SENIOR LEADER SUCCESSION IN A FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCY

A large US Government Agency needed a new generation of leaders who could transform the organization.

THE CHALLENGE

Our client is a much-loved American institution and large national employer. Faced with significant changes in their core market and a disconnect in employee engagement, they not only needed leaders who could sustain the organization, but could also transform it.

We partnered with the client to support them in strengthening the senior leadership bench, accelerating the development of future leaders and introducing more objectivity into selecting and developing its leaders.

OUR APPROACH

  • We engaged with senior leadership to define a Senior Executive success profile linked to the strategic challenges facing the organization.
  • Key stakeholders participated in a design committee to identify ‘crucible’, make-or-break scenarios that reflected the future challenges leaders would face and that would differentiate exceptional performance.
  • This input was used to design a Senior Leadership Assessment Center – a 1.5 day experience involving:
  • We engaged with senior leadership to define a Senior Executive success profile linked to the strategic challenges facing the organization.
  • Pre-work – 360 feedback, psychometrics, simulation pre-read
  • A leadership interview
  • A day-in-the-life senior leadership simulation fully customized to the organization’s context, culture and future strategic challenges.
  • Feedback for individuals - An in-depth leadership development report, in-depth one-on-one feedback on strengths and development needs, development plan
  • Feedback for the organization – Dashboard report summarizing the key findings, 1.5 hour alignment meeting with individual and line manager, debrief to Leadership Development team

THE IMPACT

Over the past 6 years, our partnership with the client has enabled:

  • A shared language and objective criteria to evaluate leadership performance and potential
  • A data-driven insight into the health of the senior leadership pipeline and ability to deploy the right leaders in the right roles at the right time
  • An impactful development experience, highly rated by participants (4.8/5) with 94% of participants evaluating the simulation experience as ‘highly credible’