develop 1st level leaders

How can you make sure that your company's frontlinemanagers-the backbone of the organization-

feel committed and involved? Here's how one of the world'slargest corporations answered that question.

DEVELOPINGFIRST-LEVEL

LEADERSby Andreas Priestland and Robert Hanig

W HEN IT COMES TO TRANSLATING a company'sStrategy into results, there's no denying the im-portance of first-level leaders-those who manage

others who do not manage others. At BP Group, these lead-ers oversee operations at retail outlets, manage work crewsat chemical plants or refineries, and handle operations atdrilling platforms. Some supervise more than ten people;others work with few subordinates in R&D, marketing, orhuman resources. First-level leaders are the ones who aremost responsible for a firm's day-to-day relationships withcustomers and the bulk of employees. As Harvard profes-sor Linda Hill wrote in Becoming a Manager, "...managerson the front line are critical to sustaining quality, service,innovation, and financial performance."

JUNE 2005 113

Developing First-Level Leaders

Yet high-quality training programs for these people arenotoriously difficult to create and maintain. They're typi-cally set up as one- or two-day seminars, and trainees retumto the shop floor with little or no follow-up. The processis decentralized: Local HR departments run the programs,and local executives decide which supervisors will attend,based on their subjective assessments or other nonstrate-gic considerations. As a result, the potential of these man-agers is left largely unfulfilled, and the entire organizationsuffers accordingly.

BP, an oil and energy corporation with operations onevery continent and more than 100,000 employees, facedprecisely this challenge. The company's senior manage-ment was aware of the importance of BP's "frontlinemanagers" as it had called them. About 70% to 80% of BP'semployees reported directly to them. There were about10,000 such supervisors around the world (nobody knewthe precise number), ranging in age from 25 to 40. Theyworked in every part ofthe company, from solar plants inSpain to drilling platforms in the North Sea to marketingteams in Chicago to service stations in China. Theybrought to their jobs a wide variety of ethnic and culturalbackgrounds, education and professional experience, andattitudes about work, the company, and life. Their deci-sions, in aggregate, made an enormous difference in BP'sturnover, costs, quality, safety, innovation, and environ-mental performance. They were also the people usuallycalled upon to prevent small problems from becomingfull-scale operational disasters. Yet BP didn't have a com-prehensive training program for them. The corporationdidn't even have a name for these supervisors. In internalHR parlance, they were managers "up to and includingLevel G," meaning they were separated by six or more hier-archical levels from the topmost executives.

No wonder the frontline managers felt disconnected;it was often hard for them to understand how their indi-vidual decisions contributed to the growth and reputationof BP as a whole. A lower-level manager might typically findhimself promoted to lead a team with no clear instruc-tions about how to manage people, how to handle ap-praisals, how to talk about high-stress subjects, or evenwhom to ask for advice. And if a unit supervisor wantedto move from, say, India to Canada or Australia, no onecould be sure that his or her skills and experience could beeasily transferred.

"There wasn't any sign that the company wanted tohear from people like me," recalls ian Muilins, formerly

Andreas Priestland ([email protected]) is a senior consul-tant for organizational development at London-based BP.Robert Hanig (Iave99@aoicom) is a vice president ofDia-logos in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and o founding mem-ber ofthe Society for Organizational Learning. For moreinformation about the first-level leader project at BP, visitivmv. dialogos.com/FLL.

a logistics supply chain manager at BP Chemicals andcurrently a compliance adviser for the BP Group. "Weweren't aiming for the top ofthe house, but we had lead-ership ability and ambition-and we felt ignored."

During the past five years, BP has finaiiy learned toconnect with this population. There is now a company-wide name for the group-"first-level leaders," a title delib-erately chosen to emphasize the managers' significance toBP. And there is now a comprehensive training programfor this cohort. Since the program was first offered in early2002, more than 8,000 of the io,ooo first-level leaders(FLLs) have attended training sessions. The attendees, anotoriously tough group, have consistently given thecourses average ratings of 8.5 on a scale of one to ten.More important, the managers who've been throughtraining are consistently ranked higher in performancethan those who haven't, both by their bosses and by theemployees who report to them.

