Chatsworth

Taking Chatsworth’s managers from tradition to innovation

Premier visitor attraction Chatsworth needed its managers to understand and drive forward its ambitious plan for growth. When they asked us to help, we looked to contemporary technologies – rather than historic practices – to build a flexible, university-accredited programme fit for a duke.

The challenge

As a traditional brand with a traditional culture, Chatsworth’s challenge was to adapt its business model and encourage its employees to embrace the wide-ranging changes required to compete successfully in the demanding leisure market.

The directors recognised that their managers would be crucial in this change process, and so wanted to set up a management development programme.

Whatever solution we suggested had to be flexible enough to:

• be useful and relevant to managers from a diverse range of specialisms
• allow the estate to operate efficiently – ensuring all managers were not taken out of the business at the same time.

The solution

A flexible one-year programme was devised and accredited.

Key features included:

• a focus on personal professional development – this allowed managers to explore and reflect upon their own management skills in their own time
• a bespoke online portal – this supported individual learning out-of-hours
• workshops in subjects such as personal development, managing people and budgets, and project planning
• individual work based assignments – these that allowed managers to spend time on real projects, which could be implemented and would add value to the business.