The Work: Professional Development
Client Profile
- US $9 billion international consumer products company
- Family-owned with 2 primary divisions, equal in size
- Each division run by an independent President, both reporting to worldwide CEO, a family member
Client Situation
Business was leveraging innovation around the world to outpace competitors, but was lagging in Asia.
The Company had made multiple new hires in the region, but everything else seemed “business as usual”.
Core question: why hasn't the Company's successful model worked as well in Asia?
Diagnostic Finding
Our insights were obtained in an in-depth discovery process with a broad group of company executives.
The issue was found to be corporate culture, where collegiality and conflict avoidance had led to atrophy and an inability to face or address even serious problems.
The business' level of team activation was very low, never achieving a shared sense of mission or teamwork, despite a congenial facade.
Ascentador Bespoke Solution
Drawing on our expertise in business leadership, change management, and executive alignment, we proposed a Professional Development Process that organized employees by underlying potential and provided each with suitable roadmaps for growth and development, so long as they were able to collaborate with others.
1. Skills
The most straightforward aim of the professional development process, this level is focused on expanding technical and/or functional skills.
2. Competencies
Elevated beyond mere skill, competency development includes a focus on strategic agility, organizing & planning, decision-making, problem-solving, and managing performance. Such development is often achieved through temporary, cross-functional assignments, in which a given professional is tasked with contributing in a series of innovative ways.
3. Leadership
The purpose of leadership development is to ensure that a small cadre of executives is sufficiently schooled in relevant competencies (including dealing with ambiguity, organizational communication, priority setting, managing diversity, team formation and activation) so as to be ready to assume senior leadership positions, whether as part of a formal succession plan or not. This type of development is, by its nature, reserved for the very few.