Some ofthe signature aspects ofthe program, such asthe emphasis on team dynamics and the fact that muchofthe content is delivered by senior BP executives, havebeen specifically credited by people throughout BP withhelping to make the organization much more collabora-tive and capahle.

Why hadn't BP created such a program before? Be-cause it is much harder than it seems. Indeed, it was onlypossible because we designed and developed this initia-tive in a highly participative way-unusual for BP and, wesuspect, for many organizations. The year and a half weSpent creating the program included surveys of thosewe had deemed first-level leaders and others throughoutBP; extensive benchmarking of other companies' efforts;and a series of design and piloting sessions that involveddozens of advisers and cocreators. We managed to com-bine all these efforts into a cohesive whole, in whichnearly everyone's contribution was not just recognizedbut also deeply valued.

In the end, this was the broadest and most compre-hensive leadership development process BP had everengaged in; the company invested $1.5 million in its re-search and development. But it was considered successfulenough to have become a model for other such initia-tives throughout the company, in part because it repre-sents a $1 million annual savings over the plethora of BPtraining courses that it has replaced around the world -without creating a backlash. In 2002, BP Group ChiefExecutive John Browne honored the FLL program withone ofthe company's Helios awards for distinguished ser-vice to BP.

We both helped to develop the first-level leaders train-ing initiative - of course, as part of a much larger team.The story of that team and its work not only details a bestpractice in leadership development but also demonstratesthat broad change is possible at BP - or, indeed, at anycompany.

114 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW


Aspirations and LimitsThe project began in early 2000, when a Leaming andDevelopment Committee composed of eight senior BP ex-ecutives was appointed by Lord Browne to rethink the or-ganization's approach to learning and development for itsexecutives and employees. At that time, BP was emergingfrom a dramatic series of mergers and acquisitions. Threelarge oil firms-British Petroleum, Amoco, and ARCO-andseveral smaller companies had joined to form the third-largest oil-producing enterprise in the world. The associ-ated turbulence had taken its toll; Iob satisfaction surveysshowed that supervisors, team leaders, and other BP man-agers working on the front lines were unhappy with theirown supervisors or their career tracks. As the committeeconsidered this information, its members voiced an aspi-ration: BP should be composed of bolder, more powerfulleaders, from top to bottom.

ognize people's individual jobs, cultures, aspirations, orfutures. The group had seen too many well-intentioned,expensive training programs instituted with great fanfarefrom the top, with no lasting results. At the same time, itunderstood that BP couldn't keep its current ad hoc, hap-hazard approach to training lower-level managers. Thecommittee had to find some solution that paradoxicallyrecognized BP's diversity while providing global cohesion.

Andy Inglis, the deputy chief executive of BP Explo-ration and Production and a member ofthe Leadershipand Development Committee, was the lead sponsor forthe first-level leaders initiative. He viewed his involve-ment as an opportunity to help managers on the frontlines understand their piece ofthe corporate strategy andthe drivers for its delivery, as well as the factors behindhigh performance in their domain-particularly thoserelated to the issues of health, safety, and the environ-ment. Andy's sponsorship was critical; he showed us, for

WE MET IN A REMOTE BRITISH HOTEL WHOSE PROPRIETOR HADA KNACK FOR BREAKING IN AT OUR MOST INTENSE MOMENTS,OECLARING: "IT'S TEATIME NOW. THE SCONES ARE ON THE TABLE."

But how? The committee members were pragmaticenough to realize that they didn't have the answer. Theydecided to conduct experiments to educate not just them-selves but people throughout the company on the funda-mental opportunities for learning at BP. The first-levelleaders initiative described in this article was one of sixexperiments the committee oversaw. The others includeda project to develop initiatives for better social responsi-bility and regional governance at BP; a cross-platformlearning initiative linking several business subsectors inAsia; a redesign of BP's leadership development programfor fast-track executives; an effort to monitor innovationat BP; and a series of "salons" - executive dialogues onwide-ranging but relevant business topics. The experi-ment in developing first-level leadership was not only alearning and development project but also a moral im-perative for BP: If this group was truly the backbone ofthe company, then the committee felt a responsibility toembrace it.

