IT products and services company Cisco’s Leadership Breakthrough is a nomination-based leadership development program for high-potential directors and principal engineers in Cisco’s Development Organization.
The program strengthens leadership capability in five areas:
1. Shaping Business Strategy
2. Focusing Externally (Customer and Market Centricity)
3. Building Capability in Their Organization
4. Leading Change and Business Transformation
5. Leading Self/Emotional Intelligence
In a cohort structure of 30 participants, hands-on skill development occurs via residential and virtual sessions, plus small group work on an action learning project that has been identified by an Advisory Committee made up of VPs.
Directors achieve four important outcomes from the program:
1. Significantly stronger leadership skills in defining business strategy, executing with sharper precision, comfortably challenging status quo, and influencing across the organization
2. Greater self-awareness about their leadership strengths, pressure points, and how their peers perceive them
3. Hands-on experience with more senior-level responsibilities and expectations
4. Exposure and relationship building with both external customers and Cisco executives
Program Details
Leadership Breakthrough consists of the following components:
1. Orientation: A virtual one-hour orientation to launch the program and communicate expectations. Both participants and their upline managers participate.
2. Four-day “Hot House” (Residential): During this challenging in-person session, participants:
- Learn pragmatic approaches to customer and market centricity, strategy development, cross-functional collaboration, and viewing talent from an organizational lens
- Participate in an assessment-style simulation, working in teams to determine market and product strategy under challenging conditions
- Hear from a panel of Cisco VPs and customers about leadership, market position, business opportunities and threats, and competition
- Receive candid and supportive feedback on their leadership strengths and development opportunities from both facilitators and peers
- Work on a current business challenge and apply new tools to create conditions for success
3. Two-day “Cool Box” (Residential): This in-person session occurs two months after the Hot House and focuses on self-awareness and the potential for personal “Breakthrough” to new levels of leadership behavior and execution.
4. Action Learning Project (ALP) Readouts: Each ALP Team presents its findings and recommendations to executive-level project sponsors and stakeholders, who, in turn, provide feedback on both recommendation quality and team performance. Often the projects receive funding/commitment to bring recommendations to fruition.
5. Cohort Closeout: A virtual two-hour program close to review learning and conclude the cohort experience. Upline managers of each participant also participate in a separate cohort closeout so they are better equipped to support the ongoing development of their high-potential directors.
Results
Leadership Breakthrough participants cite high levels of skill development (4.64 out of 5) and immediate job performance improvement (4.68 out of 5). The program is considered a positive investment in career development (4.63 out of 5). And longer-term business impact study results reveal that 73 percent of participants have increased the engagement of their team members, 71 percent have built better relationships with key stakeholders, and 78 percent have demonstrated a greater focus on Cisco customers.
