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For the past two years, Ron
Sacchi has served in the official role as corporate shaman for Mountain View,
California-based VeriSign. He’s not a mystic or a healer. But Sacchi has played
a significant role in helping the company forge a unified culture, and develop
its leadership talent for today and tomorrow.
During the past two years,
Sacchi and his management peers at VeriSign, have worked their
organizational-improvement magic with support, services and tools from Denison
Consulting. They’ve relied on the Denison
model of organizational culture, and the key measurement tools based on this
model -- the Denison Organization Culture Survey (DOCS) and Denison Leadership
Development Survey (DLDS).
‘Intelligent infrastructure’ is company’s focus
VeriSign – founded in 1995
-- is a high-technology firm that helps to make the world’s voice and data
networks function effectively for individuals and organizations. It operates
“intelligent infrastructure services” that enable billions of voice and data
transactions everyday. If you’ve logged onto a Web site today, or sent an
e-mail or text message to someone, there a good chance that VeriSign was
involved in the interaction.
The company has been on a
major growth tear in recent years, acquiring 37 other firms. In the process, it
has dramatically expanded in virtually every area – product portfolio,
geographic reach, workforce and sales. It now has 4,000 employees around the
world, generating annual revenues of more than $1.6 billion.
Rapid growth poses organizational challenges
The rapid flurry of
acquisitions posed some critical organizational and business challenges. “We
urgently needed to develop a collective understanding of our identity, our way
of doing business, and how we manage and lead,” said Sacchi. “The VeriSign
community was exuberant and entrepreneurial, but it also was widely dispersed
with leaders and managers who were not necessarily tied to a cohesive culture
or consistent way of operating.”
With the assistance of Bryan Adkins, a senior consultant for Denison
Consulting, and a team of very talented consultants and coaches, Sacchi
developed and implemented a global leadership-development program. It’s
designed to support the VeriSign “STEPS” model, a leadership competency model
identified in a series of focus groups among company executives. The key
elements of the STEPS model are: strategic thinking, teams, execution, people,
and self-awareness.
Denison tools used in ‘action learning’ effort
The initiative emphasizes
“action learning,” and includes work in the classroom and on the job;
360-degree leader evaluations, done with the DLDS tool; cultural assessments,
done with the DOCS tool; executive coaching and mentoring; and hands-on,
problem-solving of real-world business challenges.
Groups of 18 to 35 leaders
and managers participate initially participate in a two-day, off-site training
session. Two follow-up sessions – of two to three days each – are held at
six-week intervals. Prior to attending the first session, each person is
evaluated via the DLDS, a “360-degree” leadership performance survey. A
coach/mentor assists each person in interpreting and leveraging the results.
And the coach/mentor remains involved with the participant throughout the
action-learning process.
In conjunction with the
program, a number of cultural assessments have been done – using the DOCS tool
– in specific business areas of the company.
According to Adkins, the Denison model and tools
are well-matched to the VeriSign leadership model. “They’re also research-based
and linked to performance, factors that have high value for those who use the
model and tools,” he said.
Outstanding results reflect program’s value
By the end of this year,
more than 90 percent of VeriSign’s senior leaders and mid-level managers will
have completed the program.
“We have received
significant positive feedback on the program, and the results have been
outstanding,” said Sacchi. “Just getting people together -- and making sure we
are all on the same page -- have generated major benefits for VeriSign.”
By all accounts, the drive
to strengthen leaders, remove organizational silos, and promote a common
culture is working. And, according to Sacchi, the benefits are measurable. “By
my calculations, the return-on-investment on our most recent leadership-development program has been more
than 600 percent.”
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