The committee members agreed to sponsor the first-level leaders initiative but weren't exactly sure how itwould unfold. The conventional approach would havebeen to design a prototype training program, test it onceor twice, and then roll it out through the entire corpora-tion. But the committee members understood that a one-size-fits-all program wouldn't take at BP; it wouldn't rec-

example, how to present our ideas to hisconstituencies-senior and upstreampeople-more effectively.

Three individuals were tapped todesign and develop the initiative-us andproject leader Dominic Emery, a senior BPexecutive with commercial and operational experience.We worked closely with Kate Owen, then BP's head oforganizational and leaming development, who helped usclarify our thinking and canvass senior executives compa-nywide. She also introduced us to Robert Mountain, anexperienced training and development consultant, whobriefed us about other companies he had studied that hadsought to train their lower-level managers. Cisco, for ex-ample, used electronic media extensively, and G E targetednewly appointed managers as part of its comprehensiveleaming program for supervisors.

It soon became clear that BP had some unique require-ments. First, the training initiative would have to embodyBP's new, stili-evolving corporate culture. Second, whilesome corporations designed their training initiatives soentire teams could attend two or three sessions over thecourse of a year, that wasn't practical for BP. We had toomany frontline managers scattered in too many places.We would need a more individualized program, in whichsome people might go to one session and others to two or

2005 115


more. Third, it also wasn't practical for us to use Web-based courses to fill in the gaps between face-to-face ses-sions, as other companies had done. A fair number of ourfrontline supervisors worked offshore or in other remotelocations not easily accessible by Intemet. Fourth, mostother companies relied on internal or external trainingprofessionals to facilitate their programs. But at BP, wehad leamed the value of leaders training leaders in our ex-isting executive-level seminars, and we wanted to bringthat same concept to the frontline supervisor level. Ulti-mately, more than 250 senior managers would deliver sec-tions ofthe FLL courses. Finally, to gain their sponsorship,we needed to assure the members of the Leaming andDevelopment Committee of not just superior perfor-mance results but potential cost savings as well.

We based the FLL initiative on a theory of corporatechange called the "generative spiral model," which wasdeveloped by Dialogos founder William Isaacs and col-leagues in the organizational learning movement. Thismodel posits that successful organizational innovationsstart with a small group of "thoughtful, committed citi-zens" (as Margaret Mead famously put it) that graduallybroadens in sponsorship and deepens in awareness. Asthe relationship between the core group of innovatorsand various allies becomes more vibrant, the organiza-tion's ability to sustain change becomes stronger. By thetime the change initiative is extended throughout the com-pany, the organization is ready to accept it.

In the early stages of such a process, it may seem likenothing much is happening, but, in fact, the groundworkis being laid for the change to take hold. By contrast,change initiatives that are rolled out within a month ortwo oftheir announcement generally end up failing be-cause they haven't followed a deliberate sequence forbuilding commitment among constituencies, establish-ing sponsors, and developing the capacity to act in newand different ways.

Getting the System in the RoomOne ofthe first moves suggested by the spiral model is toget the whole system in the room. That is, our design pro-cess needed to include representatives from every keyconstituency - not only the lower-level supervisors wewere targeting but also their managers and direct reports.It needed to include people from all of BP's businesses(Exploration and Production, Refining, Trading, Retailing,and Chemical Production); from a range of geographicareas; and from all the organizational heritages (BP,Amoco, ARCO, Castroi, and others). We made sure that ailthe participants understood one another's backgroundsand perspectives. We gently but relentlessly reached outto people who had reason to be suspicious of us; somemanagers in the technology groups, for instance, hadtheir own training initiatives that they thought might be

threatened by the FLL program. But we persisted, andthe extra hassle and costs paid off.

