Challenge

The industry in which our client, a global manufacturing and brands management company, operates is subject to heavy and ever-growing regulation in most of its core markets. This is resulting in fundamental changes to the business model, such as searching for new and innovative products, streamlining the infrastructure overhead, and increasingly looking for growth through acquisition.

Kaplan Leadership and Professional Development was asked to design and develop a radically new program aimed at the country Finance Directors to support their transition to a more strategic role.

Action

• We were trusted to develop an intervention that would address both the technical skills, as well as the behavioral know-how, of the country Finance Directors after our client decided that the development program they were running was not appropriate to equip this population with the skills necessary to lead the business.
• Over several weeks of design and development, we talked at length to members
  of the global finance leadership team to understand their views about the organization’s priorities and individual needs.

The key design principles were:

• Agility over precision
• A horizontal view rather than a narrow vertical one
• Decision-making in a VUCA environment
• Cross-functional collaboration

At the end of the week, the delegates were asked to reflect on their experience and commit to taking away a number of tangible actions that they could implement in the workplace which we followed up on after three months.

Result

Our client has straight away decided to run another group of associates through this program, as well as explore other development interventions for different areas in the business.

“I really liked the balance and the structure of the program between the financial technical, the behavioral exercises, constant feedback between each other, and the actors and role plays. I believe the base case study was great and also helped us understand the strategic imperative for us moving forward.”