Accelerating the Development of Leaders to Drive Business Performance
OUR CLIENT'S ISSUE
A large multinational investment bank wanted to make changes in one of its core businesses, acquired a
year earlier. The unit, whose managing director retired shortly after the acquisition, was challenged to
triple its size by "outleading" its competitors, rather than outspending them.
THE CAPITAL H APPROACH
Together with our client sponsor, we guided the multi-national leadership team through three steps to help
build a more competitive leadership culture:
1. Capture and understand the current state of the business
- Performed an organization diagnostic through executive interviews, focus groups, and an
organizational culture survey in order to gain a solid understanding of the language and
criteria for success
- Orchestrated executive planning sessions that defined strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities and threats
2. Define the vision for the future state
- Developed a vision for the organization and strategies to achieve the future state
- Determined that a significant path for growth was developing a high-performing
executive team and, in parallel, developing the next level of leaders to carry out and drive
the business
3. Determine the critical paths and catalysts for growth
- Utilized and communicated the results and recommendations from the organizational
diagnostic
- Developed, implemented, and executed on strategies from the executive planning
sessions. This entailed prioritizing which business opportunities to
pursue; re-organizing to capture larger deals for the business and developing a plan to
ensure the right talent in the right roles
- Launched leadership and strategic communication coaching for key members of the
executive team and initiated an accelerated leadership development and effectiveness
program for the next level of leaders
THE BUSINESS BENEFITS
- Our client doubled very aggressive revenue and profit expectations during the first year post
acquisition and completed several large transactions
- The company is now well-poised for the future, as over 60 new leaders with a common language to
drive innovation, communication and collaboration have been identified
- All employees understand the vision and their role in executing on the plan. In fact, 96.2%
of employees agreed with the statement that they "understand the role that they play and know what
the team is trying to accomplish"
- The CEO attributed the company's ability to significantly exceed revenue and profit expectations to this
initiative