Cargill is one of the world's largest privately-held companies, with annual revenues exceeding $50 billion and employment of more than 80,000. Headquartered near Minneapolis, it is restructuring itself in 1999-2000 to place more authority and responsibility in the hands of managers who run its many agricultural, food, industrial, and financial businesses around the world.

To prepare its managers in Latin America for the new leadership required, Cargill gathered 130 top people and spouses from 11 Latin countries together for a four-day program in Rio de Janeiro. The organizers designed the October, 1999, event around the company's new "strategic intent" of becoming the "premier provider of innovative customer solutions in food and agriculture."

The planners knew that past platforms would not work well for this agenda. Instead of a succession of lecturing executives with powerpoint presentations, they crafted the program to convey the restructuring message that "this was not business as usual." When participants arrived, Cargill's Latin director greeted them with a dozen samba dancers.

To drive home the vital messages, participant groups enacted the main points. Cargill is cultivating deeper knowledge of its customers, and one group staged an encounter between a weary manager of McDonalds, one of Cargill largest customers, and an informed Cargill account manager. The company is pressing for innovation and change, and here participants confronted the "ghost of Cargill's past," a lingering spirit that despised risk. Cargill is fostering collaboration, and for this a team of "five musketeers" dramatized how its Central America managers had rallied in the aftermath of the devastating hurricane in Honduras.

To bring out the firm's new strategic intent, a master of ceremonies played Larry King -complete with wig, glasses, and suspenders - and in Larry King fashion provocatively interviewed Cargill's CEO, Warren R. Staley, about the company's direction.

Finally, to reaffirm firm's focus on "leading change together," managers and spouses divided into competitive teams that performed song and dance for Cargill's own version of a Carnivale celebration, the legendary festival of Rio.

Information on Cargill is available at http://www.cargill.com/, and information on its leadership development programs is available from its organizers, Rae Lesmeister, Manager of Worldwide Learning at rae_lesmeister@cargill.com and Barbara Luke, Learning Manager, at barbara_luke@cargill.com.

From the the Wharton Leadership Digest, December, 1999.