Overview:  The Classroom Experience

Battlefield Leadership’s classroom programs are highly impactful and cost-effective formats for delivering the same leadership concepts and principles examined through our onsite battlefield programs.  Because our battle-based classroom programs replicate all but the physical experience of being on location where these historic events occurred, participants in these classroom programs emerge with the same kind of focused strategies for leadership development and improvement in effectiveness as they do from our corresponding battlefield experiences.

Overview:  Why the Battle of Normandy
The Normandy invasion, and D-Day specifically, is a rich and stimulating source of leadership insight relevant to the challenges (and opportunities) of the current global business environment. Planning, organization, communication, teamwork and initiative amidst profound and increasingly rapid changes in circumstance, and across cultural and political boundaries, are as critical now to effective execution as they were in 1944.

Throughout the Normandy Leadership Experience we examine key strategic objectives and the tactical events that accompanied them and focus on the role that leadership played in effective implementation, or the lack thereof.  We also reflect upon the relevance of these timeless lessons and how each relates to contemporary leadership initiatives in participants’ current roles. Hallmarks of effective leadership and decision-making are explored in the context of the D-Day operations.

Methodology and Delivery
Combining pre-reading with the use of highly effective technology and mixed media such as Powerpoint slides, video clips, and case studies, our battlefield classroom programs can be delivered in traditional corporate conference venues to groups as small as 20 participants or as large as 1,400 participants all at one time. 

Our programs are designed in a modular fashion so sessions of differing lengths and depth can be developed to meet an organization’s objectives and needs.  Working in advance to create a highly customized session, we can highlight selected combinations of case studies and battle events in order to emphasize certain lessons or messages.  Or, the programs can be intermittently delivered in an interstitial mode to fit differing agenda needs, or as featured parts of broader agendas for corporate meeting or conference plans.

The standard classroom program length is eight hours, but can be expanded to 12 hours if needed.  A minimum length of four hours is required, which allows time for the necessary context and overview of the battle and for an in-depth examination of two leadership case studies, along with concluding exercises and comments. Each added case study requires two additional hours of program time.

Leadership Elements Explored and Discussed
Although the potential for relevant take-aways during and after the classroom experience is virtually boundless, our intent is that each participant leaves with an understanding of the importance of the following in much more detail:

• Team and coalition building
• The implications of leader development and succession planning/readiness, both in battle and in the workplace
• Rising to the challenges of ambiguity and uncertainty
• The knowledge, skill, and abilities required for leaders today and tomorrow to navigate through periods of tremendous change and uncertainty
• Communicating a vision that permeates the organization
• Creating an organizational structure which encourages the communication of values/vision/goals. Ensuring that direct reports understand one’s vision/values/ priorities
• Orchestrating and coordinating efforts across cultures, languages, geography, and “territorial sovereignty”
• Developing and using critical and creative thinking
• The impact of “the fog of war” on local (and global) operations
• The selection and development of emerging leaders who will help achieve lofty goals
• Developing an organization in which leaders feel authorized to take initiative and innovate in the face of unexpected outcomes or obstacles
• The readiness of leaders in an organization who feel encouraged and equipped to guide their people through perplexing challenges
• The mandate for preparing leaders with the skills needed to achieve goals and overcome the challenges of the unexpected

Benefits:
The Normandy Classroom program, as well as our other classroom programs, offers the following benefits:

• Cost-Efficient – Because these programs can be conducted onsite or at a client’s location of their choosing, our classroom programs can be a highly cost-efficient way to introduce or extend leadership training programs to a larger group of leaders and managers.
• Highly Customized – By gathering information from pre-session interviews or teleconferences with program sponsors and/or HR leaders, we can focus in on specific events, characters and dynamics of the battlefield programs or the theme-based programs to make each classroom experience highly relevant and situational to all participants and the needs of that organization.

Who Should Attend
The leadership training principles and concepts presented through the Normandy Leadership Classroom Experience can be tailored to meet the needs of the highest level senior leaders to the less-experienced yet rising leaders within an organization.  The Normandy Leadership Classroom Experience program offers universal leadership themes upon which any leader will find beneficial to his or her career growth and/or organizational aspirations.  However, this being said, the Normandy Leadership Classroom Experience will be highly beneficial for leaders of large, complex and multi-national or multi-cultural organizations experiencing tremendous change, and/or professionals who are charged with leading team(s) of the same nature. 

Additional
Stephen Ambrose’s D-Day: The Climactic Battle of WWII is strongly recommended reading prior to the session. We also recommend watching “Saving Private Ryan” or the early episodes of Band of Brothers, the HBO miniseries, and/or, if you are really motivated and like black and white cinema, Darryl Zanuck’s “The Longest Day”.