We started by conducting a telephone survey, inter-viewing about 175 BP managers around the world whoplayed various supervisory roles. Using the data from thatsurvey, and through our network of learning and organi-zational development professionals across BP, we identi-fied about 250 people spanning all the groups we wantedto include in the program's design process. We broughtthem together, 30 or 40 at a time, for several one-day work-shops between February and April 2001.

The workshops all started with the same statement,generally delivered by Dominic Emery: "First, we're goingto take inventory of ail the training that is done today foremployees below a certain job grade. Second, we want tounderstand the needs of that group of employees. Third,we want to develop a whole new training program that is,at minimum, cost neutral to our current offerings. Thisprogram has to operate globally-and we have only a fewmonths in which to design it. We want you to tell us whatyou think."

From there, the sessions would move into structured di-alogue, in which carefully selected small groups reflectedtogether on the role of the first-level leader, the majorchallenges such leaders faced, and the development op-portunities they should get at BP.

The sessions were energetic and lively. Attendees re-ceived materials to read ahead of time-critical insightsfrom previous sessions and summaries and updates astime went on. As we got several of these fact-finding ses-sions under our belt, we continued to be impressed by theamount of time and effort our participants invested inwhat was essentially a volunteer initiative. We were espe-cially gratified when some ofthe senior executive spon-sors, who had hesitantly agreed to spend part of a dayin these dialogues, became more intrigued. We slottedsome time in each session for a senior executive to talkabout his or her understanding of leadership and then totake questions. The response from the attendees was sopositive that it galvanized the executives themselves.They were starting to feel a pull from the organization-a desire to learn. The sessions also showed that seniorleaders could talk to frontline managers not simply as em-ployees but as fellow leaders, thus initiating them directlyin the larger community of leadership at BP.

Defining and Understandingthe AudienceSince the group we were trying to reach didn't have aname, we had to find one. The titles already in use atBP-"fromline managers,""supervisors,""team leaders"-had regional (and sometimes negative) connotations."Team leader" might sound senior in one country and ju-nior in another. In one ofthe Leaming and Development



Committee's first dialogues, backin April 2000, it had settled on"first-level leaders." "First" sug-gested that BP put this group ofmanagers foremost in the com-pany's consciousness."Level" con-noted the hierarchical rank theseindividuals shared, and "leader"connected this group with BP'skeen interest in developing strongleadership.

In all the workshops we con-ducted early in 2001, we learneda lot about the distinct needs ofeach group. The first-level leaderswanted a better understanding ofthe whole corporation and its pri-orities. For example, increases inoil prices generally led to increasesin feedstock costs for BP's refiningbusinesses. Since lower-level su-pervisors in refining and chemi-cals typically didn't know the dy-namics ofthe upstream businesses(exploration and production, forinstance), they couldn't give cus-tomers (or train their staff to givecustomers) a credible explanationfor the pricing change. So, theycouldn't explain: "Well, the cur-rent wave of demand and the lat-est OPEC policies have forced theprice of oil up. This means extracosts for our own raw materials.We aren't passing on the full coststo you - but we do have to recap-ture some of them."

The senior executives in oursessions had no idea that the first-level leaders felt so disconnected.Listening to the frontline supervisors talk gave the seniorleaders a visceral understanding ofthe performance gainsthose managers could reap if they understood how differ-ent parts ofthe organization fit together. It also gave thempause; they realized they would have to stop acting ascontrollers and gatekeepers, parsing out messages on aneed-to-know basis, and become creative partners, nur-turing and channeling the enthusiasm and interest ofthefirst-level leaders.

It was also important to hear in those sessions fromthe hourly staffers who reported to first-level leaders. Theworkers were more performance-oriented than anyoneexpected: If there were slackers in an operation, theywanted the first-level leaders to deal with those peoplepromptly-and fire them if necessary.

