Normandy
Through the powerful metaphor of the allied landings, Normandy equips leaders to manage ambiguity and turn complexity into a roadmap for success.
Managing complexity during chaos
By exploring the strategic development and deployment of the allied landings, leaders refresh their capacity to lead through "wicked" problems and organizational disruption.
Location:
Historic beaches and battlefields of Normandy, France
Duration:
2.5–3 days
Format:
In-person or modular virtual formats
Primary Focus:
Strategic clarity and adaptability
Unity under pressure
Resilience and navigating uncertainty
Organizational alignment
Learning takeaways
By examining historical sources and taking part in historian-led leadership dialogues, participants rediscover timeless truths — and how to apply them to their modern organizational challenges.
Navigate complexity and chaos
Leaders refresh their ability to analyze situational ambiguity and remain calm while making critical decisions in a VUCA environment.
Create organizational alignment
The experience focuses on breaking down silos and building shared momentum across diverse cultures to move strategy toward action.
Innovate through
"wicked" problems
Participants explore how to manage difficult change agents and develop creative solutions for the most persistent organizational challenges.
The experience in action
Normandy involves historic site immersion, reflective exercises, and strategic sense-making led by expert military historians and strategy consultants.
Surfacing collective insight
WDHB facilitators guide the narrative and translate these timeless lessons into decision frameworks and actions that strengthen your team's collective energy.
Is Normandy right for you?
Groups typically include executive and other leadership teams and high potential cohorts. Attendees range from CEOs, Vice Presidents, Directors, to managers of managers.
Those interested in exploring strategic planning vs. implementation and navigating complex organizational structures will experience particular applications.
Designing Normandy for you
Every Normandy Experience is shaped to the client’s context. Let’s explore your leadership challenges and discuss how the power of connection can support your team.
Download program details
Learn more about the design and content of the Normandy Leadership Experience.
Other Leadership Development Experiences
Our Approach
Threaded LearningTM distills over 35 years of pioneering practice, woven into one framework. It’s the “secret sauce” guiding how we design, differentiate and deliver programs that stick and scale.
FAQs
We love to find answers. Let's start a conversation about how our experiential learning programs and services can answer your needs.
Experiential learning brings the real world and learning concepts together. Participants are placed in a situation with real-life context and high authenticity and are challenged to live through it for themselves. Based on this first-hand encounter, they reflect and develop ideas that are applicable for their unique leadership and organizational objectives. The outcomes of experiential learning are characterized by higher relevance, increased buy-in, broader ownership, and more sustainable impact.
We are focused on anticipating the ever-changing landscape facing organizations today. We help you create the momentum necessary to strategically solve problems and address obstacles in bold, unconventional ways. From L&D consulting to custom on-location and virtual experiential learning programs, we are here for you.
We are a forward-focused team dedicated to helping you continually improve your L&D strategy. With our robust ecosystem of experts and partners, we provide unparalleled access to people, research, and stories that provide learning mindsets, skill sets, and toolsets for you to achieve your greatest strategic visions.
The bespoke nature of our programs allows for customization in order to address challenges for all levels of leadership. Please get in touch to discuss your specific situation in more detail.
WDHB works with L&D teams focused on being future-ready and ensuring that human capital and financial resources are allocated most effectively across the organization. L&D teams can no longer be a mere provider of training — they must develop a strategic advantage for an organization.
We collaborate and partner with our clients to ensure that content and context are applicable, relevant, and customer-focused. Trust is vital to these relationships. Significant time and energy are spent in collaboration to go beyond the surface of whatever situation you are facing. When we get to the heart of the matter and address it in ways that resonate with the participants, you unlock real progress. Our research shows that effective L&D is not “one size fits all.” It is customized and evokes emotion and engagement from the participants so they connect with the content and embrace the learning journey. By customizing our programs to fit your goals, they have unparalleled impact on how learners operate as individuals, teams, and organizations.
WDHB explores both well-established theories and the latest trends in learning and development. Our research team is dedicated to understanding how learning happens in organizations and then develops cutting-edge approaches to corporate L&D for today and tomorrow. Visit our Resources page for articles and videos. Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to get immediate access to our latest research reports as they as published.
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