Leadership Team Development - Strategic Focus

The Client

The Queensland Region of an international food manufacturing and distribution organisation with two manufacturing sites and a large distribution warehouse in South East Queensland.

The Brief

To work with the Regional Manager to increase the effectiveness and strategic focus of the top management team.

The management team was getting bogged down in present day 'fire fighting' activities. Previous strategic planning processes were not meaningful and had failed to engage top managers.

There was not sufficient time being given to strategic leadership and the longer term development and performance of the business. Top managers needed to work more closely together on these issues.

The team comprised the Regional Manager and ten operational and functional managers.

Our Response

Working with the Regional Manager, HR Advantage designed and planned a multi-pronged approach to the issues. This included:

• Developing and facilitating quarterly management team workshops devoted to medium and long term activities, including strategic planning, business systems, learning and people management activities
• Revising the approach to management development to explicitly connect individual development activities with strategic plans and performance management processes for top managers
• Designing and implementing key actions to assist the Regional Manager and individual managers to improve their management processes with direct reports. We provided coaching to executives to support these changes

The Results

Over about 12 months, significant improvements in the functioning and effectiveness of the management team were observed.

Top managers were actively engaged in the strategic planning process. They reported that for the first time they were fully informed and fully involved in developing the key issues, strategies and performance metrics for the business.

Therefore executives felt the strategic plan was relevant for the Region and could be applied to their own teams in setting priorities and guiding work.

Clear improvements were observed in the leadership of the business, the rigor of debate, levels of initiative shown by managers, and focus on longer time horizons.

Quarterly top management workshops continue to be held and are now a normal way of doing business, sustaining the work done. A small senior group was formed to drive continuous improvement and actively manage change. This continues to develop the business, including the learning and people culture and activities.