These are summaries of how I helped the business people involved to drive each solution, supporting their commitment, leadership, and effort.
Solid Coaching Saves Talented Leader from Derailment
Challenge: The VP took over a business unit that was holding its own, but not reaching its potential. Despite his track record of outstanding results as an individual and as a leader in a smaller unit, he knew the strengths that got him there would not be enough. He could easily have derailed on issues of communication, micromanagement (which his new senior level direct reports would not have tolerated for long), and “managing his boss” (who had run the unit in the past).
Strategy: Facilitate leadership team meetings to communicate his vision of the business. Use his combination of business acumen and strong people skills to tell a compelling story and serve as a foundation for the team’s collaborative strategy. Clarify and align communication with his boss.
Result: After achieving record results and setting the group up for continued growth, the VP was ultimately tapped to succeed a retiring executive who was legendary for having built their business from scratch.
Personal exploration and assessment leads to renewal of passion for work.
Challenge: The executive had achieved good, but not great results, over a period of three years. Pressure was increasing to solve the problems that were limiting success. The pressure to improve led the exec to become more and more self-conscious and risk averse, and more insular in his thinking.
Strategy: Perform an interview based leadership assessment. Deliver valuable feedback from more than a dozen peers and direct reports. Discuss the feedback report, starting with his own account of his career. Define how he intends to show up as a leader.
Result: As he re-read his own history for accuracy, he stopped and referred to his college basketball experience. He said, “Every time I was on the court, I wanted the ball. I knew I could make the shot that would win the game, give us the lead, bring us back. I wanted the ball every play. In this job, I haven’t wanted the ball. I’ve been playing it safe, reluctant to get in the game. We can go through this information now, but I will tell you I already know what I’m going to do. I want the ball.”
Testing the “Truth” of a Succession Plan
Challenge: The leadership team of a 500-person organization had completed a succession planning process that resulted in the identification of their 20 high potential leaders. They wanted to create a custom program to groom these individuals for more senior roles.
Strategy: Confirm the desired outcome: build the leadership capability of the organization. This led to two questions:
- Are we certain these 20 are the ones?
- What about the other 40-50 leaders in the organization?
Result: Some of the original high-potentials they thought were “stars” fell back in the pack. Some leaders they least expected to do so rose to the challenge of leadership. The entire leadership team was strengthened in both skill and alignment with the strategic priorities of the organization.
A Big Company Aligns Hundreds of Leaders With a New Strategy
Challenge: The highly dedicated managers of a Fortune 100 company, most of whom had grown up in the business, were executing very well on a strategy that needed to change. Nothing was broken, the climate was in great shape. However, the executive team was embarking on a growth strategy which would put pressure on people development, business process, and customer-facing practices.
Strategy: Identify the capabilities needed to execute on the new strategy. Build, from the ground-up, a unique learning process to develop the leadership talents of people who were highly sophisticated about the business but brand new to structured leadership learning.
Result: Together we designed programs that broke down silos, built individual capability, and strengthened the strategic thinking and change leadership skills of 250 senior leaders. More than 100 ideas resulted from these programs. Dozens of them led to either the initiation of new projects and products or the enhancement of initiatives already in motion.
Feuding Execs Become High-Performing Team
Challenge: The EVP of Marketing left the organization and his three direct reports all saw themselves as ready to succeed him. But each had unique strengths and the company President needed to retain them. Previously, the three were responsible for multiple functions that competed for resources, with the former EVP as tie breaker. Now those decisions had to be made collaboratively for the good of the entire business.
Strategy: Set priorities from a one-company perspective; learn to function as a leadership team with clear decision rules regarding collaboration and independence; learn to communicate a consistent and unified message to the marketing organization and their customers in the business.
Result: Clear roles and accountabilities were divided among the three. Common leadership tasks they owned together were agreed. The resulting clarity of mission and message renewed the organization. The company President left the team in place on the strength of their achievements in efficiency, cost reduction and creative, innovative marketing solutions including an award winning TV ad campaign.
Siloed IT functions unified; $52 million saved; no lay-offs
Challenge: Individual business units within the company could contract with segments of the IT function for one-off solutions, creating a patched-together web of systems that did not “talk” to each other. Recent and anticipated growth of the company was straining existing tools and systems to the breaking point. The new CIO needed to create an integrated IT strategy for the company, and fashion that solution out of a collection of disconnected, competing departments.
Strategy: Create a team to design a year-long organizational change initiative to break down silos, built collaboration and teamwork among previously competing functions, and create a united leadership team able to address issues of governance, people leadership, process improvement, and tools development.
Result: The mindset of IT was shifted from functional specialties to customer-focused business solutions. IT costs were reduced by $52 million, with no write-offs (or lay-offs). Five years later, the core leadership team is known for authentic, open dialogue, and a mindset that puts the customer first.