Renewing Leadership Competencies

A supply chain management and logistics company had been building a competency model over several years, adding to it as new insights and information surfaced. As The Leadership Code emerged, the company became concerned that key elements may be missing from their competency model. There was also a desire to have a comprehensive model that reflected their firm brand. The vision was to have a competency model that was tied to their competencies and that could be used to develop and differentiate their leaders from the competitors in the industry.

The RBL Group was asked to assist the company in solidifying their competency model. Steps included:
    • mapping the existing model to the Leadership Code to pinpoint over and under representations and missing elements
    • stakeholder, including top customer, interviews to decide the three differentiating competencies the company wants to be known for by their customers
    • identification of the Leadership Brand that would align leader behaviors with customer expectations
    • development of a customized leadership 360 assessment that built on the existing competency model, integrated missing Code elements, and emphasized their leadership brand behaviors.

The organization now has a competency model with both the foundational competencies necessary for a leader’s success and the differentiating competencies that enable the creation of intangible value.  This competency model is now being integrated into leadership development processes, including assessment and development processes.

Competency Model Improvements

A consumer goods company needed help validating their existing competency model and conducting a series of interviews with key external stakeholders. 

The RBL Group was asked to perform the analysis of their competency model, comparing it to Leadership Code research.  Their existing model was very strong in 3 of the 5 domains, had a few gaps in one domain, and was very weak in the other domain.  Given the competencies they had already identified, there was no need to add any new competencies, only add questions to their existing 360 survey.  The RBL Group worked with them to add a few questions in the domain that had gaps and add a number of questions for the domain area that was weak.  The questions were selected from a pool of previously validated questions.
Eighteen interviews were conducted with global customers, suppliers, ad agencies, analysts, and board members. This external work with stakeholders created a focus on two of their existing competencies, which for this company meant increasing the weighting on these competencies for their senior leaders. 

One outcome of this work was a modified 360, which was approved by the company’s executive team.  The other outcome was the design and delivery of a customized leadership program which addressed two competencies where leaders consistently scored low.

Centralizing HR Across the Globe

As a global insurer, Zurich Financial faced a decentralized HR across the countries in which it operated. They found that HR was being done with different guidelines, policies, and processes. In order to have a consistent and centralized HR, Zurich Financial’s HR organization needed to transform itself and implement a strategy that would help HR be consistent, add value, and better help achieve company objectives.

Zurich Financial asked The RBL Group to assist them in defining a strategy and planning a clear implementation approach. Over a four year period, RBL collaborated with the HR executive team to coach, facilitate, and conduct strategic HR training sessions to help HR define what HR stands for and deliver results the business expected from HR. 

In four years, HR has made significant progress on their transformation. HR professionals understand the issues and are motivated to make transformational changes in the way they perform their work and provide value for their organization.

Expanding Growth, Expanding Leaders

A global financial institution has experienced incredible growth as it has climbed its way to the top. Given the expanding growth, the increasing need for leaders (both national and expatriate), and the increased global interest in their industry, this organization wanted to be sure they clearly identified and developed the characteristics that differentiate their leaders.

RBL was engaged to assist this organization in clarifying their leadership framework and leadership development processes such that they tie directly with their external branding initiatives. By working together, they assessed leaders and created leadership development tools to ensure success. Key steps included:
    • Collecting Data from External Sources.  RBL interviewed a number of key
      customers, analysts, suppliers, and vendors and got their perspective on
      what this organization’s leaders do well and what they need to do well for
      continued success.
    • Articulating the Organization’s Leadership Brand.  Research and interviews
      were used to pinpoint what these leaders need to focus on to make them
      distinctive. This was incorporated into the leadership framework.
    • Assessing High Potential Talent.  Leaders were assessed in career
      development interviews and provided with detailed personal development
      plans.
    • Comparing the Organization’s Framework with the Leadership Code. The
      research from the Leadership Code was used to help this organization
      ascertain how well they had covered the fundamentals of leadership in how
      they were assessing their leaders.
    • Developing a Senior Leader Program.  The leadership brand is being used
      to create a program and ongoing process for developing the organization’s
      leaders who possess the fundamentals of effective leadership as well as
      competencies that make a leader unique.

The work with this organization is ongoing.

Investing in Future HR Leaders

A multinational pharmaceutical company saw a business need to upgrade the strategic abilities of its mid-level HR professionals. They believed that investing in the skill sets of these future HR leaders would pay off in the short-term and in the future.

