Storyblok’s Story: Growing Leaders While Growing the Organization

Background 

Storyblok is the world’s first Headless Content Management System (CMS) created for developers and marketers. The revolutionary platform enables easy delivery of a powerful content experience on any digital platform, including corporate websites, ecommerce sites, mobile apps, and screen displays, to enhance audience experiences.  

Storyblok’s overall organizational mission is to deliver the best CMS that validates and prioritizes content management innovations and enables teams to deliver their content in a fast and reliable way while building the remote company.  

Storyblok at a glance:  

• Remote-first company with colleagues across 45+ countries  
• Leaders encompass 47 nationalities worldwide  
• Global clients in 130+ different countries   

Challenge  

Storyblok achieved remarkable success, experiencing rapid growth as its team expanded from 70 to over 240 members within a brief amount of time. This meant they had many leaders promoted within the organization as well as several first-time leaders on their team, leaving them with a need to quickly train and provide resources to these leaders.  

“We had a lot of amazing minds, but they have never been leaders before.”

– Nevena Buzek, Senior Talent Management & Development Specialist  

Storyblok recognized the need to introduce a leadership development program that would benefit its first-time, mid-, and senior-level leaders while incorporating its “North Star” mission, vision, and strategy. This includes:  

• One goal, many paths  
• Craft with responsibility and passion  
• Everyone is part of the Story  
• Treat everyone equally  
• Trust in talents  
• Gratitude and respect  

Storyblok identified several essential skills they believed their leaders needed to achieve the organization’s goals. These include instilling trust, being resilient, having decision-making abilities, being action-oriented, developing and empowering others, managing complexity, and driving vision and purpose.   

In addition, Storyblok needed a solution that would work with the unique culture and circumstances of employees working in over 45 different countries and in various time zones.   

“We wanted to develop leadership skills, especially for our first-time leaders, and to standardize the leadership style, throughout the whole company.”

– Nevena Buzek  

 

Solution  

Storyblok wanted to find a partner with whom they could create a customized program, rather than an off-the-shelf, standard solution. The organization has a unique start-up culture but a corporate structure and growth mindset. Bluepoint was able to work with Storyblok to develop a program to reach its 44 leaders on their time. The program was designed not only for their new managers but for leaders at all levels of the company to standardize leadership across the organization. With this in mind, Bluepoint intentionally incorporated Storyblok’s values and culture throughout the program to align learning to its daily environment.  

360 Assessment

The program kicked off with a 360-degree Leadership Emotional Intelligence assessment for leaders to gain a better understanding of their EQ as well as areas for improvement. The assessment was multi-rated and reviewed 40 different behaviors. It also provided detailed averages in charts as well as comparisons with others, in order to get a detailed personal perspective.   

Results were then shared and discussed in order to answer any questions and ensure that participants understood how to improve their personal performance.   

Personalized Workshops

Storyblok’s leaders then went through a series of virtual facilitator-led workshops over the course of several months. These included The Leader Within, The Powerful Coaching Conversation, The Leader Speaks, Leading Change, and Making Great Leadership A Habit.  

Each workshop was specifically selected to complement Storyblok’s culture, values, and competencies and speak to its “North Star” vision and strategy. In order to ensure that all leaders could participate in the workshops due to time zone differences, workshops were grouped into AM and PM sessions.   

 Through these experiential workshops, leaders learned how to:  

• Develop the ability to readily relate to and connect with others, particularly those with differing personalities, backgrounds, and values.  
• Learn how to create an environment of trust and accountability in which well-intentioned feedback flows freely.  
• Increase leadership power by weaving both organizational values and personal principles throughout communications.  
• Gain resilience and skills that they can employ to help their team members respond to and thrive in periods of substantial organization and business change.  

Micro eLearning  

Following each of the workshops, participants took part in a micro eLearning program on their mobile devices. The program includes a series of strategically designed messages, videos, podcasts, quizzes, surveys, and assignments that are sent to participants two to three times a week for several months following the workshop.   

These programs were designed to reinforce workshop concepts and make real, sustained changes in their day-to-day behavior while also being accessible to complete anywhere at any time, since employees are fully remote throughout the world. 

Virtual Leadership Consults  

Following each workshop, participants were brought back together to participate in virtual leadership consults to review key concepts. This also allowed them the opportunity to ask any questions and discuss challenges or success stories they had when implementing the skills learned.   

“During these activities, more senior leaders were able to provide their experience and their knowledge and their examples to more junior ones.”

– Nevena Buzek  

Strategic questions were also developed ahead of time to engage participants in a large group discussion and get a conversation about the topics flowing.    

Results  

Storyblok has been thrilled to witness substantial growth within their leaders, particularly in resilience, communication and coaching abilities while also driving home the organizations “North Star” strategy. Feedback from participants has been overwhelmingly positive, with many sharing how the experience boosted their confidence as leaders and improved their relationships with their teams. Participants also reflected on how working on developing themselves has already made a big impact on how they lead and improved their relationship with their teams.  

“We saw positive feedback immediately from the program. During a workshop, someone with over 20 years of leadership experience shared how valuable these skills have been. She started using the tools and techniques from the workshops and expressed how her relationships improved with her team.”

– Nevena Buzek  

The program was also an invaluable opportunity for the leaders to form strong relationships with their peers whom they might not have interacted with. The program also created an interactive space where the leaders could grow and develop together as well as share any concerns in a safe space. These opportunities have already led to increased cross-functional and global teamwork with leaders collaborating on various projects. 

“I really enjoyed getting to connect with my fellow team-managers in an unbiased setting to talk about the problems we face together.”

– Program Participant   

Overall, the program properly prepared the leaders for their roles within the growing organization and aligned them with Storyblok’s “North Star” mission for success.