Swarovski and Ashridge Executive Education Partnership Wins EFMD Excellence in Practice Award

The partnership between Swarovski and Ashridge Executive Education recently received the EFMD Excellence in Practice (EiP) Gold Award for Organizational Development for the creation of a new leadership academy and a set of live-business interventions that address emerging organizational issues.

A global brand with more than 2,000 stores and 24,000 employees, and a complex organizational matrix that typically leads to silo thinking and internal competition, Swarovski recognized the need to develop stronger leadership capability and organizational in order to mitigate these risks and ensure a sustainable future. The organization approached Ashridge Executive Education to help develop its leadership capability and organizational culture.

They began by consulting with 40 leaders. Sophy Pern, Corporate Client Director, Ashridge, notes, “We shared a strong sense that for leadership to be ‘done well’ the current leadership culture needed to be properly understood – not just by us but by the business. So we set about first un-covering what kind of leadership existed at Swarovski – and what kind of leadership was needed going forward.” The focus on collective leadership, collective inquiry, and shared learning stressed the following principles:

* Being a leadership journey, not a destination
* Inquiry, discover, and conversation, rather than ‘teaching’
* Taking risks and experimentation – ‘learning laboratories’
* Building emotional connections
* Bringing in the whole system – goals, challenges, organization dynamics
* Developing collective leadership

According to Michael Gambs, Director Global Leadership Development, Swarovski, the partnership with Ashridge met the company’s most pressing and emerging needs and is putting them in a stronger position, in which they are better able to adapt to the fast-changing market.

Petra Lockhart, VP Global Learning and Development at Swarovski, comments, “We are thrilled to be recognized with this award for the wide impact the Swarovski-Ashridge partnership has, on both an organization and individual level, which has exceeded all expectations. This has been achieved by the OD orientation, focus on mind-set change and culture, addressing of live issues, growing ownership for change across the business and the development of leaders who understand, and feel accountable for, the collective needs of Swarovski.”

For more information on Ashridge and this award, visit the Ashridge Web site.

Albert & Company International, Inc. is a one-stop shop for Executive Development and talent management. Our vision is to help individuals gain the knowledge they need to excel, thereby increasing their efficiency and productivity, leading to better organizational growth. For more information on this and many other courses in our extensive Executive Education database, the most comprehensive and complete of its kind, visit us on the Web at http://albertconsulting.com, or email us at info@albertconsulting.com.