To Grow Your Company, Leverage Your Leaders

How does an industry giant become more nimble? DuPont gets fast answers on new business opportunities by training its executives to think outside their divisions. Here's the program's MO.

Call in the troops for three weeks at most. Leadership for Growth used to be an eight-week assignment, but "it wore people down," says Chor-Huat Lim, program manager of Leadership for Growth.

Ensure that team members can fully commit themselves. "This isn't something that can be done part-time," says Rajeev Vaidya, a business manager in DuPont's fluoropolymers division, who participated in a team last year. "You'd dilute the power of the whole thing." Provide information on what's been done on the issue so far, so that team members don't tread old territory. Market research, competitive information, product literature, and a list of pertinent Web sites are good choices.

Give teams latitude and a travel budget. While exploring e-commerce applications for Corian countertop material, one Delaware-based team sent a member to Dell Computer's Texas headquarters in order to bone up on e-business best practices.

Assign a coach to each team. Coaches don't participate in field work, but they do act as facilitators who can help members work on their management skills, and who can intervene when meltdown seems imminent.