Leadership Fundamentals

Client need

• The organisation, the second largest global producer of Titanium Oxide and Powder with major operations in Asia, Australia, Europe, North and South America, pursued an aggressive growth strategy during the first part of the 21st century. Two major acquisitions completed the process of creating a company that was vertically aligned to the Titanium Value Chain.
• The company wanted to consolidate its strategic gains, maximize operational efficiency, and continue its aggressive growth strategy by improving the effectiveness of the company’s senior leaders as individuals and as a team.
• The company approached Accelerance to design and deliver a two-day Leadership intervention for a selected group of Senior Managers from its top 70 leaders population.
• Some of the organisational and leadership challenges that we were confronted with include:

1. • Two distinct management and leadership cultures were cohabiting with one another; the legacy culture of the acquirer and the US-UK-driven culture of the most recent and largest acquisition
   • All the senior leaders interviewed indicated that decision-making processes were slow and inefficient, which resulted in having to accelerate execution, meet tight deadlines, and excessively stressed resource allocation. Furthermore decision-making authority and accountability was diffused across the organization and was exacerbated by a recently adopted global matrix management structure.
   • Prioritization was also a challenge with senior leaders indicated that everything was “a priority,” which meant nothing was a priority. This resulted in overloaded leaders and inefficient use of available resources.
   • Senior leaders also cited the lack of communications around the firm’s strategic and operational priorities. As a result they struggled to understand how their business units fit into the larger strategic picture and how to align their various change initiatives with the corporate priorities.
   • Senior leaders also indicated the difficulty of mobilizing people and driving change

Solution

• Through our co-creation workshop with our client we jointly designed a two-day pilot programme that intensely addressed the following topics in a highly focused manner: Leadership in Context; Leading and Executing Strategy; Leading Change; Communication & Motivation. Each of these four sessions would last half a day.
• The pilot programme was targeted towards senior leaders from different business units and regions of the organization and was facilitated by practitioners with experience in the client’s industry.
• The programme aimed at creating a deeper awareness among participants of the actions they can take to improve their effectiveness as senior leaders, improve their performance as a senior management team, and drive the overall success of the company.
• The programme was also designed to generate greater interest in these topics and encourage these senior leaders to “dive deep” into them via follow-up workshops.
• Finally, the programme was designed to actively challenge these senior leaders assumptions and choices in terms of their perspectives on: Leadership, Strategy, Change, Communications.

Session 1: Leading in Context

The opening module focused on helping the participants frame their current and future leadership challenges across an “operational excellence” to “innovative change” spectrum. Participants also leveraged the Context Framework to explore the business’s priorities and processes as well as its core purpose. The aim of the session was to gain a deeper appreciation of their management and leadership context, which would serve as the foundation for the rest of the program. In addition the module highlighted that strategy, change, leadership, and communication are much more effective when leaders understand their operating context. A firm grasp of the context clearly illuminates the choices and trade-offs a leader must make and simplifies the path they must navigate.

Session 2: Leading and Executing Strategy

The second module focused on strategy as thinking. The participants reviewed the choices, assumptions and probable outcomes that leaders make about the future. They also explored the sources of competitive advantage and differentiation as well as the forces driving strategic convergence across industries. The participants worked at identifying the waves of changes impacting their industry as well as its impact on the business and its competitors. In addition the session focused on the issue of value generation and quantifying what value means to each strategic stakeholder and how the company creates and delivers value to its strategic stakeholders. Finally, the session aimed at helping the participants gain the confidence to navigate the fog of strategic uncertainty by employing strategic insight

Session 3: Leading Change

The module focused on leaders as the architects of meaning and engagement. The participants also discussed the idea that “to follow or change is a choice” and that leaders need to appreciate the underlying drivers of their followers’ choices and trade-offs to maximize their performance. In addition, the participants assessed the quality of their leadership eco-system, their leadership agility and their skill as adaptive leaders. They also discussed  how self-reflection can help leaders take the steps needed to practice authentic and values-driven leadership. The aim of the session was to rethink their leadership credentials and the factors that drive motivation, gain clarity as to modern day leadership requirements, understand the dilemmas and trade-offs of leadership, and appreciate the choices they have as leaders and as followers

Session 4: Communication & Motivation

The final module built on the takeaways regarding change and aimed at having the participants challenge their beliefs and assumptions about motivation by reviewing traditional change models and discussing the deficits of these models within the company. The participants also explored lessons from Behavioral Economics, i.e. how people act irrationally in predictable ways. They discussed how these insights could be used to drive behavioral motivation and organization change via nudging with the aim of expanding their portfolio of options to deal with difficult situations, problems, or resistance. The remainder of the module focused on tying all of their new insights together through effective communications. Participants explored the factors that underlie communications success and discussed how great communicators consider the needs and preferences of their audiences. The participants also gain familiarity with a six-step framework to build effective communication plans for change initiatives. Finally, the group examined story-telling and how it can be used as an effective leadership communication technique. The program concluded with the participants crafting and sharing their personal leadership stories about change.

Impact

Prior to the pilot, we agreed that a successful programme would deliver practical tools and frameworks that these senior leaders could immediately apply to their current challenges and motivate these leaders to continue their learning journey by attending future programmes. The overall feedback received indicated that the pilot was well received. However, they asked for more case studies and practical / real-world examples in the future to increase the impact and value of the program:

• 80% of the pilot participants (Agree/ Strongly Agree) that they’ “would recommend this course to others”.
• Over 73% of the pilot participants (Agree) that the course was a good use of their time.
• Eight participants cited “Change and Communications” as the most valuable segments, while seven participants cited “Leadership in Context” as the most valuable.

Impact of delegates’ actions on their stakeholders:

• “Good reactions from my reports in terms of what I’m trying to do i.e. trust more, ask questions, delegate and show concern”
• “I feel good about helping my colleagues as I remember the phrase, “feel rather than say.”
• “Colleagues and Direct Reports have found the “two circle” Context model / concept valuable”
• “Gotten “push back” from his boss, who is not use to push back: Hopes his boss is learning to accept his perspective and that it will not cause other problems down the road”

Specific actions were taken by delegates:

• Maintaining a focus on their KISS (Keep, Increase, Start, Stop) commitments
• Mapping stakeholders and their potential ability to contribute to the delegate’s priorities as part of building out his leadership support network
• Further developing their leadership support network

CLIENT TESTIMONIAL

“What I most appreciate about Accelerance is their passion for ensuring that interventions really add maximum value for the client. They are not simply interested in earning a pay check, but in ensuring that interventions have impact and that learning sticks. This means that they will passionately, creatively and constructively engage with you in building interventions, and they will be tactfully honest in telling you when they feel that your choices may not be the best way to go. They will do their level best to ensure that your intervention is  a success. I regard them as a trusted advisor and learning partner. They have earned this status.”

Global Learning and Development Manager