A Blackfish Success Story:
Dramatic Turnaround for Municipal Group

– Uninspiring, ineffective class structure was cramping their usefulness
– We restructured their training program make personal connections
– Fresh business model inspires effective leadership & improves the city

TRANSFORMATION:
New Life For A Struggling Organization

The Problem:
For an organization whose entire purpose is fostering leadership in a community, there’s no skating by on ambition. Especially when you put the word “leader” right there in your name. If you call yourself a leadership organization, you had better do a good job of leading!
 
But sometimes even the best leaders need help training up others. An established leadership group in one city came to Blackfish for a complete turnaround. They had fine leaders, but they needed a new business model. Their training method was an all-day event filled with motivational speakers. They hit prospective leaders with a barrage of tips, guidelines, ideas and lessons, one after the other. Each speaker muddying the message of the next.
 
This approach was completely ineffective. They had no active alumni, no robust corporate support and no diversity on their board.
 
What Blackfish Did:
We came in and completely changed the structure of their classes. We made the sessions interactive, integrating the themes of each class to build on a single cohesive message. If the seminar was about public transportation, we made the students arrive via public transportation, walking, biking or carpool. We helped them learn to relate to other folks in their city affected by this issue.
 
We also divided the sessions into halves. For the first half of the day, two expert speakers presented different angles of the municipal challenge at hand; for the second half, the class saw a presentation from someone in another city who had already solved the problem. Leaders-in-training would learn which skills to apply to fix the problem in their own city.
 
We revamped their business model, and helped them find their new stride. Now they are carrying out their mission with gusto, molding new leaders into extraordinary agents of change for their city.  These leaders got exactly what they needed to turn themselves around.