1The Challenge
What was the challenge?
Cisco gathered 17 participants in Sri Lanka around a clear mandate: tighten team cohesion, break down silos, and grow the kind of trust that translates into real performance. The 17 senior leaders, from Cisco India, met in Yala, Sri Lanka, for a high-impact leadership offsite focused on embracing change, deepening collaboration, and aligning around a shared vision. This intimate gathering created a rare space for strategic reflection, closer connection, and experiential learning at the leadership level.
2Our Solution
What solution did we design?
The day was carefully shaped to stretch the group and inspire unified leadership.
It opened with the Smart City Challenge, where leaders split into teams to build smart city models. Partway through, a surprise twist reshuffled the team captains, opening up discussion around adaptive leadership, shared ownership, and navigating change.
The difficulty ramped up as the brief shifted from building individual cities to co-creating one mega smart city. Teams had to recalibrate, align their objectives, and merge their ideas, ultimately presenting a single unified vision brought to life through collective effort.
3How We Did It
How was the programme delivered?
Working in small groups, leaders were dropped into hands-on simulations that called for inventive thinking, strategic collaboration, high-level problem-solving, and design thinking as a structured route through ideation, prototyping, and user-centric planning. The scenarios mirrored real-world situations that demanded agility, trust, and leadership in step with one another. The debrief drew out the leadership lessons that mattered most — vision casting, inclusive planning, cross-functional collaboration, and leading through uncertainty.
4Key Outcomes
What were the results?
The experience built toward a powerful Gratitude Circle, where each leader wrote heartfelt messages to fellow participants. Because these leaders so often collaborate remotely, the exercise opened a rare moment for honest appreciation and emotional connection. It lifted morale and reinforced the human side of leadership — empathy, acknowledgement, and trust. Design thinking ran through the whole day, showing up in how leaders reflected on co-creating solutions, aligning different perspectives, and meeting challenges with empathy and creativity, so they left with both emotional and strategic takeaways.
All 17 leaders finished the programme rating it 9.7/10 overall, with facilitation independently scored at 9.8/10. In the weeks that followed, Cisco reported a clear, lasting improvement in cross-team communication — and went on to engage The Thought Bulb again for a follow-up session.