Building a high-performing organisation
Julia von Onciul
Holistic Talent Strategy - an Organisation Development approach with major impact
The challenge
It quickly became apparent to Julia that the departments had developed in silos as part of what can be called ‘natural’ departmental growth, i.e. technical specialists, growing into the roles of managers and then the business leadership, whilst managing their own areas from a specialist, rather inward oriented perspective.
As a result the senior leadership team was firefighting; managing their individual departments through day to day challenges. "Leadership" meetings were high-jacked by the need to manage issues that were making the interfaces of departments ineffective. The leadership team was simply not making time to work at a strategic level.
What was missing
Julia quickly realised what was missing . The first was an overall strategy for the whole organisation and vision setting for its future growth. The second was a leadership structure committed to that vision and supportive of talent movement and development in pursuit of it.
Holistic interventions
Julia helped the leadership team obtain a more strategic remit and become more effective at managing outside stakeholders. In addition, a new managing team was hand selected - and allowed to mature into their roles before going live. Having split the role of the leadership team in two, both teams were provided with support around communication, team effectiveness and running highly productive meetings. Individuals were coached both for their own development and around their role in the team. These (and other) structural changes were fundamental to allowing talent to grow and in ensuring alignment with new business objectives.
Bottom line result
As a result of these new leadership structures and the team effectiveness work enabling people to collaborate across the silos more effectively, synergies were created that led to significant savings in procurement costs. The organisation began to pull together towards a common strategy. Julia was given the feedback that as a result of the consultancy and support she had provided several processes had become much more efficient, and the internal and external profiles of the organisation had markedly improved. So much so that this approach and new leadership structure was transferred as best practice to the US leadership team.
A comprehensive talent strategy, organisation development, strategic leadership coaching, and a team development approach came together in an holistic intervention that moved the whole organisation forward significantly.
FROM: The Center for Creative Leadership
Businesses that are committed to building a global presence have been selecting and developing leaders remotely for some time. As a result, our consultants have been involved in delivering remote assessments since around 2005. Since covid, more and more businesses have realised that leaders in global businesses have to lead people and generate teamwork remotely, rather than face-to-face. When we speak of leadership today there is no longer an assumption that people will be in the same room. It's vital to realise that leading people from a distance places different demands on a leader and makes new demands of the team. If you're looking for people to lead geographically distributed and remote-working teams you really need to assess their leadership capability in that context. Our consultants have assessed hundreds of senior leaders using remote assessments. It offers many advantages. A well-designed remote assessment enables you to create a truly immersive experience that faithfully represents the demands and challenges of the role you're recruiting for. This matters matters. Research shows that assessments that take into account the context in which leaders are being asked to perform are four times more accurate at predicting leadership potential than generic assessments. This means that the combination of bespoke content and realistic assessment methodology ensure your potential leaders and hires are demonstrating their capabilities in a simulation setting that is highly predictive of their actual capability and potential. Here's one example of such an assessment - a leadership simulation called SkyFly, co-created with a client to represent their specific business context:
We're working with a diversified global business to help them develop their Managing Directors, General Managers and other senior executives. We've highlighted their individual strengths and development needs in an assessment tailored to the challenges their businesses face, and are coaching them to help every one them fulfill their potential. We've also analysed several years' of the client's talent management data to identify persistent patterns of strengths and weaknesses in their diverse leadership pipelines. This enabled us to offer strategic insights that revealed how the strategy, structures and cultures within the group shape the mind-set and the skill-set of the leaders who emerge at executive level, leading to important conversations about the talent strategies the group needs for the future. The client has told us that we've taken the assessment and coaching of their senior leaders “ to another level ” , and that our strategic insights are “ light years ahead ” of anything they've experienced previously. They've discovered that being willing to take a fresh approach and engage with provocative thinking can add even greater value than expected.
A global retail and leisure business hired us to help them "improve teamwork" in their central marketing team. It quickly became clear that there were really two groups operating within the notional 'team', and that each group had a markedly different 'mission' personality, priority and processes. The first group were highly motivated by business results. They were very structured and analytical in their approach, and powerfully assertive in pursuing it. The other group had a huge creative drive, artistic aspirations, and could often be seen surreptitiously sketching new products on the back of the sales charts handed out by the first group. Much under-appreciated by their 'business-focused' colleagues, t hese highly gifted creatives were (and remain) the inspiring and passionate heart of the business; they are the reason its customers have made it a global success for decades. It was obvious that the key to improving the performance of the marketing organisation wasn’t questioning team members' commitment, coaching the leader, or trying to improve 'teamwork'; it was reorganizing and re-focusing the talent available to do what it did best; enabling all of the people involved to follow their passion, use their skills and fulfill their potential. The next step was ensuring an appropriate level of engagement and interaction between these two superb teams. Understanding the question the client wants us to answer is vital, and "how do we improve the performance of the team?" was the question we were asked. However, knowing the right answer - and achieving a competitive edge - depended on being prepared to think about the context and the underlying issues. And then stepping outside of the box to provide the solution the client really needed: "It's two teams".