Moving Slow to Go FastWe knew that we wanted our training program to teachthe first-level leaders the value of being thoughtful anddeliberate. We understood this meant we had to live up tothe same ideal ourselves. But BP's culture did not tradi-tionally support a reflective pace. Farly in 2001, membersof the Learning and Development Committee showedtheir impatience."Do you really need to bother with all ofthese workshops?"they asked. We stood our ground, puttingourselves in the uncomfortable position of defending a prin-ciple (time for refiection) that our bosses had espousedagainst their doubts. Here, it made a difference that therewere three of us, including one outsider (Robert Hanig)who had seen in other organizations the importance of

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taking time to reflect. The issue came to a head in a con-ference call with Andy Inglis. We explained to our chiefsponsor how much we had learned in the workshops andthe need to take the time to include diverse perspectives.

Andy listened and said,"That's not the way we usuallyoperate. Make sure you do it properly." But then he saidsomething that became a catchphrase for the entire en-deavor: "Sometimes you have to go slow to go fast." By theend ofthe research phase in April 2001, we saw how ourdeliberation had paid off. We had built up our own capac-ity to the point where we could competently cross an im-portant threshold - we could turn this initiative into aglobal program.

Until now, we had assumed that local business unitsand regions would put their own spin on the main FLLcourses- That is, we would develop the basic materialsthat they would use as they wished, and they would pay

first-level leaders, we invited some ofthese professionalsto talk with us about integrating their work into the FLLinitiative. We expected them to share our enthusiasm.Instead, to our initial annoyance, they balked. Or so itappeared. In fact, they were asking the right questions;"Would this replace our existing programs? How wouldit meet local needs? How would we be involved?" We re-alized that, from their perspective, we were imposing yetanother new program from BP's central headquarters ontheir long-decentralized efforts.

To recoup, we returned to our sponsorship-seekingmind-set, talking with them one by one, listening to theirconcems. The learning and development professionalswanted a large role, for example, in choosing the trainersfor sessions in their geographic areas-a request that, fromour perspective, was ideal. It helped that several of BP'smost respected regional practitioners became impressed

COULD WE REALIZE THE COST SAVINGS WE HAD PROMISED?..."WE'LL SHOW THAT IT'S POSSIBLE," WE TOLD THE COMMIHEE,"AND YOU SELL IT TO THE ORGANIZATION."

for them from their learning and development budgets.But the first-level leaders, their direct reports, and theirbosses had all agreed: They wanted a truly global pro-gram. The design could tolerate some flexibility in imple-mentation, but basically it should be uniform. The first-level leaders, in particular, pushed for a single program.We had not expected this mandate, and it was very wel-come, especially when it led directly to the group's nextpoint: The FLL program should get central funding. Oth-erwise, the first-level leaders said, the program would lastonly until the next budget cutback. Some divisions wouldsend people; others wouldn't. With central funding, theFLL initiative could replace existing training programs.We took that message to the Leaming and DevelopmentCommittee, and it bac ked us up, approving our basic ideasand timetable. We were exultant-ready to move directlyinto designing the curriculum.

Designing the CurriculumAt this point, the process design group hit a snag thatalmost unraveled the entire program. In canvassing sup-port, we had delayed our work with a critical constit-uency: BP's extensive staff of ieaming and developmentprofessionals operating in regional offices around theworld. We had been reluctant to involve them in earlyresearch tintil we knew for sure that the program wouldcontinue. Then, buoyed by our great response from the

with the quality ofthe training moduleswe had developed. Once they saw thevalue ofthe project, they recruited otherprofessionals from places like Zimbabwe andChina, whom we otherwise would have missed.

With the learning and development professionals onboard, we could move into our nuts-and-bolts designprocess. In June 2001, we convened 15 HR and learningprofessionals to settle on the curriculum. We did our bestto replicate in this group the diversity ofthe company. Weinvited people from BP operations in Alaska, Australia,Belgium, China, Germany, Ireland, Zimbabwe, the UnitedStates, and the United Kingdom and gathered in a remoteBritish hotel that reminded us of Fawlty Towers. The pro-prietor had a knack for breaking in at our most intensemoments, declaring: "It's teatime now. The scones are onthe table." Many ofthe people who attended will remem-ber that four-day off-site meeting as one oftheir most cre-ative periods at BP because ofthe process: We would dis-agree, hash things out, take a break, talk some more, reacha mutual decision, and start all over again on a new topic.