The RBL Group was invited to design a 5-day seminar including modules on Strategy, Organization Design, HR Consulting Skills, Talent Management, and Change Management.  Prior to the workshop, participants identified a specific Business Challenge that they could address during and after the workshop. Throughout the week of the seminar, participants applied the concepts to their projects, which they implemented back on the job.  Each participant also received 360 feedback on his/her HR competencies, as well as intensive 1-on-1 coaching on their personal development plans and Business Challenge projects.

  • The seminar received one of the highest evaluations ever within
  the company
  • The company is following up with participants to track the execution and
  effect of their Business Challenge projects
  • By the time the intervention is concluded, more than 300 HR managers
  and high potential professionals will have executed specific projects with
  bottom-line impact
  • As a complement to the program, a new program has been
  recently designed, piloted, and launched successfully to provide critical
  skills to HR Practitioners as Business Partners. In the future, all HR
  Practitioners will participate in both programs as they grow in the
  organization. The 4-day program will be delivered 2-3 times during 2010

Strengthening Leadership Brand Through 360 Assessment and Results Based Coaching

A leading provider of vehicle redistribution services in North America had been facing significant changes.  It had recently become a stand-alone public company and initiated strategic shifts that resulted in an increased emphasis on three key initiatives: cost reduction, technology upgrades, and facility expansion in the United States. 
This organization’s leadership team recognized that moving the company forward would require a unified leadership team and leaders throughout the organization who could not only deliver results, but deliver them in the right way—in other words, a new leadership brand reflecting the new strategic focus of the new organization.

The RBL Group was asked to partner with the organization’s leadership to create consensus and drive the right results in a two-tiered approach.  The initial focus was on unifying and developing the executive team by facilitating an executive strategic session that created alignment and consensus on main priorities and defined the organization’s Leadership Brand that would support the strategic direction.  This session was reinforced by individual executive development plans that were tied to performance initiatives and critical leadership attributes.
The RBL Group also supported the cascading of the new leadership brand throughout the organization by assessing leaders on the new leadership brand and following up with individual coaching that helped leaders make the shift to the new competencies and behaviors required by the new brand.

  • The top leadership team gained alignment and consensus on main
    priorities.  By clarifying these priorities, the organization has been able to
    prepare their leadership to deal with recent changes and to ensure that the
    company can face future challenges as well. 
  • The leadership brand assessment and development coaching process was
    cascaded through the organization’s top 125 leaders.
  • Their leaders at all levels knew what characteristics leaders in the organization
    should have and actively worked through a defined coaching process to develop
    these characteristics.

Financial Results through Leadership in Action

One of the largest U.S. bank holding companies faced increasing competition.  Their executive leadership team wanted to strengthen the strategic acumen of their leadership, drive business results, build leadership capability and ultimately bolster their position in the market.

The RBL Group collaborated with the team to design and deliver a custom leadership development program designed to improve business strategy thinking and fundamentals among middle level leaders. 
      • Each session focused on understanding the company’s strategy and
        applying it to their individual positions and teams.  The curriculum included
        requiring participants to identify their strategy and then develop specific
        plans for more effectively aligning their organization performance, culture,
        communication, and to identify development challenges for themselves
        and their teams
      • Each participant was required to develop an action-learning project with a
        $250K impact, on revenue or cost reduction.

The leadership program ran successfully for over four years, impacting over 600 participants.

Over half of the action learning projects have been implemented as a direct result of the leadership development program: 
      • Sales growth and cost reduction/efficiency were the primary categories
        of projects, but projects also included developing new markets,
        introducing new products, and increasing capabilities.
      • Conservative estimate of financial ROI on action-learning projects
        exceeded $30 million dollars.

HR Capability Development

A government mail bureau faced considerable change when regulators stepped in to break the monopoly and grant licenses to competitors.  In the marketplace, the organization found itself facing rising consumer expectations for higher quality, more attractive retail outlets, and different product mixes while the bureau remained obliged to maintain uneconomic retail outlets. 

Internally, the organization’s traditional command and control management style combined with poor communication strategies and skills led to disengaged employees who resisted the changes that could enhance business performance and customer satisfaction. 

Recognizing this gap, the HR leadership team identified a need to develop a more robust “strategic HR” role for their HR business partners and specialists in order to build the organization’s capability to change.

