Leadership development in FMCG
In the increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous commercial landscape, organisations need leaders capable of building great teams and delivering sustainable results.
We worked with a major global manufacturer to deliver a stronger internal talent pipeline – through an innovative approach to programme design.
The introduction of leading-edge talent centres is a key feature of the strategy. Known internally as future leader development programmes, these events benchmark potential rising stars and directly support their development – while the programme outputs feed into individually tailored development plans.
- Successful talent pipelining based on sophisticated measurement & benchmarking
- Innovative, engaging talent centre events designed to inspire rising stars
- Mutual programme co-creation ensures alignment to business goals & stronger ROI
“This approach has been a focal point for calibrating and accelerating our talent through the organisation. The team demonstrated a high level of understanding of our business and our talent challenges and were both pragmatic and innovative in designing and delivering a programme that we are all proud of.”
After a competitive tender process, this international brand chose us as their partner for the design and launch of these crucial events. Our brief was to assess potential as accurately as possible, whilst simultaneously engaging and inspiring participants to develop their careers within the business.
The first step in the design was a review of the criteria against which participant potential would be evaluated. We drew on the organisation’s global leadership framework, adding clarity around concepts such as mental agility and emotional intelligence, and providing guidance on how participants’ aspirations could be objectively measured and interpreted.
The importance of evaluating commercial understanding was also emphasised, to ensure that potential was considered in tandem with a) each individual’s passion for developing their career within a global FMCG business, and b) the experience they had gained to date. Our input ensured that the process was founded upon practical behavioural definitions that all stakeholders could understand, providing clarity, transparency and fairness.
A creative approach was taken to the design of the events. This included the deployment of a combination of different exercises and activities not used within traditional development events.
Strong emphasis was placed upon ‘adaptive’ components i.e. the design built upon the actual learning that each participant achieved over the course of the event. Participants were provided with short inputs on relevant topics such as leading change and building high performing teams, and then set exercises that test their ability to apply these concepts. The content of these exercises was fully tailored to the host organisation’s markets and challenges to optimise face validity.
Inclusion of benchmark interviews were run by our search and assessment specialists to provide market-wide comparative data on potential. Senior leaders from the organisation were also involved in the assessment process to ensure a context-relevant reading on the participants’ business understanding and commercial drive, whilst providing all parties with a valuable internal networking opportunity.
Each event concluded with participants receiving one-to-one feedback/action planning sessions. These meetings were carefully designed to support the identification of clear development actions. This was supplemented with an individual development report that had been prepared during the event. Following this, each participant was supported in translating their learning back into the workplace (to address Kirkpatrick’s ‘behavioural’ level of evaluation).
This ground-breaking initiative has proved very successful for both individual participants and the organisation, with the programme now being rolled out into other areas of this global business.
In addition to providing a platform for individual development, this future leader development programme produced vital group-level data relating to themes and trends within the high potential cadre as a whole. This information was fed into the organisation’s global talent review system, providing objective information that is now being used to refine priorities within the talent strategy.
The future leader development programmes are now managed internally by the organisation’s own organisational development team. This sharing and handover of expertise is a vital step in our consultancy model – mutual co-creation and two-way learning is a cornerstone of the NSCG way.