THE CHANGEMAKER EFFECT
CORPORATES
The capability of the leadership team is the biggest predictor of an organisation’s success. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought this insight into even sharper focus. Added to this is the current pressure to strip out structural costs that will be sustainable. Assemble changemaking senior teams and create value adding structures using The Changemaker Effect’s proprietary science based methodology.
The Case for Corporates
The capability of the CEO and the senior team is the single biggest predictor of future business and investment performance. Knowing whether a senior team is ‘big enough’ though is usually left to trial and error.
The Changemaker Effect’s human capital practice uses a unique science based system to address this problem and brings real rigour and objectivity to human capital due diligence.
At the heart of the science is the notion that we are not all able to handle the same levels of complexity. There is considerable complexity at the top of large corporations which is often overlooked. Turnarounds where a business needs to reinvent themselves at considerable pace adds even more complexity. 75% of senior teams are incorrectly matched to their role, their manager or both. Add to this that 90% of the population is more comfortable with continuous improvement than transformation and the importance of completing human capital due diligence is clear.
Usually corporations have scaled badly and have unnecessary non value adding layers of management. By focusing on organisation design cost can be removed from the flabby senior and middle management layers making businesses more agile ironically at the same time as cutting payroll overhead. Without help corporations usually cut payroll in the operational levels where the work has not gone away and over time it creeps back.
CASE STUDY 1.
A UK subsidiary of a global travel business used the methodology to reset and reinvent after 9/11. The CEO was new and whilst he was at the right level in ‘complexipacity’ terms the rest of his board assessed as capable of continuous improvement rather than change and new. By contrast, in the Heads of Department population there were a number of under-employed individuals and a pipeline of under-employed talent coming up behind to replace them. The senior team was reconstituted with 100% of internal talent who could all hit the ground running causing very little disruption. In fact there was huge admiration and support for the new CEO who was seen to address the problems and fix them by identifying and sponsoring internal talent. Discretionary effort increased enormously which the turnaround needed.
CASE STUDY 2.
A successful global digital start-up was bought by an underperforming retail corporation and the entrepreneur put in charge of the merged businesses. Trying to run a corporate in entrepreneur mode disrespecting any notion of structure seeing it as bureaucratic, old fashioned and just not cool the business was in chaos. This was further compounded by inheriting a corporate board of over promoted Heads of Department from whom he demanded strategic thinking. A human capital due diligence project was commissioned. In this case the start-up had more than enough talent to populate the corporates board and by repositioning a couple of over promoted executives sufficient organisation knowledge was retained. As in case study 1 lots of under-employed changemaking Field Managers were identified who were highly energised by the changes and able to translate the strategy into a plan that the operation could execute. Again high levels of discretionary effort followed.
Our people intervention is a semi-structured, highly enjoyable experience based interview. No tests. Making full use of existing talent before hiring externally is our approach and this is always very well received. An added benefit of completing the interviews is that the discussions provide additional insights which can be captured and addressed.