The RBL Group collaborated with the bureau in using a data-driven approach to identify specific areas of competency weakness and to create a customized HR development program that included: 
      • A 2-week intensive training for top-level HR executives, with program
        cascaded through the organization to cover 180 business partners and
        specialists
      • Classroom experiences that included topics such as HR consulting and
        coaching skills, core business knowledge and strategy topics, the bureau’s
        value chains and stakeholders, HR’s role in strategy formulation and
        execution, organizational capabilities, managing culture change,
        measuring HR’s value, and driving employee engagement
      • Action learning projects that had tangible impact on business results, were
        strategically relevant, entailed a real-time HR challenge, and were
        actionable within five months
      • Elective offerings (coaching, detailed workshop on managing change,
        coaching, and action learning projects) for those with more interest or
        need

Satisfaction with service from HR business partners and specialists vastly improved by a minimum of 50% along several key dimensions: Timeliness, Quality, Business Focus, and “HR meets my needs.”

Refocusing on Ethical Leadership

A global financial services company had experienced significant success and had built an enviable brand.  While the overall firm continued to see strong growth and success, isolated decentralized businesses began to experience some ethical problems.  The firm’s global leadership recognized that these seemingly isolated incidents would threaten their continued success and invited The RBL Group to assist them in creating a solution that would restore customer, regulator, and employee confidence. 

The RBL Group joined the client’s senior management to design a custom workshop aimed at the top 1% of the company’s executives.  The workshop was to be delivered in a period of five months to thousands of executives across the globe. 

Features of the workshop included:
      • Reviewing “lessons learned” from the past year, using case studies to
        illustrate both good and bad examples and their impact on bottom line
        results
      • Ensuring executives knew how to behave consistently with expected
        company behaviors—something the firm had already outlined as critical to
        customers, to each other, and to the franchise

The workshop was designed and delivered in record time to executives across the globe, from New York to Tokyo to Hong Kong to Mexico City to London. 

• The workshop, while initially received with skepticism by executives, gradually created a groundswell of support. 
• Executive support intensified as stakeholders responded favorably to a company addressing ethical crises in a strong, proactive way. 
• As the firm demonstrated—internally and externally—that they were a company that wanted the right results in the right way, regulators responded favorably, analysts’ jitters subsided, employee confidence was restored, and customers regained confidence that their financial partners were uncompromising.

Helping Leaders Adapt to Strategic Shifts

As part of a strategic shift towards a more diversified business strategy, an international insurance company had very quickly undergone considerable growth through the acquisition of other financial services companies. 

In order to more fully integrate leaders in the organization around the new business focus, the company asked global thought leaders to develop a series of three workshops: Strategic Planning, Innovation in Financial Services, and Leadership Development.

The RBL Group was invited to design and deliver the Leadership Development workshop with a focus on giving global executives tools and knowledge that enabled them to build organizational capabilities (i.e., talent, innovations, learning, culture, collaboration, shared mindset, etc.) and a stronger results focus.

The workshop design emphasized leaders as teachers and included an accompanying leadership toolkit to make it easy for executives to reuse workshop content within their organizations.  The toolkit included videos and online material in several languages and was organized in a modular, topic-based format for ease of adaptation and reuse.

The three-day workshop was delivered to hundreds of global executives (in groups of 50) over a three-year period.

In addition to the actual participants, the impact of the workshop was felt more broadly in the organization through the “stickiness” of The RBL Group design approach—the flexibility of the toolkit that accompanied leader training and “leader-teacher” emphasis meant concepts circulated broadly throughout the company.

New channels for distribution of products and services were identified, funded, and implemented through the workshops, positively impacting stock value.

Strategic Overhaul

A large consumer packaged goods company was underperforming in every aspect of business compared to the competition. The executive team concluded that a complete strategic overhaul was needed to achieve the full potential of market success.

The RBL Group collaborated with the executive team and targeted “design teams” to develop and execute the new business strategy.

This plan focused on:
      • Cultivating a high performance culture
      • Determining a new approach to resource allocation based on which core
        competencies should be world-class
      • Identifying where to increase cost efficiencies
      • Restructuring the global company from a geographical organization with
        multiple businesses to a business unit focus in an integrated corporate
        structure

The business transformation was remarkable. As a result of strategy implementation, company stock value grew from $18 to $60 a share over the next five years.

