Leadership in Action: Learning by Design: Developing an Engine for Transforming Your Company

CLOSING THE GAP

To illustrate these principles, let's look at the case of Cardo, a Sweden-based international industrial group now running the third wave of its leadership development program. Faced with a decade-long decline in performance and with no improvement in sight, top management realized that unleashing the capabilities and commitment of Cardo's leaders was the key to unleashing the capabilities and performance of the business. The performance payoff from enhanced leadership has already been enormous—a return of ten to twenty-four times the program costs.

Now, flash back four years, to late 2005 and early 2006. Peter Aru was in his first year as CEO, with a mandate from the board to transform Cardo from a highly decentralized holding ...