In the end, we developed six pilot FLL courses, one eachin Houston and Chicago in the United States; Port ofSpain, Trinidad; Cape Town, South Africa; Aberdeen,Scotland; and Milton Keynes, England. We invited someofthe first-level leaders from the early design sessions toeach. We also asked some participants from our early ses-sions to join an informal Sponsorship Group to critique



and comment on the pilot courses. This group comprisednot just senior executives but also first-level leaders, theirbosses, their direct reports, and some staff members fromHR and organizational development. The group laterhelped to recruit local executives and support teams andto organize on-the-ground coordination efforts where thecourses were delivered.

"One thing that can't be overstated "says BP's DouglasFrisby, a project manager and a member ofthe Sponsor-ship Group,"is the amount of work and effort it took dur-ing the implementation phase from local reps-setting theclasses up, arranging for people to be there, recruitingtrainers, and making sure it was delivered properly. Theprocess design team could not do this without the solidengagement of local people, mostly within the HR andlearning-development functions."

In September, the Leaming and Development Com-mittee agreed to provide the budget for the first-level lead-ers initiative. By now the project involved a Web site sothat first-level leaders could easily register for the courses,a set of evaluation measures, and a schedule for coursesthat would start in January 2002. The committee mem-bers now held us to our pledge: Could we realize the costsavings we had promised? We said we could, but only ifBP as a whole remained committed to the first-level lead-ers initiative and didn't compete with it. "We'll show thatit's possible," we told the committee,"and you sell it to theorganization." BP's executive leadership would have tovisibly sponsor the FLL initiative or people throughoutthe company would feel vulnerable supporting it. Thecommittee members agreed, and the conversations tumedto logistics. The attack on the World Trade Center hadtaken place only two weeks before, and business travelwas being cut back. We were worried the organizationwould postpone this global program-but it didn't.

At that same meeting, the committee members had ad-vised us to get a good marketer. We were skeptical at first,but we took their advice and recruited to the team a BPmarketing expert, Duncan Blake. This tumed out to becrucial, not only for establishing a professional presencebut also for deepening our awareness ofthe FLL popula-tion. Getting word out to the entire organization turnedout to be more of a challenge than we expected. Therewas no distribution list that covered the lo.ooo or so first-level leaders who work for BP-or even a list of sites. Wehad to develop our own. We could not simply use the In-temet, because BP managers in remote parts ofthe world,or on offshore oil rigs, don't necessarily have e-mail. Nordo some of our retail staff.

What We DeliveredHaving one course of training meant we needed to tie thecurriculum tightly into BP's overall leaming and devel-opment objectives. It helped that we had a rationale for

this, laid out in the early days ofthe initiative by two keyhigh-level sponsors: Kate Owen and John Manzoni, thengroup vice president, now BP's chief executive of refiningand marketing. For the courses to be deemed successful,trainees needed to be able to answer yes to the followingquestions:• "Do I have enough awareness ofthe direction of this

organization?" In other words, am I exposed to BP'sstrategic thinking?

• "Do I have the skills and support I need to deal withthe challenges of my immediate business?" In otherwords, are they giving me what I need to do my job?

• "Do 1 have the skills and support I need to deal withthe leadership challenges I face now?" In other words,can I be the kind of person I need to be in this position?

• "Am I getting enough support and feedback from BPto make the right personal choices about my life andwork?" In other words, does BP support my aspira-tions as well as its own?To help first-level leaders answer in the affirmative, we

developed a training program with four components.Most first-level leaders, we expected, would engage in atleast one (and possibly two or three) of them. The fourcomponents remain in place today.

