Building COLAS North America's Leadership Pipeline
COLAS North America partnered with Wally to build a leadership pipeline, creating a deep bench of talent to insure seamless succession at the executive level.
Project overview.
COLAS North America built a leadership pipeline, creating a deep bench of talent to insure seamless succession at the executive level. The program flows through three key dimensions:
- Mastering Self – The key premise is you cannot change or lead anything if you cannot lead yourself. Assessments, journaling and executive coaching help develop enhanced self-awareness.
- Mastering Relationship – Emotional Intelligence and how to have Crucial Conversations enable the student to lead change through better interpersonal effectiveness.
- Mastering Organizational Action – Moving from a project orientation to a company orientation is a challenge. Relevant strategy models and understanding the challenges of leading change are important elements in this dimension.
Project execution.
Situation
Acquisition and organic growth created 13 operating subsidiaries across North America with over $4b in revenue. The culture of COLAS North America, an ENR Top 100 infrastructure contractor, was unclear. Succession planning revealed there was no leadership pipeline. In response, the group had great success creating junior- and mid-level leadership programs known as COLAS 1 and COLAS 2.
FireStarter Speaking and Consulting helped create and then deliver these programs, starting in 2001. This process included the beginning of a common leadership language and the identification of talent for future advancement. As the quality of leadership increased in middle management, COLAS recognized the need to create a program to prepare leaders for subsidiary and national leadership roles. In 2008, they engaged a consortium of two highly-regarded business schools to create a new program to meet this goal. The new program was a total failure. The business schools were unresponsive to COLAS, ignoring requested input on research projects that were to be tailored for COLAS. The generic, canned academic approach to teaching did not meet the needs of a dynamic construction company.
Solution
Wally collaborated with educators at North Carolina State University and with COLAS executive leadership to create a custom program exclusively for COLAS. Meeting over the course of six months, the collaborative effort resulted in the creation of COLAS 3. During the development phase, operational definitions for key terms, clarification and codification of values, and leadership competencies were created and confirmed. This established a common leadership language across the continent that enabled construction professionals to learn and apply MBA-level concepts. COLAS 3, combining important basic principles in leadership development and
client-specific needs, launched in Spring 2010.
Program Dimensions
- Mastering Self – The key premise is you cannot change or lead anything if you cannot lead yourself. Assessments, journaling and executive coaching help develop enhanced self-awareness.
- Mastering Relationship – Emotional Intelligence and how to have Crucial Conversations enable the student to lead change through better interpersonal effectiveness.
- Mastering Organizational Action – Moving from a project orientation to a company orientation is a challenge. Relevant strategy models and understanding the challenges of leading change are important elements in this dimension.
Program Elements
- Assessments for each of the dimensions of the model: self, relationships, and organizational action
- Built-in structure for Reflection to Action to enable application
- Minimum Lecture /Experiential Activities emphasized to maximize the application of academic principles for on-the-job success
- Presentation skills developed through graphic recordings, book reports, and
improv. - Action Learning Projects focused on company-specific issues develop analytical
research skills to impact the organization - Data-driven personal development plans developed for self, relationships and
organizational impacts. - Site visits outside of construction to emphasize learning points and challenge- entrenched paradigms
- Build community within the cohort to enable leadership cohesion into the future
- Use of cutting-edge, researched-based models and tools
- Personal executive coaching with action-planning to foster behavioral change
- Graduation ceremony on Normandy Beach to underscore key principles and the
importance of leading well
Project results.
The bench got deeper. This advanced leadership program, COLAS 3, is their premier leadership development experience in North America. Client anxiety was high after the previous, failed attempt. But after the completion of the first week, COLAS committed to doing a second program. Since then, COLAS 3 has been delivered eight times, to nearly 150 participants. Subsidiary Presidents know and trust each other, having all experienced COLAS 3. The quality and success of graduates was clear to COLAS SA, in Paris. The program is being integrated into a global effort to create organizational leaders for this international company.
