Working with Leaders to Create Conditions for Success

We coach leaders all over the world – working with them to create conditions that encourage and enable others to dedicate their collective intelligence, talents and full energies to achieve extraordinary results.

Skills and Aptitudes
Members of the Team bring the full range of skills and aptitudes needed to perform the Team’s task.

Worthwhile Purpose
Everyone believes that what they are doing is worthwhile.

Shared Ownership
Everyone feels a personal sense of responsibility not only for their own job, but for the results of the Team.

Goals, Roles, and Expectations
Everyone clearly understand their own and others’ roles, goals and interrelationships.

Innovation
The Team constantly seeks new means of improving the manner in which the work is done.

Encouraging Communication
Everyone knows how well they are doing, and seeks ways in which to improve their performance.

Valued Rewards
Everyone feels that their work is rewarding.

Self Management
The Team solves problems in a manner which enhances their willingness to learn and grow.

High Morale
The Team believes that they are capable of achieving great things.

Agility
The Team assesses and examines the Team’s priorities and opportunities in a manner which efficiently redirects the energies to what is newly important.

We were a newly formed entity of three merged companies with very different cultures and ways of working. With SGA we came together. The Board got their strategy, and as a leadership team we managed and grew the company as planned.

Case studies below.

Leadership Lens and Strategy Work

CASE STUDIES

WHAT HAPPENED AS A RESULT

SGA met with the leaders of the three different companies and their key staff members. We then stepped out a staged process for each business to analyze and present their markets, challenges and readiness, and then look for synergies and shared possibilities. Common interests were clarified, as well as the key management and leadership principles that would need to be agreed and adhered to by the top team. Individual coaching was also provided to enable the team to integrate their work.

“We’re a newly formed entity of three merged companies with very different cultures and ways of working. And the Board wants a strategy…”

A strategy and set of business priorities emerged and was refined, agreed, and ratified by the Board. In three years the company grew both domestically and globally, exceeding the growth goals and delivering well ahead of plan.

#1

WHAT WE DID...

CASE STUDY
WHAT HAPPENED AS A RESULT

SGA worked with the business leaders to clarify the characteristics of their most effective leaders, and to identify the exemplars of those characteristics in their global markets. We then conducted a series of eight different assessments of each of these exemplars, comparing their results with various established global baselines of leadership characteristics.

“We’re one of the world leaders in our field and we don’t know how to assess and develop the critical attributes of our leaders…”

We discovered the differentiator. Global best practices existed – we could locate what these leaders were doing in common. More importantly, however, we also identified that these same practices were common among many who were not generating exceptional performance. The secret was found not in what they did, but in the thoughts and interests that preceded their behavior. We came to call this their mindset. An assessment tool was created, along with a multi-faceted leadership development curriculum. In this highly competitive and disrupted global economy our client retains its leadership role and the admiration of the analyst community.

#2

WHAT WE DID...

CASE STUDY
WHAT HAPPENED AS A RESULT

We spent time to understand how the demands of growth and change were challenging our client’s leadership and the enterprise. The business issue was growth and how to best direct the attention of leadership. We interviewed the Chairman of the Board, Board members, functional heads, and industry experts. We then facilitated a workshop with the top 30 leaders of the firm and assigned issues and questions for them to answer and present. They then offered and refined this best thinking to each other, each as facets of the company’s current condition, emerging environment, and keys to its successful future.

“We lead the field. We know the market. We have the most innovative and successful offering available. How do we mobilize our people to leverage this advantage?”

The Chief Financial Officer described it as “You picked us up from where we were and put us down where we needed to be, and it was seamless.” Our client grew exponentially and continues to this day as the continent’s industry leader.

#3

WHAT WE DID...

CASE STUDY

A strategy emerged and was agreed, with resultant critical issues to address and task forces to do so. We then engaged the entire organization in a series of department workshops, helping them to articulate the priorities and practices needed to deliver the organizational results required.
WHAT HAPPENED AS A RESULT

SGA interviewed and earned the trust of both groups, conducted workshops to identify shared interests, value the contributions each group were making, instilled an appreciation for differences, coached individuals and facilitated problem-solving discussions.

“We have New Guard and Old Guard department leaders who aren’t talking and are stifling progress…”

With greater appreciation for each others’ strengths and contributions, teams aligned their goals, set priorities, adhered to agreed ground rules for constructive dialog and generated new products and campaigns that rejuvenated the organization’s growth and market leadership.

#4

WHAT WE DID...

CASE STUDY