Bold Growth Strategy – “Double in Five”
What?
The company had recently finalized a growth strategy process. The Big Hairy Audacious Goal was to double revenue in five years.
As part of that growth strategy they had a number of work streams and one of them was “People”.
The Two Simple Questions Were:
What are the people consequences of this growth strategy?
How do we address these consequences?
How We Can Make a Difference
When we entered the project, the growth numbers were already decided and communicated.
This was in itself not unusual, but as usual, they may have wanted to consider the people consequences before deciding on the strategy.
The first talent forecast we did quickly illustrated that with 100% growth in revenue they would need to grow their group of executives from 110 to 130 and that over the five-year period they would lose 45 of the original 110 executives. This created a net need for new executives of 65 over the next five years. Looking at their current succession plans and talent reviews, it was only realistic to recruit half of those internally. This came as a major surprise to the management team and they appreciated that they needed to fundamentally upgrade their talent engine if they were to meet their growth targets.
Our Role in This Project Would Be:
Design and deliver leadership transition programs for the core leadership roles
Design and implement an approach to how to accelerate the development of talent. Essentially, the organization needed to be turned into a talent factory
Integrate their people review process in the quarterly business review process.