THE CHALLENGE
Akamai set out to enhance their leaders’ skills and behaviours in order to deliver against current market challenges and to take advantage of future opportunities.
THE SOLUTION
PotentialSquared partnered with Akamai and designed a bespoke Leadership Academy (LA) and Advanced Leadership Academy (ALA) for middle to senior level leaders, built around our Pi2 Leadership Impact Model. The Academies aimed to bring fresh and engaging ways of delivering the priority skills and behaviours that Akamai’s leaders needed now, and in the future. Akamai wanted to future proof the leadership pipeline so that people on the bench are ready to step in when opportunities become available.
PotentialSquared adopted, with Akamai, a Design Thinking approach and created, prototyped, and tested, a blended development experience. The experience included the use of actors, simulations, diagnostics and coaching circles. This approach continues to be delivered. The content is reviewed and refreshed as and when needed. The Academies have their target skills measured via a multi-rater 360. We anchored the content around very distinct competencies that are aligned to the manager success profiles within the business, so they resonate with Academy participants.
Materials were created specifically for the academies, covering:
1. Executive Presence
2. Purpose
3. Coaching
4. Habits
5. Psychological Safety
6. Leadership Narratives
7. Storytelling and Strategic Conversations
The content was delivered through a series of face to face/virtual events, coaching circles, a digital platform and discussion forums. The work of the Academies was underpinned by the concept of Emotional Intelligence. With each year focusing on new topics.The Advanced Leadership Academy featured a business focused Innovation project, using SprintbaseTM (a virtual collaboration tool) to develop projects set in an Investors Marketplace. These projects involved Senior Leaders as the end point.
THE IMPACT
The Academies partnership with Akamai has won two awards:
- The Brandon Hall Awards 2019 (The Best Advance in Measuring the Impact of Leadership Development – Gold Award
- The ATD 2020 – Management & Leadership – Awards (Excellence in Learning Success & Measurement – Gold Award
IMPACT STORIES FROM THE ACADEMIES:
1. “With refreshingly direct conversations, I can convey my messages much more effectively in my conversations with upper management and cross organizations. This helps trim down potential misunderstandings or conflicts, and gain a lot more trust and affinity with the peers”
2. “I developed more personal relationships with my team members, encouraging a higher level of psychological safety, while still maintaining accountability.”
3. “My team continues to lead Web Americas. Leadership Academy helped me keep things fresh and injected new ideas. The results:
- #2 Region in Web.
- 4 out of 5 reps were 100%+ of their quota = 80%.
- Promoted 2 reps in last P&P.
