new department, new leadership, new culture

Defra was founded in 2001. A merger of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, MAFF, with responsibilities from the old DETR, Defra was due to bring together all aspects of the environment, rural matters, farming and food production under the umbrella of sustainable development.

But mergers always create challenges - and the challenge for Defra was to ensure the new department was greater than the sum of its parts, and to create a fresh, new culture with sustainability at its heart.

Our story

 “ We designed the SMLDP, (Senior Management Leadership Development Programme) to address Defra’s need to assess and benchmark all 700 senior managers against a new leadership competence framework and offer them the broadest range of relevant development.

We converted Defra’s new leadership profile into a 360° assessment instrument and designed a programme taking the senior cadre through a series of events (spanning 12 months for each participant) with a Development Centre at its heart and supported by executive coaching. This mandatory element of the programme was supplemented by workshops, seminars, masterclasses and a range of more tailored interventions and psychometric instruments

Defra was the largest, and most ambitious programme we had delivered : with over 700 participants, the logistical challenge is obvious, but the cale of programme also challenged us energetically, to maintain momentum.

As the programme draws to an end, we’re very proud to have met the expectations placed on us and made our contribution to Defra’s growing stature on the national, European and global stage.”

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