Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology with over 114000 employees that develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics and personal computers and services. As of 2011, it was the world’s largest software maker by revenue, and is one of the world’s most valuable companies.
Bluepoint was first appointed by Microsoft in 2000 to design and launch their Executive Bench Program. This followed the appointment of Steve Ballmer to CEO and Bill Gates to Chairman. The original brief was for an off-the-shelf program, but it quickly became apparent that a more focused and customized solution was required. Acutely aware that leaders were neither living the values nor living their brand promise of “Realizing Potential”, Bluepoint partnered to design two parts of a four-part series as follows:
- Values-Based Leadership at Microsoft: a two day intensive workshop where leaders examined their values as compared with the company values, developing a personal action plan to raise their game.
- The Leader Speaks at Microsoft: this followed approximately 4 months later to help leaders significantly improve their communication skills on company strategy and direction. It was based on our core communications workshop, The Leader Speaks.
- Strategy and Business at Microsoft: for part 3, Bluepoint handed off to Wharton Business School, where they ran a simulation and delivered programs on strategy and finance for the non-financial manager.
- Leading at Microsoft: the final component was delivered by the members of the executive team and provided a unique insight into leading at the enterprise level.
Bluepoint firmly established itself as a key partner to Microsoft based on the success of this Executive Bench Program. This led to many departmental requests for leadership development but, most significantly, it resulted in the largest deployment in the history of Bluepoint – The Manager Excellence Initiative.
Mid-level managers had been neglected in terms of development opportunities, and it was showing. This key group was under significant pressure to drive results, interpret and deploy strategy from above, and keep direct reports motivated and engaged in the midst of a war of technological talent.
Bluepoint has built a formidable global team of 20+ facilitators purely dedicated to the Manager Excellence Initiative. Each year we work with over 2000 managers within a total manager population of 14000. The focus is on building core leadership skills at the personal, interpersonal, team and organizational level.