Curtiss-Wright Flow Control’s (CWFC) senior leadership team established several strategic objectives as part of the company’s plan to create a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace. One of these objectives was to hire and retain the best talent in the industry and they started by developing the managers and leaders of the entire organization.

CWFC partnered with Interaction Associates to design, develop, and deliver a leadership development curriculum that mapped to their leadership competencies. The efforts began with development programs for first-level supervisors and managers and mid-level managers and leaders.These successful efforts were followed by highly customized learning experiences for the next two levels of leadership, the Strategic Leaders and General Managers of each of the 26 business units.  

How Interaction Associates Helped  

In this groundbreaking initiative, one key goal was to create a shared cultural understanding and alignment and give the leaders the tools and skills to execute consistently with the cultural values.Interaction Associates created a spiral Leadership Curriculum that re-visited core concepts and models at each level of leadership and expanded on these concepts as appropriate given the particular challenges of each level of leaders.The Strategic Leaders (direct reports of General Managers) and the General Managers completed customized applied and action learning programs to support the key objectives of the business. Below is an overview of the customized General Manager Program which included a multi-perspective approach designed by Interaction Associates.   

Interaction Associates partnered with an inside design team at Curtiss-Wright Flow Control to build business acumen, strategic thinking and collaborative capability by teaching participants to examine the business from four perspectives: finance, change management, operations, and talent. During this program, participants examined their businesses based on this variation of a “balanced scorecard,” which would typically view the business from financial, customer, operations, and organizational perspectives.  

Senior functional and line executives participated in teaching each of the four perspectives, and were coached to use relevant collaboration skills in the context of each presentation. The strategic context is explored through both a PESTE (political, economic, social, technological, and environmental) analysis and a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats relative to competition) analysis. 

Return on Involvement

Participants reported better implementation, strategic decision making, collaboration techniques, and application of skills to effect change management. Many participants appreciated the ability to use a common language when coaching and leading. Many also pointed to experiencing an increased capability in coaching and managing employees.  

One GM reported, “I believe the Curtiss-Wright Flow Control leadership development program has made a noticeable difference in my thought process on how to handle the tougher decisions in the business, and how I’ve been more methodical in the interaction and coaching of my staff and employees.  The program has also raised my awareness in how I’ve executed the business plan successfully in these extremely tough economic times.”   Another volunteered, “The major impact has been in the access to additional easy-to-implement tools and techniques to help me in the continual struggle with leading/coaching vs. managing/doing.I have seen an improvement in my leadership ‘efficiency’.”

Another GM said, “Also, the change management models have been useful in planning for changes.”   Finally, one participant noted, “Facilitative Leadership® and Adaptive Strategic Leadership have prepared me to effectively collaborate with my team on a daily basis: improving my ability to coach, build teams, conduct efficient meetings and build agreement.”   In addition to a variety of positive reports of the impact the leadership development programs had on the participants, several cross-business unit opportunities were identified and implemented as a result of leaders across the organization attending the programs together.

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