This paper presents a company congress planned and realized by management as an innovative management development tool. Different challenges were met. After a series of acquisitions, the congress played a crucial role in internetting the management of the different business units of a leading German corporation. An important characteristic was the development of proposals addressing the major challenges of the company (e.g., internationalization, competitiveness) to top-management in a bottom-up-process during workshop sessions.

Following the description of the organizational framework, a presentation and discussion of personnel development aspects connected with the different roles of managers during such a congress is given. Especially the development and learning experiences of participants and moderators, exclusively managers, are described and discussed.