Our story
A virtual space flight became the company's moon landing
In 2011, Mats Kristensen took part in a leadership development program in the USA. Together with other amateur astronauts, he safely launched a spaceship to a distant planet. The space journey provided Mats with astronomically little leadership training. So he decided to create something completely new and different.
By Rita Tvede Bartolomei
After completing a 5-day, leadership development program under the auspices of their previous employer (at the neat price of NOK 200,000 per person), the participants were served the conclusion from the program manager:
- Take 1 thing you learned on your space journey back to your business. Then do something with it. If I can thank the program for anything, I was at least inspired to do something about the way leadership development is carried out," says co-founder of FRONT Leadership and leadership developer Mats Kristensen.
Event-based was replaced with evidence-based leadership training
Because if the outcome of a leadership development program is only one thing, then something is really wrong with the program and the level of ambition," Mats points out and elaborates:
- That's why I developed a leadership development concept in 2015 that was evidence-based and not event-based. We wanted to provide managers with leadership training over time, based on research, continuous learning and the practice of new knowledge. When leadership development is based on the fact that leadership is a profession that takes time to become good at, you get really good leaders," he says.
No, FRONT Leadership (originally called Leadership Weekly) didn't organize meetings at Norefjell with a bubble bath before dinner and red wine in front of the fireplace. They did something completely different.
- "We were keen to be out in the workplaces and as close as possible to the management. To find out what the needs of the companies were. So that we could develop management development that was best suited to each company and each manager as an individual," he says.
With no sales experience, and without a single customer or prospect, it was a tentative start to the leadership development concept for
Mats Kristensen and co-founder Stian Jensvoll. Until some researchers on the other side of the Atlantic published a study in 2017 (Lacerenza et al.). It was a thorough meta-analysis that supported FRONT's method.
- The researchers recommended the same principles we followed for good leadership development. But to gain more credibility in the Norwegian market, we launched our own research project in collaboration with NIFU and BI, among others, with 540 participants from five different companies. Here we managed to document significant progress among the managers, without the managers meeting physically: only digitally," says Kristensen.
The research project gave FRONT Leadership 12 new learning points, which you can read more about in MAGMA(Why have leadership development at a seminar when you can have leadership training at work?) One of these was that social gatherings are unifying and clearly strengthen social ties, and their effect should not be underestimated. But strengthening networks and relationships is not the same as strengthening managers' leadership skills.
- Sure, I got to meet a lot of nice people and taste some great red wine at a leadership program in the US. But did I get better at leading? Just by taking part in an intense, Star Wars-like role-playing game in the galaxy? Because the company was recognized as top 3 in the world for leadership development for decades? Well, no. Absolutely not. Single, short events only provide a small mouthful. It's like drinking water from a fire hose, where there's a lot of spillage and a lot goes to waste. Leadership training is a continuous process that should be digested one glass of water at a time," he says.
Read more: World leader in leadership
Replaced e-learning with digital leadership meetings
The way FRONT Leadership worked in the beginning was completely different from the trend in leadership development 5 to 10 years ago. Event-based leadership development was often supplemented with short e-learning courses that could be completed left-handed.
- "The ambition of e-learning participants was often to just click through the course on their computer. Not to learn how to become better leaders, or to change their leadership behavior," says Mats Kristensen.
FRONT Leadership was committed to digital learning that delivered results and actually changed leadership behavior.
- "While other leadership developers organized conferences and different types of events, we combined physical meetings with virtual meetings. Video meetings were not so widespread at the time, and were not widely used until the pandemic opened most people's eyes," he says.
"If you don't use it, you lose it". The saying applies to many skills in life. The principle definitely applies to leadership skills.
- "Management is a practical subject, and you have to continuously train to be a good leader. Leadership is a perishable commodity, just like muscles," he says.
Therefore, the 40 hours of leadership development in FRONT Leadership are spread over 12 months. The most important part of the leadership development is practical training. It doesn't take place with the leadership developer, or buried in management theory, but in the real world - where the value of leadership is created.
- We follow the 70-20-10 principle: 10 percent is learning from us leadership developers, 20 percent is learning the participants give to each other, and the remaining 70 percent is taking the new knowledge into the leadership role. The learning must be practiced and used every single day at work. You can absorb as much management theory as you like, but the theory is useless if you don't put it into practice," says Mats Kristensen. Our leadership developers guide participants through the process and put all this into a system and structure
From zero customers to thousands of managers
The pandemic became a make-or-break situation for many businesses in Norway. But when Erna shut down Norway on March 12, 2020, FRONT Leadership's most important customer called.
- Not to close the door, but to order more leadership development. Suddenly everyone was on Teams and Zoom, and by then we already had many years' experience of conducting leadership training digitally," says Mats Kristensen.
It's clear that evidence-based leadership development trumps event-based leadership development: Since launching in 2017, FRONT Leadership has helped more than 3,000 leaders become more effective leaders. Revenue has increased from NOK 9 million in 2020 to NOK 28 million in 2022. The number of FTEs has increased from 2 to 11 in the same time period.
- Of course, it's our vision that drives us and sets the direction. "Everyone should have a fantastic leader" means a lot, because "everyone" is many. There are 209,000 in Norway alone, and as many as 300 million worldwide. Most need help and many need crisis help," says Mats.
In 2020, 500 managers participated in leadership development, doubling to 1,000 managers in 2021. During 2022, 2,000 managers will receive leadership development through FRONT Leadership. The ambition for 2023 is to continue the strong growth: 4,000 managers receiving leadership development within 12 months.
- The number of managers in the process is of course important to us, but quantity doesn't matter if the quality is poor. At the same time, we must see each and every manager as a unique individual with their own needs and conditions, and adapt the course accordingly. The work we have ahead of us is very important and demanding. Surely there must be a reason why we have a man on the moon? Yet companies are still struggling with something as important and profitable as effective leadership," he says
