Bayer: Leadership upskilling – IMD Sprints for scale, speed and impact

How Bayer was able to revamp its leadership development, which helped the weedkiller-to-aspirin conglomerate create a new culture of psychological safety and performance management.  

Context

For the better part of two centuries, Bayer has been the darling of corporate Germany. A pioneering force in life sciences, known for inventing the aspirin painkiller, the group also boasts giant divisions in consumer healthcare and crop science. Today, the 160-year-old corporate behemoth employs 100,000 people and holds a market value of around €30 billion. 

Challenge

In 2021, amid a tough operating environment, Bayer faced a clear problem: its organizational culture. It had an internally focused, risk-averse mindset, and a rigid top-down structure, which stifled decision-making and innovation. This was a big problem for a company that relies on R&D to discover and develop new products, while also facing the impending loss of exclusivity of some of its best-selling drugs.

The challenges didn’t stop there. The weedkiller-to-aspirin conglomerate struggled with poor performance management: in 2020, only half of its employees had a development dialogue, and just one in four set any development goals. On top of that, 40% of Bayer’s leaders reported difficulties in evaluating staff performance.

The company, under the leadership of then-CEO Werner Baumann, needed to upskill its leaders with a “coaching mindset”, marked by providing ongoing, constructive feedback to staff, thereby boosting the performance of teams.

By the end of 2022, most of Bayer’s top leaders had completed a program focused on developing psychological safety and using coaching as a real-time approach to performance management. But for this cultural transformation to succeed in the long term, Bayer understood that it had to involve everyone, at every level. In a nutshell: it needed a scalable solution. 

Partnering with IMD

The company turned to its long-time partner, IMD, to co-create a scalable and impactful leadership development program.  Bayer required a solution that could be deployed quickly and efficiently across its global operations, targeting an initial 5,000 leaders, launching and completing within a year, and with an engaging design, to foster both individual and organizational learning. 

IMD proposed a custom “Sprint” format, integrating both synchronous (live) and asynchronous content, focused on developing key leadership behaviors. The design and implementation of the Sprint was scalable, impactful and engaging.

Scalable: the program was delivered through 29 Sprints over the span of 10 months, reaching 12,826 Bayer leaders globally.  

“It was a peer sharing experience, and it became a movement of people that wanted to participate because they saw the benefits of those who had already gone through. It was a horizontal world of coming together to learn differently,” said Beatriz Rodriguez, Bayer’s Chief Talent and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer.  

Impactful: to ensure participants could apply what they learned, the program included practical assignments, peer discussions, and reflections, all designed to help leaders translate theory into practice.    

“A success indicator is the application to daily work. You can say it’s successful when there is a psychologically-safe environment and people communicate with each other — even during difficult conversations — or you can see productive sharing and people setting stretching goals,” said Christine Elian Peralta, a Government Affairs Manager at Bayer in the Philippines.  

Engaging: to capture the participants’ interest and keep them engaged throughout the learning journey, the Sprint had a mix of learning activities, including videos, readings, discussions, and practical exercises. 

“We learn best from others, and by hearing other people’s personal journeys and experiences. While there were a few hundred per cohort, the learning really took place when interacting in the smaller peer groups,” said Brian Naber, now President for the North America and Australia/New Zealand region for Bayer’s crop science division. 

Tangible impact

The program’s success was evident in the high completion rate (83%) and positive feedback from participants. Leaders reported significant improvements in their ability to create psychological safety, adopt a coaching mindset, and manage performance effectively.  

These changes had a tangible impact on the organization, leading to improved performance and increased engagement. Overall, the program resulted in an estimated return on investment of 66% – almost three times the target of 25%. For every €1 invested, Bayer gained €1.66.  Moreover, the Sprint program had a major, positive impact on Bayer’s business, leading to an estimated €23 million in annual efficiency savings.  

But the program’s impact extended beyond the immediate financial rewards; it created intangible benefits such as building trust, fostering psychological safety, enhancing active listening, and promoting collaboration and networking.  The program also led to the increased adoption of key leadership behaviors, like encouraging team members to share thoughts and ideas, giving feedback to improve performance, delegating with necessary power and freedom, having courageous conversations, and communicating the reason behind actions. 

What this success demonstrates is that large-scale, impactful leadership development is possible, setting a new standard for executive education.  

As Paul Hunter, IMD’s Director of Programs and Learning Design, noted: “For years, organizations have struggled with the democratization of learning – often mentally accepting a trade-off that scale and speed are somehow incompatible with impact. The IMD-Bayer Sprint provides demonstrable proof that simultaneously delivering on scale, speed and impact can be achieved, opening the way for a new era in the deployment of learning at scale.” 

Key takeaways

• Bayer faced challenges with a risk-averse, top-down culture that stifled innovation, necessitating a cultural shift to support better decision-making and performance. 

• Partnering with IMD, Bayer implemented a “Sprint” program that upskilled 12,826 leaders globally, combining live and self-paced learning. 

• The program emphasized psychological safety, coaching, and active performance management, all essential for fostering a supportive and effective leadership environment. 

• With an 83% completion rate, the program significantly improved leadership skills, delivering a 66% return on investment and €23 million in annual savings. 

• The Sprint program built trust, psychological safety, and collaboration, crucial for sustaining high-performing teams and long-term organizational success.