How to grow the leadership that will drive the generation version of this company?

The CEO’s question to us

Over 25 years, we have built a successful wholesale cash and carry business from the ground up, growing store by store. We have an exponential growth plan in our home country and a shareholder who fully supports our ambitious international expansion. I also see how our market is evolving fast, with the entry of new competitors, sustainable food and non-food solutions, e-commerce and digitalisation, and the fading barriers between B2B and B2C channels. We need to lift the (next generation) leadership of this company to transform this company into its 4.0 version.

Background

This international wholesale company, headquartered in Southeast Asia, has the ambition to be/remain the number one provider for their target customers. This ambitious growth trajectory is ‘multi’-dimensional: from 50+ single type stores in one country to 120+ stores, with multiple store and digital formats, targeting multi-segments of customers, through multi-channel (off- and online, store and delivery), and in multiple countries. They have a strong operational and cost focus, have a track record of outperforming in their markets, a high achievement drive with stretching budgets, and numerous vacancies and gaps in the capabilities required for today’s and tomorrow’s success.

The challenge as we saw it

• How to build strong and distributed leadership underneath the Executive Board, in an organisation that is highly focused on execution of critical tasks and functions?
• How to evolve the top management structure to allow leaders from outside and inside the company to step up in role and responsibility, and in style and leadership approach?
• How to open the minds of 50 senior leaders to drive and create a new model for success? How to build the commitment from leaders to re-invent themselves and the success formula of the company while retaining a strong focus on today’s and next day’s sales?
• How to improve an under-development HR function to manage the succession of iconic leaders, recruit for and retain major roles and capabilities, and build a talent pipeline?

What we did

• We worked together with the Executive Board to build more alignment between top management on the long-term and short-term priorities, and helped them teaming better.
• We rejuvenated the soul of the company, the stable anchor that acts as the basis to transform the business, organisation and leadership: we conducted an in-depth stakeholder investigation with 60+ interviews answering the question ‘why does this company exist’ and crafted a purpose statement, goals and storyline to leverage the heritage and guide it into the future. We defined a roadmap to embed the goals of the purpose into products, services and key business processes.
• We co-designed the next generation organisational model to support the growth of the next generation leadership team(s) and functions, and coached the critical people to prepare and onboard them in their new role and team.
• We created a constructive environment for openly discussing & aligning on major, sensitive, continually recurring topics and coached the Executives to develop meeting habits facilitating clearer, faster and more committed decisions.
• We supported the CHRO and HR team in defining the profiles and in searching for key functions and roles (externally and internally).
• We identified the critical development areas of key leaders and specified the new thinking, working, communication and behavioural patterns, yet to establish.
• We created a leadership programme for the top 50, with four acceleration sessions in a 12-month period, to embed the critical behaviours in the next generation leaders. This was delivered through high touch (working sessions, personal feedback) with high tech tools (existing tools, combined with pragmatic simple platforms that feed learning and track progress).

What the client got out of it

• One transformation journey, that integrated the business, organisational and leadership challenges.
• A value creation dynamic that shines through in the organisational and business development efforts that the company embarks on.
• A community of next generation of leaders taking more and more ownership and responsibility, working together across functions and teams.
• A leadership repertoire and common language, and a rhythm to deal with the biggest business and leadership challenges at hand.
• New ways of meeting, interacting and working together, on real topics.
• A learning environment and attitude, to keep improving the ways of working in the company.