Fonterra: Putting leaders’ learning into action

How can leadership development translate into practical skills that leaders can apply in the real world?

As the grand finale of Fonterra’s nine-month Accelerator Future Leaders Experience, Big Bloom was invited to design and facilitate a tailor-made hackathon that would enable future leaders to put their learning into practice.

The experience also brought together leaders from different functions and geographically dispersed cohorts, creating opportunities to strengthen relationships and collaborate beyond their usual teams.

The challenge was rooted in Fonterra’s social impact partnership with Pūhoro STEMM Academy, which supports Māori youth in accessing STEMM education and career pathways.

Big Bloom designed and facilitated a full-day hackathon, bringing together 37 future leaders across five teams, supported by three Big Bloom coaches and five Fonterra facilitators trained in the Big Bloom method.

Through the four stages of the Big Bloom method (Empathy, Ideation, Prototyping and Pitches), participants engaged with Pūhoro STEMM stakeholders, explored different perspectives, generated ideas and developed solutions to a real-world challenge.

Working on a shared challenge gave participants the chance to practise essential leadership capabilities, including active listening, collaborative problem-solving, decision-making under pressure, rapid prototyping, communication and influence.

• Navigating different viewpoints and reaching shared decisions.
• Co-creating solutions rather than working independently.
• Strengthening learning agility through experimentation and rapid prototyping.
• Developing stakeholder empathy and framing problems around real needs.
• Communicating ideas with confidence and making decisions under pressure.

Five Fonterra facilitators were trained in the Big Bloom method, equipping them with practical tools to bring collective intelligence into their own teams and future initiatives.

The experience developed participants’ leadership capabilities and strengthened Fonterra’s internal capacity to facilitate collaboration and problem-solving beyond the programme itself.

A well-designed practical experience can turn leadership learning into action.

By combining real-world problem-solving with the development of internal facilitators, the hackathon gave Fonterra a powerful finale to its leadership journey: practical leadership development, cross-functional collaboration, social impact and lasting internal capability.