Dramatic Turnaround

A data storage company had been lagging its competitors in the industry.  After the unsuccessful sale of the company, a new CEO was brought in with the mandate to turn the company around.  He discovered low levels of commitment, performance, trust, and engagement from his executive team on down through the organization.  In response, the new CEO sought out The RBL Group to help rally the company around an aggressive new strategy.

The RBL Group collaborated with the CEO to design and conduct a three-day workshop designed to give executives a strategic vision, personal ownership, and a commitment to working together to achieve the turnaround. 

Through the workshop, the executive team:
      • Established consensus on the company’s strategic direction using The RBL
        Group strategic options framework.
      • Evaluated the implications of changing direction on the organization’s
        current technical and social capabilities, branding, etc.
      • Developed implementation plans to achieve strategy.

The results of the workshop were then cascaded through the organization down to the supervisory level as leaders repeated the workshop process in their own organizations with the aid of a customized leadership toolkit designed by The RBL Group.  The toolkit included videos and online material organized in a modular, topic-based format for ease of adaptation and reuse.

Through the workshop, the executive team got focus, direction, and understanding of the possibility for success. 

Working together to frame the opportunities and craft the strategy led to increased collaboration and confidence among team members, and began a process that led to:
        • Doubling of stock price
        • Company awarded “Most Admired Company” in industry survey, moving
        from last to first
        • CEO named “Industry CEO of the year

Creating a Strategic HR Organization

The merger of two defense manufacturers created a more completely integrated systems business for the defense industry. In addition to the strategic and operational synergies that would occur through the merger, executives believed that they could also achieve extensive cost savings by creating shared services and eliminating redundant elements from the combined organizations.  As they began work, it quickly became clear that to achieve their goals and develop the strategic, value-adding capabilities of HR population would also require investment in the development to shift HR professionals from highly effective practitioners to strategic professionals.

The RBL Group was selected to design and deliver a developmental program for the organization’s HR professionals.  The custom-designed six-month program focused on 63 senior HR professionals and used the following design features:
      • 360 assessment of top senior HR professionals, including interviews and
        individual feedback sessions
      • tailored pre-program exercises for HR participants to assess their current
        business strategy and environment
      • three classroom-based highly customized learning modules at regular
        intervals that focused on linking the business strategy with HR strategy
        and processes, driving organizational capabilities, and defining HR in the
        leadership role
      • two team-based projects focused on applying knowledge and skills
        learned during the learning modules to real-world problems  

• 120% increase in the influence of their HR professionals on business decisions and strategy
• 85% increase in providing innovative business solutions as well as substantive increases in understanding key performance indicators, providing good general HR advice and support and understanding the business and its needs
• Inspired ability and desire to discipline themselves to think, speak, and act more strategically
• Ability to more substantively contribute to their management teams
• Codified tacit knowledge about the role of HR into an explicit framework which made their knowledge valid, defensible, and useable
• Success of program in developing strategic HR capabilities led to cascading program content to target mid-level professionals and recent graduates

Leadership in the Face of Rapid Growth

A major retail chain’s growth strategy called for increasing retail outlets by 250% in a ten-year period.  Company leadership knew that kind of growth would require executive attention to leadership development in order to maintain high quality management while facing high turnover rates and intensified demand for new store managers and associates.  The RBL Group was brought in to help create a leadership development strategy that would facilitate the growth strategy and maintain critical standards and culture. 

The RBL Group helped the senior leadership team:
      • Quantify full impact of growth in terms of number of new store managers
        and associates needed given current turnover rates
      • Identify critical hiring and leadership development investments (in
        addition to already identified asset and capital investments) that
        would be required for the strategy to be successful
      • Re-focus training and development investments on store managers (not
        middle managers or executives) for strategic success

• The company began placing more emphasis on leadership intervention for critical jobs. 
• Company executives were convinced of the importance of dealing with growth in business impact terms instead of value terms; ignoring the significance of leadership on growth would be detrimental to success.
• Executives initiated the process of identifying a leadership brand that would embody the values of the past with a perspective for the future.

Creating Critical Capabilities

A few years ago, an international hotel company found themselves in a crisis.  It had recently de-merged, faced bloated overhead costs in the competitive hotel industry, and was confronted with reduced business and vacation travel due to the economic downturn and the SARS crisis.  In addition, the company was undergoing a brand name change, battling a hostile takeover attempt, and was being downgraded by analysts. 

