Challenge
Our client is a significant investment management company with global reach. They strive to be a digital, agile, and future-focused organization.
A new organizational direction, technology advancements and corporate restructuring revealed the need to invest in leadership and talent development. The company wanted to prepare for executive succession and make the necessary leadership changes to accelerate future growth.
Their goals included:
- Defining and strengthening their leaders’ capabilities
- Building a talent assessment and development pipeline that supports strategic alignment throughout the organization
- Identifying executive-level succession candidates for the nomination committee to mitigate future risk
- Creating an innovative and more structured approach to leadership development throughout all levels of the organization
Solution
We reviewed the client’s leadership framework and specified the behaviors and qualities leaders needed to advance the business individually and systemwide given their operating context.
Using this framework, we assessed high-potential candidates for succession into executive-level roles. Using the assessment insights, we created an executive succession plan to advise the board.
Each leader received an individual report and opportunity to attend a feedback session to discuss the insights and create a development plan to accelerate their progress. Additionally, coaching sessions provided concrete guidance and resources to promote continued progress.
Following the success of senior-level development, we deployed our talent assessment technology to rapidly assess a pilot group of emerging leaders. We collected data through our potential psychometric using YSCQ’s digital platform, and participants accessed data-driven insight to manage their development.
Impact
- Our client has gained clarity on the talent profile of its leaders and the strength of their succession pipeline. They have been able to make key appointments and know where their leadership gaps are.
- Through our partnership, the organization’s leadership team understand the effect leaders’ behavior has on the business and culture. They have adopted a mindset and motivation to build a culture that promotes leadership progress and growth.
- Our client has reconstructed their talent assessment and development processes to drive their business strategy, with the profile leading to more focused leadership development investment.
- Ongoing YSCQ assessments and coaching are supporting the growth of current and emerging leaders throughout the organization.
“Working with YSC to support our succession activity has provided us with deep insight into individual talent and how we can best help them develop their readiness. Not only this, but we’ve been able to generate an understanding of our collective pipeline, helping us to see what’s working well and less well across our business so that we can take targeted data-informed actions. YSCQ feels like a genuinely progressive talent tool. It’s got a modern look and feel, and the dynamic way you can work through the data at both an individual and collective level makes data-driven decision-making on talent much faster, simpler and transparent.” Global Head of Talent
Find out more about Executive Assessment with YSC...
A business strategy is only as good as the leaders that can bring it to life. In today’s environment of disruption and change, it is increasingly difficult to fully understand and identify the capabilities needed for individuals to be successful in business-critical roles. As roles become more complex, looking at past performance to predict fit for future leadership roles does not suffice.