Land O’Lakes’s vision is to be one of the best food and agricultural companies in the world. To help achieve this vision, CEO Chris Policinski has identified four strategic imperatives for the company and its employees:

Policinski is transforming the Land O’Lakes business structure from its current holding company model, in which business units are more autonomous, to more of an operating company, in which the parent company plays a greater central role, particularly in relation to functions common across diverse business units, such as accounting, information systems, and human resources. Land O’Lakes’s modified operating company approach calls for business activities, particularly those that most directly touch the customer or affect the business unit’s bottom line, to remain directly under business unit direction and control. As Policinski has stated, “A significant focus in our journey toward more of an operating-company culture has been to bring increased standardization, collaboration, and discipline to all of our processes—including leadership development and succession planning.”

Together, the superior insight strategic imperative and move to an operating company culture provided the impetus, inspiration, and foundation for Leadership Edge and an opportunity to drive business change through leadership development.

As a first step toward developing a program for these high-potential directors, HR examined the annual individual development plans of each of the 215 directors in the company to find what they needed to take them to that next level. Across the board, improved strategic thinking was the most striking need, and that finding would become the foundation for Leadership Edge. The stage now was set for developing the program itself.

The SST was given the ultimate responsibility for selecting forty participants from a pool of directors initially identified by officers in each business unit. The company’s succession plan was a key factor in the process as SST members evaluated the depth of backup within Land O’Lakes.

To take the program from concept to completion, HR enlisted the SST to invite eight company officers at the vice president level or higher to form a steering committee and represent their businesses and functions. No SST members were part of the committee because they were the final arbiters of the committee’s recommendations. The steering committee met for only one hour every two weeks over the course of several months. Once a month, the steering committee provided a program update to the SST.

The program’s objectives for the participants included:

To achieve these objectives, the Leadership Edge development team designed a multiyear experience with a number of activities and events, including assessment, a three-day event, and action learning teams (Figure 17.1). The experience began with a learning event held at a resort and conference center in northern Minnesota.

The final topics for Leadership Edge coalesced around the building blocks of strategic thinking:

The agenda for the three-day event was built around these four topics (see Table 17.1).

The Leadership Edge development team drew on steering committee recommendations for presenters from within and outside Land O’Lakes. They wanted the information to be challenging academically and up to date so that participants would experience the type and level of information that more senior leaders in the company use when formulating strategies. For example, Land O’Lakes had commissioned a customer-segmentation study for its Ag Services businesses. The release of those results coincided with the Leadership Edge event, so participants had a preview of the findings. In addition, presenters were coached to break the information into digestible segments interspersed with exercises that allowed the participants to put a concept or theory to use or practice a related skill.

Exercises 1 and 2 focused on market entry and exit tactics. In exercise 1, across-business groups were asked to determine the best market entry tactics for specific products or services that Land O’Lakes might consider, such as biofuels and organic feed. In the next exercise, cross-business groups were asked to look at products and services in different businesses to identify their place in the product life cycle and determine appropriate exit tactics for them near the end of the life cycle. The third exercise addressed cross-business groups and developed a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis for a specific Land O’Lakes business based on information provided by participants from that business unit plus additional information regarding key customers and competitors.

Presentations, exercises, journaling, and chats with senior executives all helped Leadership Edge meet key objectives. But it was the Land O’Lakes Amazing Race that was designed to build across-the-company relationships in ways that are not possible in a conference room or even sitting by a bonfire.

Each race takes roughly three hours, followed by a final challenge. During the race, teams are expected to participate in a certain number of physical or outdoor activities and problem-solving activities. Following the race, teams make brief presentations, finally ending in an awards ceremony to recognize the victors.

Each activity was intentionally designed to highlight a particular aspect of leadership or team building. The teams most successful at these challenges were those that developed a strategy before jumping in to perform the task, consciously considered the skills of their team members, and exhibited a combination of steadfastness and flexibility in implementing their strategy.

The first part of the program focused on these elements:

The last part of the program was devoted to tactics and tools for effectively implementing strategies. Participants were introduced to the alignment model (Figure 17.2), which brings the company’s mission, vision, values, customers, needs, strategies, and action plans into alignment and provides a system for identifying systems, structures, leadership, staff, and skills needed to achieve the business’s goals and then measure and evaluate progress and success. Participants then had the opportunity to pull together everything they learned in their action learning teams.

To ensure that participants were learning and leveraging their new skills, each was required to create an individual development plan that applied to his or her action learning team project and corresponded with its goals.

An SST member or officer was assigned to each team as a sponsor, coach, mentor, and resource. In addition, MDA Leadership provided external coaching to bring outside perspective to the process. The sponsors helped the teams frame their strategic challenge. For instance, the team assigned the topic of sustainability first had to determine what sustainability meant in terms of Land O’Lakes and then focus on a particular set of issues. The sponsors also served as sounding boards for the teams, helped keep them on track, pointed them in the direction of other resources such as people or experts they may not have been familiar with, provided perspective, and reacted to and challenged their findings. For example, a sponsor might ask the team about the ideas they discarded to further the participants’ understanding of the strategic thinking process.

But the sponsors did not do the work. As one SST sponsor said, “My team did all the heavy lifting. I was there as a resource for them.” The sponsors also scheduled regular and informal check-ins with the teams and individuals, increasing the participants’ exposure to and interaction with these seasoned leaders.

Each team’s first step was to develop a charter that defined the scope of its project, set out its mission and goals, outlined the team’s work process, and served as a work contract between the team and its sponsor (Table 17.2).

The teams had to live and breathe what they learned during the formal Leadership Edge event while they worked on these high-profile challenges with high business stakes. And they had to do this on top of their regular workload, an intentional decision by the Leadership Edge development team. The development team did not want participants to become focused solely on one project, which is unrealistic in the real world. While much of the work was done independently, team meetings were also set up. The action learning teams discovered that despite the challenges of remote team members, meetings were most effective when they were face to face and lasted longer than one hour.

The official survey was one way of rating the program’s value, effectiveness, and success. The group also conducted informal interviews to determine how the experience measured up to the objectives. Here is a sampling of what a cross-section of respondents said:

The development team is aware that challenges exist for “keeping the pilot light on” for this group of Leadership Edge leaders. Participants have said, “Don’t forget us; keep us in the loop. We want to keep getting opportunities like this.”

Leadership Edge has become a key element of Land O’Lakes’s leadership development and will alternate with an officers’ conference so that each year, high-potential employees will have access to unique, customized development opportunities. The company also is exploring other avenues for bringing more people into this development experience to broaden the group, which will cascade learnings through the company.

In the end, Leadership Edge met all its objectives and was deemed by all measures a resounding success by the CEO, SST, the development team, and the participants themselves. As the CEO has stated: “We have found that we can generate increased energy and passion for leadership by bringing high-potential employees together to develop leadership skills and capabilities. There seems to be a compelling drive among participants to not only meet their personal expectations, but also those of their high-potential peers. In essence, working together, Leadership Edge participants raise the bar when it comes to the definition of exceptional leadership.”

Grabow is a licensed psychologist in the State of Minnesota. She has been a lecturer at the University of Minnesota, University of St. Thomas, Macalester College, the Society of Industrial/Organizational Psychology Annual Conference, and the American Psychological Association conferences.

Nelson holds a B.A. in psychology from Luther College and an M.A. in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Tulsa.

Zemke earned her B.A. in history and secondary education from Trinity College, Vermont, and her M.S. in reading and reading administration from the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut.