The Business Need

Wood had internally identified a need to address gaps in leadership development and succession planning at senior levels. They needed to set up a sustainable and scalable succession pipeline that both gave exposure to, developed, and helped retain top talent.

This initiative needed to help Wood evolve, adapt, and succeed at speed and overcome challenges of Covid-19 and a VUCA business landscape. Wood was looking to partner with a provider that could design and deliver a dynamic, evidence-based leadership development programme to maintain a competitive edge in a fast-moving world.

It was essential that the initiative was closely aligned with Wood’s strategic vision of an empowered community culture able to embrace bold ideas, new ways of working and skills for the future. There were several key strategic goals the programme needed to embrace, champion, and align with, such as:

Balance economic sustainability with social accountability, by achieving 40% female senior leadership by 2030, promoting and championing diversity, and meeting 2030 targets of reducing carbon emissions by 40%.

Invest in high quality support, development, and resources to attract, develop and retain key players and accelerate high performers into world-class leaders.

Create value through values-based decisions. Demonstrate core values of care, commitment, and courage whilst balancing risk and opportunity through data analysis to identify and assess development target areas.

We knew that only a bespoke, data-driven and cost-effective solution that delivered learning in a dynamic fashion would meet the specific organisational needs of Wood. The approach from design through to execution was done very much in partnership.

The Solution

The high potential talent pool of Wood was assessed using a robust “Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential.” Wood then asked us to analyse the data so they could better understand their high-potential population and identify areas for development.

Through the data-driven business case, the L&D team, with Management Dynamics’ support, engaged with senior leaders of Wood. Through a robust analysis of the people data, we were able to draw a clear link between the needs of Wood and how our solution would meet those needs, making programme buy-in a simple decision.

With target areas identified, we designed a programme of high-quality modules, offering an optimum balance of workshops, Action Learning Group coaching sessions and self-directed learning to bridge development gaps.

Given disruption from Covid, the solution had to be delivered entirely virtually. Management Dynamics specialise in virtual facilitation and have a rich history of delivering virtual learning and development initiatives globally. We were uniquely positioned to offer our expertise into how you can create effective, engaging, and impactful learning in a virtual environment.

Delivery for the first Cohort was led by Management Dynamics with Wood in direct support.  As Cohort 2 started up, the delivery lead shifted to Wood, with Management Dynamics in direct support.  The spirit of partnership and seamless transition, coupled with continuous improvement from the start, enabled the programme to be immediately successful.

Our solution has supported the development of future leaders of Wood from over 26 countries. The virtual format gave visibility and championed diversity by developing local leaders from Bogota to Brunei, Malabo to Melbourne and Reading to Rio.

The Results

This initiative has put the People function at Wood firmly in the spotlight, enhancing its credibility and value-add to the business. The initiative used COVID related obstacles as a springboard to design a future centric, virtual, proactive and interactive development model – allowing Wood to invest in its people when cost resource in all sectors is low.

Our development initiative has delivered a high impact, cost-effective, engaging, green solution to the succession planning needs of Wood. We supported the L&D team to deliver 233 Korn Ferry assessments, 11,023 hours of learning for 147 participants across 26 countries.

Participants demonstrated extremely high engagement, rating the programme 4.71/5 on average, with one participant stating,  “The knowledge that Wood are investing in the next generation of leaders is really energising.”

100% participants reported increased business impact from the skills they developed through the programme.

94% participants reported they met many of their development priorities.

The programme welcomed 36% women overall (50% in at least one of the cohorts), playing a vital role in Wood’s long term strategic goal of achieving 40% female senior leadership by 2030.

This scalable solution will continue to supply Wood with data-driven and research-based succession planning possibilities and will be incorporated into the long-term talent strategy of Wood.