With 110 races driven in his Formula One career, McLaren driver Lando Norris can no longer be called the “next big thing”. As he crossed the Miami finish line in first place, of his maiden Grand Prix win, he shouted “about time” across the team radio. “Everyone in McLaren, I’ve finally delivered for you,” said […]
With 110 races driven in his Formula One career, McLaren driver Lando Norris can no longer be called the “next big thing”. As he crossed the Miami finish line in first place, of his maiden Grand Prix win, he shouted “about time” across the team radio.
“Everyone in McLaren, I’ve finally delivered for you,” said the British driver.
As Norris noted, the long-time coming victory was not the his to celebrate alone. Any F1 race requires a huge team behind it, from the engineers who design and maintain the car, to the mechanics who span the pitlane, and the analysts who offer advice over the team radio.
It takes an entire organisation to even get a driver on the track, let alone over the finish line, and for McLaren, focussing on championing every employee – from engineers, to finance, to sales and HR – is what helped the British car firm make a champion out of Norris.
“McLaren’s fascinating because, yes we’re a sports team, but we are an engineering organisation, we’re a manufacturing business,” says its chief people and sustainability officer, Daniel Gallo.
Daniel Gallo, chief people and sustainability officer, McLaren
The race isn’t only about the driver or the car. It is also a “race of innovation,” adds Gallo. That means the engineers and analysts are also competing with rivals from the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull to deliver the best results for their team.
But the road hasn’t always been smooth. In order to drive success across its entire organisation, last November McLaren turned to upskilling firm Udemy for help.
Upskilling under the hood
Not all under McLaren’s roof are working simply for the F1 drivers Norris and Oscar Piastri. The Woking-based automative firm also manufactures and builds strategy for other series including IndyCar, electric vehicle series Formula E and Extreme E, as well as online gaming. Plus there is a whole other unit owned by McLaren Group that manufacturers luxury cars for consumers.
“It’s complex on a different level,” says Gallo, who entered the world of sport in 2018 while working as group HR director at Liverpool Football Club before joining motorsports.
To keep the team motivated and loyal, he explains that each employee is given a purpose, with a roadmap and continuous learning opportunities in mind.
McLaren’s Technology Centre, Surrey, UK
Its partnership with Udemy allows teams across various departments, including its marketing, sales, finance, and HR access to Udemy’s training platform to train, reskill and upskill.
At the moment, Udemy has over 1700 courses just in GenAI alone, with 3.2 million enrolments globally. GenAI-specific courses cover general use, prompt engineering, and role-specific GenAI. It also teaches users other tech skills such as cloud, and soft skills such as communication and leadership.
According to learning and development platform Cypher, 77% of UK workers feel their organisation’s training could be better, with a third saying it is negatively impacting their job satisfaction.
Leadership, in particular, ranked as the number one area that workers want training in, and also believe their manager needs training in.
“McLaren has a huge focus on technology and what it can do for them,” says Genefa Murphy, Udemy’s chief marketing officer, speaking to TechInformed at McLaren’s Technology Centre in leafy Surrey.
She says, that while there is focus on reskilling technology-wise, a lot of soft skills within its teams also adds to success in McLaren.
“Building out things like collaboration, communication, how to do things like clear goal setting, thinking how to give effective feedback conversations and understanding management style.”
McLaren’s Gallo adds that the carmaker is focused on keeping its people motivated and loyal, but communication skills also leverage this within their technology teams.
Forever forward
Pointing to Norris’ maiden victory, Murphy highlights this persistence to improve, and an inner resilience, is precisely what McLaren does throughout its business to reach success.
Once the champagne showers ended, McLaren sent a celebration email thanking all its people and partners who helped contribute.
Genefa Murphy, chief marketing officer, Udemy
In it, there were three leadership lessons, Murphy tells TI.
“One of their values is around innovation and striving to be better tomorrow than they are today, and seeking new ways to drive performance, then at the same time it’s also just about working out being their best and creating the right behaviours.”
“Their notion is forever forward, continuously innovating, continuously learning, and then being agile to adapt,” says Murphy.
The second lesson was to appreciate the team and what McLaren has: “The McLaren culture is very much that one team culture, how everybody contributes, including their partners, and taking the time to appreciate, that’s a skill.”
In the same vein, Gallo explains to TI that while the drivers are the ‘rockstars’, they are also a part of the team, the same as everyone else.
“Third, it’s the notion of championing teamwork, recruiting the right tech talent, not just for today’s technology but also future technology as well,” says Murphy.
Leaning on a third-party training platform to aid this, such as Udemy, has benefits that cannot be brought internally.
“If they want to evolve, and if they want to create a performance-driven culture across the business, they also need to learn from other organisations,” says Murphy.