The company’s CEO initiated an “organization review” and invited RBL to join them.  The RBL Group collaborated with their leaders to engineer a significant change transformation towards a high-performance organization.  Results of an Organizational Capabilities Audit identified two capabilities that were needed to achieve world-class status in order for the company to achieve future success: collaboration and speed.  The team designed and executed decisive, wide-ranging actions to develop world-class status in these targeted areas:
          • reorganizing to eliminate regional budgetary and operational
          independence,
          • streamlining differences in regional operations and aligning/centralizing
          finance, human resources, and corporate functions, and
          • creating a shared services center. 

• Stock price rose by 71% in less than a year
• Operating costs were reduced by more than $100 million/year
• Employee surveys showed a dramatic increase in morale and confidence in company leadership
• Quality of management was no longer a matter of public debate

After outsourcing, what?

A global energy company was an innovator in HR outsourcing.  Driven by a need to reduce costs, streamline and integrate HR practices from multiple acquisitions, and operate HR more efficiently, the HR leadership team initiated a ground-breaking contract with an HR business services company.  In this contract, they outsourced 18 major HR practices, with many of their HR professionals transitioning over time to the outsourced company’s payroll.  In addition, the business services company would take the lead in providing systems-based solutions to HR work. 

While the implementation of this work was dramatic, it left ambiguous the role of the HR professionals who remained.  What should the retained HR force know and do to add the most value?

RBL principals were engaged to help shape the role and agenda for HR professionals in the post-outsourcing HR organization.

With the energy company’s input, we created a model of what strategic HR professionals must know, do, and deliver;  essentially, HR professionals were charged to turn strategy into sustained results through organizational capabilities.  This meant that HR professionals had to learn to understand strategy, diagnose the critical capabilities required to deliver strategy, then create 90 day action plans to make those capabilities happen.

To ensure the HR professionals had the knowledge and skills to perform these new roles, we created a development experience with multiple modules.  Some modules focused on understanding strategy, others focused on organization diagnosis and learning how to define critical capabilities, and others focused on mastering the art of making capabilities happen.  Hundreds of HR professionals attended these modules and were given the knowledge and skills to make strategy happen through capabilities.

HR professionals had to learn how to trust and deliver the administrative work through outsourcing partnerships.  Once these outsourcing partnerships were in place, it was imperative to help remaining in-house HR professionals define their roles.  This workshop gave people the knowledge, tools, and processes to deliver value.  As one of the best-managed companies in the world, this global energy company is able to make their strategies happen.  The HR professionals play a central role in these dialogues.

The Statoil Project

As one of the world’s largest suppliers of gas and crude oil and with 29,500 employees in 40 countries, Statoil’s Vice President of Corporate HR, Jens Jensen, realized that the challenges inherent in operating internationally and the pace of change in the business environment required a more adaptable HR function. They launched a comprehensive transformation initiative that addressed the function’s structure, processes, and people. To help them on the journey, they were looking for a partner with a track record of leading-edge and practical ideas to support the transformation. 

The RBL Group was invited to support the transformation by helping shape the overall transformation and collaborating in the design and delivery of a customized 5-day development program to be rolled out to experienced HR professionals and managers. 

The intention of the HR Business Partner Program is to enable HR to better understand and help the business meet emerging global business challenges.  The development program includes a number of best practices, including:
      • Research-based and practical program content with relevant application
      focused on implementing latest HR competency research
      • Strong focus on building networks among the participants
      • The incorporation of individual feedback and action planning through the
      use of the HR Competency 360 Assessment
      • Action learning project assignments that begin during the program and
      are focused on supporting development needs and having a significant
      financial or strategic impact on the business
      • Follow-up sessions that create accountability and allow alumni to
      participate and showcase success
      • Strong internal focus on supporting continued development once
      participants are back on the job

With over 150 HR professionals who have successfully completed the HR Business Partner Program, Statoil’s business and HR leaders have begun to see some of the following results:
      • HR is recognized in the organization as having increased capability to
      contribute expertise in the drafting of the company’s strategic choices,
      and proactively strengthen the company’s competitiveness with the
      required measures in the HR field.
      • 150 participants have completed action-learning projects that have
      contributed to strategic growth and bottom-line savings. 
      • HR professionals are seen as having a more global and strategic
      perspective and have been able to work across boundaries more
      effectively to find solutions to challenges facing their business units.
      • HR professionals are more able to tailor HR initiatives and investments
      towards the development of the capabilities the organization requires to
      execute strategy.