No ordinary boot camp.

Abstract

Many companies now run boot camps--comprehensive orientation programs designed to help new hires hit the ground running. They're intense and intimidating, and new employees emerge from them with strong bonds to other recruits and to the organization. But at Trilogy, organizational consultant Noel Tichy discovered one program that's a breed apart. In this article, Tichy gives us a detailed tour of Trilogy's boot camp, Trilogy University, to demonstrate why it's so different--and so effective. Like the best boot camps, it serves as an immersion in both the technical skills new recruits will need for their jobs and Trilogy's corporate culture, which emphasizes risk-taking, teamwork, humility, and a strong customer focus. But this is a new-employee orientation session that's so fundamental to the company as a whole that it's presided over by the CEO and top corporate executives for fully six months of the year. Why? In two three-month sessions, these top executives hone their own strategic thinking about the company as they decide what to teach the new recruits each session. They also find the company's next generation of new products as they judge the innovative ideas the recruits are tasked with developing--making the program Trilogy's main R&D engine. And they pull the company's rising technical stars into mentoring roles for the new recruits, helping to build the next generation of top leadership. After spending months on-site studying Trilogy University, Tichy came away highly impressed by the power of the virtuous teaching cycle the program has set in motion. Leaders of the organization are learning from recruits at the same time that the recruits are learning from the leaders. It's a model, he argues, that other companies would do well to emulate.