“I admire the team that has put the Elevate program together — they have meticulously aligned with CSIRO’s strategic imperatives, so participants have the necessary mindsets, skills, and networks to enable them to be more influential and effective… The Board has been pleased to see Elevate’s alumni being promoted into more senior leadership roles, thus playing a greater role in the organisation’s future.”
The impact
Bringing together hand-picked cohorts of high-potential senior leaders, this nine-month immersive experience accelerated enterprise leadership capability to tackle Australia's most significant scientific and organisational challenges.
- Participants credited the program with a more than 50% increase in their leadership performance
- Each participant’s leadership journey amplified to directly impact an average of 16 others across the organisation, over 500 people directly and indirectly impacted across three years
- Inaugural cohort invited by the Chief Executive to lead a Board-level strategic initiative: “Is CSIRO doing the right science for future impact?”
- Program rated 9/10 as a worthwhile investment in leadership development and won Platinum at the LearnX awards
The context
CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, faced critical succession gaps at the enterprise leadership level. Leadership identity was strongly tied to scientific domain expertise rather than enterprise leadership capability, and business units operated in silos. With no history of developing a Chief Executive internally, CSIRO needed to fundamentally reshape how it built, valued, and accelerated enterprise-level leadership.
Our approach
LIW co-created Elevate in a true partnership with the CSIRO talent and leadership team, a nine-month immersive enterprise leadership experience that inverted the traditional development model. Instead of starting with the individual, the program started with the enterprise system: participants first understood their strategic context before progressing to team leadership and personal development. Built around real work and context relevant enterprise leadership behaviour, the experience embedded leadership experiments, coaching, 360diagnostics, and direct engagement with the CSIRO Board and executive team. Participants were coached to actively extend their learning through their own networks including their direct line leaders, creating a deliberate multiplier effect.
The lasting result
CSIRO now has a Board-endorsed pathway for building enterprise leaders from within. Alumni operate with broader strategic perspective and the confidence to drive cultural and operational change at scale. The “whole of organisation” design, engaging participants’ managers, peers, direct reports, and alumni alongside each cohort, means impact extends far beyond the 55 direct participants. Enterprise leadership is no longer an abstract aspiration at CSIRO; it is a lived, developing capability with visible executive sponsorship and tangible succession outcomes.