Helping leaders tackle today’s business challenges

Leadership is one of the highest priorities on the executive agenda and the demands on today’s leaders have never been greater. Here are four stories that show how our leadership development programmes are making an impact.

A new language for Maersk

As A.P. Moller’s technology transformation partner, we have been helping Maersk’s technology department to set up for future success.

Through this process Maersk production services leader recognised a siloed global workforce of 1,500 team members. They needed help to address this; a tool that codified behaviours and illustrated the team’s global diversity. They needed one common start point to break down barriers, listen to differing viewpoints and prevent siloed working practices.

Our Business Chemistry experts were on hand to guide the company’s new IT executive team as it developed a plan for their future landscape. Importantly, it helped the team get to know one another and open up about their working styles. They were able to spot similarities and differences, identify gaps and acknowledge how their behaviours were perceived by others. It was so successful they wanted their teams to experience it too.

Business Chemistry uses data to identify different patterns of behaviour, allowing people to shape their workplace relationships by acknowledging an individual’s or team’s traits and preferences.

The right chemistry

In May 2018, our chief chemist and eight accredited facilitators delivered Business Chemistry to 230 Maersk Production Services employees.

The following month, workshops were run for a further 310 people across three continents, and over the following year Business Chemistry was made available to 500 new team members as part of their induction programme, making this the largest global delivery of the programme to date.

Andy Laurence Head of Production Services at Maersk said: “We delivered this at a crucial time for Maersk. While planning for our ‘new future landscape’ in IT at Maersk and dedicating the majority of its resources to getting the strategy set up, the operations planned, and the engagement rolled out, there was the risk that we hadn’t addressed the siloed feeling in our workforce. Business Chemistry helped team members to connect, and work better together to protect our firm. Business Chemistry is now our behavioural language.”

Ten years of Next Generation support

Back in September 2008, ten clients attended our first Next Generation Chief Financial Officer (CFO) workshop. A decade later, there have been 66 cohorts, with 26 per cent of programme alumni now Group CFOs at FTSE 100 companies.

The sessions have been the catalyst for other initiatives that support leadership development including Transition Labs, diversity programmes and the Deloitte Academy, which offers guidance to Boards, directors and company secretaries. In total, 800 FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 senior leaders have participated.

In 2018, we marked the ten-year milestone with an alumni event at our headquarters in London. One guest commented: “I learnt a huge amount on the programme, it was the best development intervention I have ever benefited from and I use it, if not every day, at least every week.”

Another said: “I found that every 10 or 15 minutes I was jotting down ideas that would help me in the future. As a FTSE 100 CFO now, I still have these ‘top tips’ by my desk.”

A bright future

Depaul UK, one of our One Million Futures partners, supports young people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. When the charity hired new CEO Mike Thiedke our Transition Lab team, having worked with more than 700 clients, was only too happy to support him.

Transition Labs allow recently appointed executives to hit the ground running and are an important part of our commitment to clients and their leaders.

Before Mike took part in the lab, he completed the Business Chemistry assessment and our people interviewed his stakeholders to identify his priorities and understand his leadership qualities. . At the session, they helped him turn his aspirations into an action plan.

In his own words, the lab gave Mike “the time and space to be ‘centre stage all day’, surrounded by competent critical friends who guide you through a structured, reflective yet not too stringent process.”

Supporting the CEO has a ripple effect, benefitting employees, volunteers and, ultimately, the young people who Depaul helps every day.

Building on excellence

A new Nordics Centre of Excellence (CoE) is building on our UK blueprint and making our Transition Labs available to more people.

In its first year, the CoE ran two facilitator training sessions in Oslo and Copenhagen involving 50 of our partners and directors from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the UK. This enabled 30 Transition Labs to be delivered for clients across multiple industries.

Martin Bryn, Nordics Clients & Industries Leader says: “In creating the Transition Labs CoE in the Nordics, we have opened up one of the most powerful relationship development tools across the region. We have created a community of lab ambassadors, managers and facilitators, which enables us to support clients at the most challenging times in their careers.”