competencies and includes time for debriefing, self-reflection and personalisation. To help with this, we designed a Personal Learning Record where Leaders can score themselves, identify skill gaps and instantly capture self-development ideas.
Day 2 focuses on Leaders consolidating learning and making the commitment to visibly dial-up the leadership competencies in their role.
Highlights of the Bootcamp include:
An ‘Escape Room’ style experience where teams race against the clock to solve complex puzzles and save Maren the cow!
- • Audio ‘playlets’ on silent disco headsets that feature ‘real-life’ Arla situations
- • Teams working together in a real TV studio to shoot videos to engage other Arla Leaders
- • An ‘aerobic’, physical set of challenges that demand advanced teamwork
- • Leaders co-creating motivational and self-development tools which are distributed to the wider organisation via the ‘Leadership Passport’
Result
Over 20 months, we have delivered 9 Bootcamps, for approximately 900 leaders and managers.
All members of our Executive Team have participated plus we have approx. 2-3 different Arla SVPs per camp. They contribute to running the activities and driving the learning.
Every participant is asked the same 3 ‘impact’ questions pre- and post-Bootcamp. On average we see an upwards shift of +23%.
Also, using the tried and tested NPS style question, Leaders are asked how much they would recommend the Bootcamp to colleagues. The target for each Bootcamp is 50-70. The current average score is 76.
About Arla
Arla Foods Group is a one of the largest dairy co-operatives in the world, with 21,000 colleagues and operating in 40 different countries, worldwide. Being farmer-owned, we are passionate and proud about our farming culture and legacy and reflect this in everything we do. Major brands include Lurpak, Skyr, Cravendale, and Castello.
About INOVLVE
INVOLVE is a leading, UK-based agency that designs and delivers highly immersive live engagement experiences that involve, energise and mobilise attendees; leaders, managers, and all employees.
We believe that every live experience should maximise participation, co-creation and collaboration, and deliver measurable change and business impact.
Recent clients include Arla, British Airways, Diageo and GSK.
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