The Challenge
Our client needed to transform the organization – they realized that there was too much legacy and that the orgainsation had not evolved with the times and was at risk of becoming totally outdated if not redundant. This was already manifesting in high staff turnover and the inability to attract new talent.
Our Solution
As organisations of all types and sizes continue to face changes and disruption from a multitude of trends and external forces our client realized the need to transform their organization.
Organisational transformation can be daunting, but attainable if it has the commitment of Senior Leadership and with solid change management practices. With our client we started at the very top. With their Exco and Senior Leadership Team we created a Collective Leadership Philosophy – a statement regarding collective thought about leading within an organization. It brings into focus the intentions of the organization about leadership, and it clarifies what can be expected of those acting in a leadership capacity within a purposeful organization. This was done through the use of focused group discussions and serious play.
The Collective Leadership Philosophy was then expanded into the desired leadership culture – a descriptor of how things are to be done in the organisation, the way people will interact, make decisions and influence others. Once we had the Leadership Philosophy (the guiding principles for the behaviour of leaders upon which decisions, plans, processes and actions could be built), and the desired leadership culture (the way things would be done by leaders; the way leaders will interact with each other and their people, make decisions, and influence others), we co-created with our client the Leadership Practices and Behaviours – How should leaders behave and what must they do – what actions should they take – to transform the organisation and to consistently improve performance and attain growth. The above was done with a “future fit” lens, and integrating the organisations values and the results of employee engagement and culture surveys that had recently been completed. From this phase we extracted the desired leadership behaviours going forward.
The next phase involved an assessment of the current behaviours of the top 150 leaders and managers in the organisation. To this end we used a behavioural assessment together with the Future Fit Index. The integrated results gave our client an indication of current leadership
behaviours which we compared to the desired future leadership behaviours required to ‘live the leadership philosophy”
The last phase was the design and delivery of learning and development journeys. We focused on 6 behavioural dimensions and 7 future fit skills requiring development. The training was delivered by online masterclasses and supported by individual and team coaching, as well as the dissemination of curated knowledge to reinforce the learning and change
Results
- An organisation wide shared understanding of what leadership is and what it entails
- Clear understanding of desired leadership behaviours AND alignment of these behaviours to the organisation’s values
- Common and shared understanding of desired leadership behaviours and of the behaviours that will not be condoned
- Learning has moved from a “push” to a “pull” – Learning interventions are anchored and aligned to the desired leadership culture
