Located in the hilly terrain of Lonavala, L&T’s Leadership Development Academy (LDA) has been a cornerstone of the global conglomerate’s growth story.
It was the need to groom home-grown managers that marked the beginning of Management Development Centre (MDC), the earlier avatar of LDA, on 2nd June 1997 on a 7-acre campus at Lonavala.
The vision for the institute soon evolved from producing managers to that of preparing a pipeline of future leaders for the various businesses. The expansion of scope and the growing number of participants over the years necessitated the creation of bigger and better facilities, and L&T Group Chairman Mr. A M Naik took personal interest in 2007 towards expanding the facility to a 24 acres world-class campus, equipped with state-of-the-art facilities.
At a time when a lot of Corporates are looking outside their organization to fulfil their Learning and Training needs, L&T, through the LDA, is committed to maintaining the highest level of quality in its management team by keeping its Learning and Training efforts in-house.
The most notable among the courses held within the campus is L&T’s 7-step Leadership Development Programme. It covers the entire gamut of grooming qualified employees into managers and nurturing them to be global business leaders. Reputed business schools of India such as IIM-A, IIM-B, IIM-C, XLRI, Narsee Monjee and Symbiosis have partnered with L&T to develop the various levels of this programme.
Every illustrious leader within the L&T Group today has walked the corridors of this institution, sat in the state-of-the art classrooms and undergone the rigorous trainings offered at LDA which are considered something of a rite of passage to climb up the corporate ladder. It comes as no surprise then that the LDA is often referred to as the Leadership Factory.
The LDA also offers something very unique within the realm of the L&T Group. It’s programmes are designed to bring together a diverse set of employees from across the group, with varied backgrounds, cultures and experiences. In essence, every session becomes a melting pot of ideas from every corner of the vast group, and helps spark creativity and innovation in a collaborative manner.
The lush green campus, as it stands today, is dotted with five spacious residential blocks capable of housing up to 300 visitors, 10 learning halls, myriad recreational facilities ranging from indoor and outdoor games, swimming pool, jacuzzi, meditation hall, etc. To enable access to faculty from beyond the campus, LDA even came up with a precursor to the VR-type teaching by setting up a tele-presence room in 2011 which can simultaneously connect 23 locations. The students too can join from multiple locations because of this facility.
It was a conscious decision to retain the topography of the region while preparing the blueprint for the campus. The LDA fits right into the hilly landscape of the region and is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna and is home to 69 varieties of trees and 44 species of birds.
After a day of rigorous training, there’s nothing quite like an evening walk around the campus, with the slight nip in the air, green hills and chirping birds to clear one’s thoughts and rejuvenate oneself.
Aligning itself to the ESG goals of L&T, the LDA campus has adopted smart technologies to make optimal utilisation of both electricity and water, embraced rainwater harvesting and houses a captive water treatment plant. These efforts have been rewarded with LDA bagging the prestigious ‘gold’ and ‘platinum’ ratings of IGBC (Indian Green Building Council).
With the LDA campus being no less than a resort, time and again L&T has received requests from various quarters for letting out the campus for commercial events. But L&T has never allowed to dilute the sanctity of this place as profit-making was never the objective behind setting up this campus. Keeping ‘learning’ as the leitmotif for this place, L&T has, very selectively and as a goodwill measure, shared the campus premises with reputed organisations and institutions for conducting training sessions and team-building workshops.
Activity within the LDA campus had been muted during the last two pandemic years, but with life gradually returning to normalcy, the management has opened its doors to new participants with renewed focus and energy. The LDA team even expects a bout of “revenge training” in the coming months and the campus is gearing up for that.
As the institution turns 25, its role within the realm of L&T grows stronger, and it continues to honour its commitment towards the development of leaders for a brighter, greener future.
