Journey of Transformation: Enpro
Insyte began its collaboration with Enpro Industries when their then-CEO asked the Presencing Institute to lead Transformation Journeys for four business units of this leading US-based Industrial technology company. Enpro had a longstanding “double bottom line” commitment to its people, prioritizing employee voice and safety, work-life balance, mindfulness and personal growth practices, and avoidance of plant closings. Its businesses were mature and there was a sense that they were leaving opportunity on the table by not exploring new partnerships, industries and opportunities to transform current technologies.
Each business designated a cross-functional team of 8-12 emerging leaders to take a 6-month journey focused on both future-proofing their businesses and activating the highest potential of early and mid-career leaders in both their business lives and as humans in the world.
In three of the four businesses, exciting and impactful explorations took root. Our objectives: 1) identify 2-4 growth nodes for the businesses and 2) develop pathways for each person to grow in their leadership and life. Most of the individuals involved were freed up for at least 50% of their time for 3-6 months to explore and co-create.
Using the framework of the U, we crystallized the core questions and assumptions the group had a responsibility to ask and answer, invested time in relationships to build the “social body” of the teams, and increased the capacity of these engineers, finance, and operations leaders to see and sense their own company “ecosystem” as well as opportunities in the outside world that were always there, but until then, not visible. We took learning journeys to immerse the teams in environments, businesses and sectors that sparked curiosity. Because “the quality of an intervention is determined by the interior condition of the intervener,” we built individual practices and team culture to listen “from the future,” prioritizing authenticity, healthy collision of ideas, and openness to the new. The company had an existing culture of mindfulness practices, which supported our ability to slow the conversation down to reveal cultural barriers to innovation and to open mental models toward new sectors that in the past would have been discarded quickly.
Clarity about the cross-cutting core capacity of materials science emerged, enabling new focus and discipline. In each business unit, substantial and radically new business opportunities opened up in the form of partnerships, new clients, new technologies and acquisitions. Hard truths emerged and, in most cases, so did the willingness to act on those insights, particularly around company culture, sacred cows or mindset. As it examined its practices, Enpro realized it was already contributing to the green revolution and could do more. We used PI’s embodiment practices (Social Presencing Theater) to reveal subtle awarenesses that in some cases, shifted life trajectories in and outside of work. This included career advances, a few departures, and also, for example, a new weekend father-son side business, new mentoring relationships, and long-postponed tough conversations finally happening.
I believe you opened up our eyes to see changes in the world that were not apparent before your work. In short, you taught us to listen to what the world was trying to tell us.”
Since those first initiatives in 2017, a lot has changed at Enpro. Enpro pushed boundaries from more traditional products and services to use their material science expertise to move into semiconductors, life sciences, and other technology-enabled sectors.
Eric Vaillancourt, who was President of one of Enpro’s seven business units when we met him, was elected CEO and President in 2021. He then reached back out to Insyte to lead his first Executive and Leadership Team retreats as CEO.
With Eric, we co-created a workshop for the senior leadership that focused on building shared understanding of the on-the-ground manifestations of profit, people, and planet to align practices and leadership with vision. All of the business unit leads replicated our approach within their teams, in partnership with their HR leads, resulting in every single person in the company shaping company practices and culture. All of the insights from across all the global business units were synthesized and shared with the board and are in various stages of implementation.
We also co-created a “purpose” workshop, where each leader held their own personal life purpose next to Enpro’s purpose, and identified strategies for amplifying their own personal purpose within their Enpro role, and finding ways Enpro could help them fulfill their own purpose in the community. Each leader brought this workshop to all their employees including all front line workers.
The partnership that Insyte has forged with Eric and the Enpro team is one that models what a great corporate PI partnership can look like when smart people access the technologies and practices of Presencing to “listen from the future” and tap the intelligences of truly open minds, open hearts, and yes, even in industrial settings of engineers and technicians, the wisdom of the body.