When the medium-sized, local manufacturer of electronic devices was acquired by a larger, multinational player, it was still managed by the same team of managers, who have been with the company since its foundation 30 years earlier. A team of experienced professionals, each deeply involved in the operations of their function, carrying all the implicit knowledge and history of the company. In the new context, as part of a well-established international company, many things related to how the company was managed needed to change. The family-style, based on non-formal relations leadership needed to become more professional, based on clear roles, principles and objectives. The focus of the leadership team also needed to change – from operational, focused on the immediate production, or sales or logistics issues, to a more strategic role, concerned with the longer-term strategic development of the company and the integration of its processes with the new mother company.
Initial diagnostics with interviewing and Management Systems Management Effectiveness Survey, identified gaps in how managers understood and defined their roles, but also opportunity for improvement in key leadership competencies such as prioritization, delegation, feedback. Managers, who needed to act as strategic leaders were operating as first-line managers, and lacking some of the skills to do it effectively.
Development started with re-defining the managers’ roles, using Management Systems concept of KRA – based role descriptions, helping managers identify both the strategic purpose of their new roles, but also how they needed to shift their everyday work and how they spent their time so they can practically start acting in their new roles. Self-assessment on the necessary competencies for their re-defined managerial level and roles, was followed by creating personal development plans and a series of skill building sessions, focusing on key foundational skills (prioritization, delegation, feedback), but also on the competencies required for effective performance in their newly defined roles (strategic planning, organizational development, creating and sustaining strong, functional culture).
Letting go of their operational focus was not an easy task, but gradually the team managed to shift their focus to the strategic issues and empower next leadership layers to run the everyday business. Some of them needed additional individual coaching to support their transition, for others the shift was easier and faster. One of the managers could not adapt and needed to be replaced. A year later, the team was operating at new level of more strategic responsibilities, facilitating the integration with the mother-company, restructuring the company’s product portfolio and introducing innovations, with only supervising role for everyday operations.