One Leadership Strategy for a Multi-National Environment.
Leading a strategic overhaul of talent management to unify leadership practices across a complex, multi-national group—creating a transparent system to identify, develop, and deploy high-potential leaders.
3 Big Wins
1
Senior leaders visibly championing enterprise talent management.
2
One clear, shared standard for leadership potential.
3
A transparent, data-driven process to manage leadership talent across the group.
The Challenge.
Our client – an international defense contractor – struggled with inconsistent approaches to identifying high-potential talent, siloed development opportunities, and opaque succession planning. Leadership development lacked structure and business units operated in isolation, complicating cross-functional and cross-border mobility of talent. Critical roles lacked strong successor pipelines, and talent conversations often confused performance with potential.
Our old talent practices were no longer fit for purpose. Moving to a unified, transparent system to grow future leaders quickly became critical to our success.
Our Approach.
We partnered closely with the client’s internal talent team—supporting them behind the scenes to lead the change from within and build lasting capability across the business.
Key Actions:
- Benchmarking Talent Maturity – Assessed the current state of talent management and set realistic target maturity levels.
- Defining Leadership Success – Partnered with senior leaders to describe what great leadership will look like in the future context of the business.
- Shared Definition of Potential – Co-created a clear, Group-wide definition of “high potential” aligned to business needs.
- Building Internal Capability – Trained and coached the internal talent team to roll out and embed new processes with confidence.
- Objective Assessment – Implemented our Max Potential Profile to validate successor pools and target development investments.
- Process Design – Guided the design of a unified talent review and succession planning process across countries and functions.
- Executive Development – Delivered targeted coaching to senior leaders to prepare them for future roles.
This wasn’t only a technical challenge: it was cultural and political. Each country saw talent differently, so we had to take people with us, move at the right pace and adjust as we went. It wasn’t quick, but that’s what built real commitment.
The Impact.
The company now has a consistent, Group-wide approach to leadership talent management that is actively sponsored by senior leaders:
- The top team and local leadership are engaged in the new process
- A shared language now exists across countries to talk about performance, potential, and readiness
- Talent reviews are held at the country level with clear action plans for development and succession
- The Max Potential Profile tool is ready to be scaled across the business to identify and develop future senior leaders
- The internal talent team has taken full ownership of the process and is equipped to lead ongoing improvements
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