High Impact LIW Leadership Breakthrough Program Wins EFMD Gold Award for Talent Development

SYDNEY, July 22, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- EFMD has awarded LIW and Cisco's Leadership Breakthrough program the gold 'Excellence in Practice' award for talent development. The program has delivered $4bn in potential revenue for Cisco and a 30% performance improvement for participants.

Leadership Breakthrough was developed for high-potential Directors and Principal Engineers to enable them to drive Cisco's transformation from hardware company to software and solutions leader. Cisco partnered with LIW, a global leadership consulting and development firm, to build a highly customised program that would help its senior leaders enable this change.

Key elements of the program include:

• Facilitated conversations between participants and their managers to set development goals.
• A 3.5 day 'hot house' - a customised leadership simulation including actor role plays.
• A 2 day 'cool box' focusing on leading self and leading others
• Action learning projects - working as teams on key organisational opportunities

Key impact metrics include:

• 30% performance improvement reported by participants
• $4bn in potential revenue identified through Action Learning Projects from a single cohort.
• Participants reported improved performance in collaboration and team engagement to leverage organisation-wide opportunities to offer full solutions to clients

The EFMD Excellence in Practice Awards (EIP) recognise effective and impactful Leadership and Development interventions between partner organisations.

Quotes

"LIW and Cisco have been working together for over ten years, identifying and developing leadership strategies and capabilities to deliver Cisco's business goals. That collaboration extends globally from Engineering to Sales and from executives to frontline leaders. We are delighted that the Leadership Breakthrough program has been recognised for the impact it delivers to the business through challenging high potential leaders to drive innovation and change in Cisco." - Pia Lee, CEO, LIW

"Cisco is committed to investing in the development of our employees and creating an environment of continuous learning and skill development. Our Leadership Breakthrough program is one way we support the development of our leaders, for today and tomorrow, in our Engineering organization. We are honoured to be recognized for this program along with our partner the LIW organization." - Christine Bastian, VP, HR Lead for Engineering, Cisco

"Based on a longstanding relationship with LIW, a global leadership consulting and development firm, the partners designed and implemented a highly customised program including clearly desired behaviour descriptors, a vast variety of learning tools from simulation to action learning projects, refreshers and application coaching. A systematic evaluation of participants' learnings and business outcomes at each stage of the program combined quantitative and qualitative measurement methods. They showed remarkable improvement on both individual behavioural and team performance improvements as well as a major business impact through project revenue opportunity." - Bernadette Conraths, EFMD Senior Advisor and jury member

Background Information

LIW and Cisco's complete submission for the EIP Award can be found at: LIW EFMD Submission

About LIW

LIW is a global leadership consultancy committed to delivering immediate and sustainable business impact through aligned leadership, rather than individual leaders. Information about LIW can be found at: www.liw3.com

About Cisco

Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at www.cisco.com.

About EFMD

The European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) is a unique forum for information, research, networking and debate on innovation and best practice in management and development.  Information about EFMD can be found at: www.efmd.org

Press contact:

Eve Chaloner, LIW
eve.chaloner@liw3.com 
Tel: +61-2-9968-2777