CASE STUDY
Anthropic, the breakout AI company behind Claude, saw extraordinary growth from 2024 to 2025, tripling their workforce while racing to stay ahead in the competitive AI space. With new managers joining or being promoted monthly, the company faced a critical challenge: how to maintain their culture of excellence through rapid scaling of headcount.
The stakes couldn’t have been higher. Previous training attempts that used more generic content had mixed results with participants and eroded trust. The Elevate team knew they had limited chances to get Anthropic’s manager development right.
“We had participants tell us that this was their favorite manager training ever in their careers. We also now have a slew of new managers who we feel are much better enabled to handle new or tough situations and support their growing teams.”
Jackie Opritza,
Head of HR Business Partners and Manager Development at Anthropic
Anthropic’s hyper growth created four unique challenges that demanded a completely custom solution:
Generic management training wouldn't work, as Anthropic needed something authentically theirs. Content that spoke their language, honored their culture, and prepared managers for the unique pressures of building the future of a safe AI.
Likelihood to recommend
Likelihood to use learnings
Managers trained
Elevate partnered with Anthropic to create a completely custom management training program that used different modalities to deliver the content which resonated well with employees.
The “Managing@Anthropic” Program
After extensive stakeholder interviews, Elevate designed a fully bespoke two-day manager training experience in close partnership with Anthropic’s team. Every element, from the learning topics to the flow of the day, was shaped by what Anthropic’s team said they needed most. The program blended proven frameworks with Anthropic-specific challenges, using a wide variety of learning modalities to keep participants engaged.
The agenda shifted frequently to maintain energy and focus, combining panel discussions, interactive workshops, peer breakouts, deep-dive case studies, and more. Elevate also collaborated with Anthropic’s internal facilitators and coached senior leaders ahead of their panel discussions to ensure they integrated particular content and learnings into their answers.
Bringing Management Principles to Life
Elevate helped Anthropic weave their management philosophy — principles like "Drive clarity," "Enable autonomy," and "Cultivate talent" — into the flow of the training, reinforcing a common language across their diverse population of researchers, engineers, and business people.
Embedded Video Learning
Seven Elevate Academy videos were integrated into Anthropic's manager onboarding, covering fundamentals such as effective delegation, running one-on-ones, and giving feedback, creating a foundation upon which the in-person workshop was built.
1:1 Leadership Coaching
Ongoing leadership coaching is provided at Anthropic for any manager, whether it’s to work through a specific challenge, address a development area, or simply to get additional support. The service has proven extremely popular across the organization.
Elevate helped us coalesce our manager principles, which form the backbone of the training. We built a two-day manager program with the first day focused on navigating chaos, and the second day focused on how to build and manage a high-performing team.
The custom program delivered exceptional results that exceeded Anthropic's internally high standards:
We chose to work with Elevate because their content is excellent and they have really flexible products that created something uniquely custom to the culture we have here.
The impact extended far beyond satisfaction scores. Participants called it their “favorite manager training ever.” Managers began referencing frameworks and learnings in real-time situations, applying Elevate’s talent management and motivation strategies to their teams’ demanding circumstances.
Perhaps most telling: positive word-of-mouth drove ongoing demand from leaders at all experience levels, creating a sustainable culture of excellence even as the company continues its rapid growth.
Line Manager, 4 years of experience
Manager of Managers, 7+ years of experience
Line Manager, 2 years of experience
Line Manager, 2 months of experience
Line Manager, 4 years of experience
Line Manager, ~6 months of experience
We are on a mission to help leaders be the kind of manager they would want to work for. Speak with a leadership development expert to learn how Elevate can level up your team’s leadership skills:
We've helped hundreds of leaders, managers, and rising teams with our science-based frameworks and sessions. 98% of attendees say Elevate improved their confidence to manage their team, and 95% of attendees said they’d recommend Elevate to others.
We've helped hundreds of leaders, managers, and rising teams with our science-based frameworks and sessions. 98% of attendees say Elevate improved their confidence to manage their team, and 95% of attendees said they’d recommend Elevate to others.