Supervisory Essentials. This segment ofthe programfocuses on the basics of management. First-level leadersare trained on the particulars of project management andtechnology in their businesses, and they discuss relevanthealth,environment, safety, and social responsibility issues.This course is delivered through a combination of face-to-face sessions. Web-based programs for those with Intemetaccess, and CD-ROM modules-

Context and Connections. This two-day session coversBP's overall strategy and its implications for all parts ofthe global organization. The design is continually revampedas corporate priorities change.

The Leadership Event This is the most intensive com-ponent ofthe FLL program, a four-day session for 24 to 36people. It includes briefings from senior executives, whooften incorporate personal stories about their own man-agement dilemmas into their lectures; in-depth trainingon how to develop better communication, management,and leadership skills, along with sessions on how to buildgreater confidence and self-awareness; and action leam-ing. Some ofthe course's role-play exercises promote at-tentiveness to diversity and inclusion; others teach peoplehow to make less-ambiguous statements or enable more-effective analysis of a team's communication style.

Peer Partnerships. This coaching course pairs newfirst-level leaders with more-experienced colleagues asthey progress through the entire FLL training program,thereby laying the groundwork for continued learningand development after the sessions end.

The dialogues built into the courses tend to focus on han-dling difficult managerial and leadership issues, ranging

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from local concems (such as community deveiopmentnear BP's African production sites) to generic topicslike the BP brand, "in one [FLL session] that 1 ran, somepeople from Exploration and Production couldn't seehow the brand related to them," recalls Janet Ashdown,BP's vice president of field supply for retail in Europe."'A brand is a marketing thing,' they said. But by the endofthe conversation, I think they understood that thebrand is not just the logo that appears on the gas stationpole. It represents the values ofthe company, the role youplay in communities, and the kinds of behaviors thatmake it easier or more difficult, and more or less expen-sive, to go into a new market or make a new investmentsomewhere."

Ashdown also notes that participating in the FLLcourses gave senior leaders unprecedented insights intothe grass roots ofthe company. "It's very refreshing to getout and talk to potential leaders. They're a different gen-eration; they see things differently, and they are prettychallenging."

By bringing together people from dif-ferent parts of BP, the FLL program is alsocreating unexpected synergies. For exam-ple, Castrol Reprocessing Services, a BPmaintenance facility, and BP Solar nowshare a building for some oftheir technicaloperations, including Solar's slurry recla-mation process, after two first-level leadersmet at a Context and Connections session.The program also brings together peoplewho didn't communicate much before; forexample, FLL sessions are produced by acombination of local line managers, localHR and organizational development staff,and centrai HRdirectors.That in itself hashelped leaming and organizational devel-opment at BP become more consistentand coherent.

The success of the FLL initiative hasspawned a similar program for BP's 6,000senior-level leaders. Within two years,every first- and senior-level leader in theorganization will have gone through someform of leadership development. As thatpopulation increases, practices such as sup-plemental meetings and follow-up coach-ing- FLL reunions, lunches, and briefingworkshops - are also taking hold.

BP continues to evaluate the programby surveying the managers who havetaken the courses, as well as their superi-ors and direct reports. The responses con-sistently show that first-level leaders whohave gone through the program perform

more effectively than those managers who have not, ac-cording to the people they report to and the people whoreport to them. For two years running, employees super-vised by trained first-level leaders have rated their bosseshigher by almost io% in the following areas: communi-cation, interpersonal skills, team leadership, and generalmanagement.

BP's success in this initiative has given it the confidenceto take leadership development to another level. "We'renot finished," Andy Inglis says. "It's been a volatile worldfor the past two or three years, particularly in the oil andgas industry. Our leadership training needs to match thepace of change around us. We especially need to equipour people to deal with ambiguity and to feel confident inthe firm's direction as they go about their daily work.That's a job that is never finished." ^

Reprint R0506GTo order, see page 151.

"Some ofthe ideas in the staff development meeting on innovation seemedinteresting but they've never been tried, so t think I'll hold off for now."


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