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STORY OF IMPACT
Essilor
Transforming Managers into Effective Leaders
with Scalable, Technology-Driven Solutions
Sector: Healthcare Medical Equipment & Supplies
Essilor is the world leader for corrective lenses. From design to manufacturing, the
group develops a wide range of lenses to correct and protect eyesight. Its headline
brands include Varilux,® Crizal,® Transitions,® Definity,® Xperio,® and Foster Grant.®
Essilor can be found in over 100 countries with more than 55,000 employees
worldwide. Forbes consistently ranks Essilor among the 100 World’s Most
Innovative Companies. The company is also known for establishing the Essilor
Vision Foundation. The mission of this charitable organization is to eliminate poor
vision and its lifelong consequences. One of the primary goals of the foundation is
to provide eyeglasses for children in need.
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©2015 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
The Challenge
Domestically, a core strategy for Essilor of America has been
growth through acquisitions. This strategy has allowed the
organization to expand rapidly in markets, services and
product categories. Matt Jones, Vice President of Talent
Management for Essilor of America, says the first-tier
supervisors and managers leading laboratories have a wide
variety of backgrounds and experiences. “It’s no surprise
that these employees bring a vast amount of functional
knowledge to the business, but also have varying levels of
exposure to basic leadership principles,” he says.
Essilor of America first turned to “off-the-shelf” solutions
to fill the gap. While they were able to deploy the training
quickly and saw some success, the initiative was generally
viewed as unsuccessful because it lacked business context.
Lab supervisors found it difficult to apply learnings from
office-based role-plays to their own work environment.
Essilor began to phase out this basic solution in favor of
custom courses that directly fit the need; however, they
simply could not keep up with the variety of needs required
in an increasingly expanding and complex organization.
Though Essilor has a successful global leadership curriculum,
it lacked an introductory program in basic supervising and
management skills. To address the needs of its diverse
workforce, the company knew it needed to shore up its
continuum of leadership development in support of first-tier
supervisors.
©2015 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
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Solution
Essilor partnered with global leadership experts at
the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) to launch a
blended learning solution for first-line supervisors that
heavily leverages an online curriculum that could be
quickly deployed across a broad geography. CCL’s existing
eLearning resources are being adopted as appropriate and
are complemented by newly created communication guides
and job aids that reflect Essilor’s core values, workplace
environment and needs. Additional courses are being
custom-developed to address topics appropriate to the
Essilor workplace.
“Ultimately we’re getting the
best of both worlds,” Jones
says. “We’re using a blended
approach that incorporates
proven, off-the-shelf resources
where appropriate, and
building custom courses
where necessary.”
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©2015 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
The program is based on CCL’s 70/20/10 framework, which
is a research-based model for optimizing learning and
development. CCL surveys indicate that roughly 10 percent
of behavioral change and lessons learned by leaders can be
attributed to coursework. Twenty percent involves learning
from others, while the remaining 70 percent is linked to
workplace experiences.
Essilor’s new EDGE Leadership Program addresses all three
dimensions of learning: formal training, mentoring, and
workplace experiences. When all courses are complete, the
formal portion of the program will span 54 topics organized
around 10 leadership competencies vital to Essilor—from
managing conflict to developing people.
A single topic is introduced each month as a
one-hour, online training module. To support the
“learning from others” portion of the framework,
each training topic cascades from the top down
across three levels of leadership. Managers complete
each month’s web-based course and then are
prepped via a live webinar to model and reinforce
the required behaviors. Coaching guides and
“huddle” materials give them the tools they need to
conduct mini sessions with the managers and firstline supervisors on their team. They are encouraged
to bring each topic to life by sharing their own
personal experiences and lessons learned.
To support workplace learning, practical tools
and online job aids provide real-time, step-bystep guidance in how to address the issues and
opportunities that must be navigated each day.
“We are on our way toward
building a comprehensive
program that prepares
supervisors on the front
line to lead the way,” Jones
says. “As a bonus, everyone
benefits, including the
managers who serve as
coaches and mentors.”
©2015 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
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Results
Since its launch in 2012, the EDGE Leadership Program has been offered to thousands of first-line supervisors and is
making a noticeable impact on Essilor’s operations. “We feel confident it is creating the foundation we need, and one
we can build on, as individuals move from basic supervision through to global leadership positions,” Jones says.
Creating a shared learning experience worldwide
Though EDGE Leadership was initially designed for 1,300
first-line supervisors and managers at Essilor of America, the
program has “gone viral.” Steve Cunningham, Senior Vice
President of Human Resources for Essilor of America, says
EDGE may ultimately address a need that overshadows its
original intent. “We see potential in using this curriculum
in other regions, particularly our emerging markets, where
leadership skills are vital but resources to invest in those
skills are limited,” he says.
Linking leadership development to talent
management
Though participation in the EDGE Leadership Program is
entirely voluntary, there are incentives for participation.
Completion of the curriculum is a prerequisite for new
management candidates. In addition, a portion of the annual
bonus objective for managers is tied to their support of the
program. As a result, leadership development and talent
management are now more closely linked.
Building strong levels of engagement
Essilor now offers select EDGE courses to an additional 1,500
supervisors in 48 countries around the globe—creating a
shared understanding of what it means to lead an Essilor
team. The EDGE courses and supporting materials will
also be offered through the company’s global learning
management system, Essilor University.
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©2015 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
Data collected by Essilor shows that EDGE Leadership is
engaging leaders across multiple levels of supervision.
Nearly 80% of first-line supervisors and managers in the
United States have completed the training. Nearly half of
all managers are using coaching guides and huddle tools to
reinforce the program and cascade learning to their teams.
Those who embrace the program have become its most
vocal supporters.
Turning classroom learning into action
Ultimately, EDGE Leadership is impacting what happens in
the workplace. One example: After the launch of a training
module focused on the importance of a shared vision, a
third of lab supervisors voluntarily worked with their teams
to create their own vision statement and enthusiastically
shared their vision with others in the organization.
“It’s counter to Essilor’s culture
to innovate just to be clever,”
Cunningham says. “We like
innovations that are grounded
in research, but effectively (and
simply) address a need. This
is true for our products, and
it’s true for the training that
we provide. EDGE is a good
cultural fit.”
©2015 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
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The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) is a top-ranked,
global provider of leadership development. By leveraging
the power of leadership to drive results that matter most
to clients, CCL transforms individual leaders, teams,
organizations and society. Our array of cutting-edge
solutions is steeped in extensive research and experience
gained from working with hundreds of thousands of
leaders at all levels. Ranked among the world’s Top 5
providers of executive education by the Financial Times
and in the Top 10 by Bloomberg Businessweek, CCL has
offices in Greensboro, NC; Colorado Springs, CO; San
Diego, CA; Brussels, Belgium; Moscow, Russia; Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia; Johannesburg, South Africa; Singapore;
Gurgaon, India; and Shanghai, China.
CCL - Americas
www.ccl.org
+1 800 780 1031 (US or Canada)
+1 336 545 2810 (Worldwide)
info@ccl.org
Greensboro, North Carolina
+1 336 545 2810
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+1 719 633 3891
San Diego, California
+1 858 638 8000
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©2015 Center for Creative Leadership. All rights reserved.
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