Insurer Transforms and Turns Around 6 Businesses With Growth Leader Executive Assessment
Executive Summary
A global life insurer was experiencing stagnant to declining growth in its emerging markets and wanted to identify new country CEOs that would transform these businesses. They used the Growth Leader Executive Assessment to select CEOs with the capabilities to drive growth. Selected CEOs in two markets turned their businesses around within 3 quarters while other selected CEOs more than doubled their growth rates.
The Client’s Challenge
A new leader was appointed to manage emerging markets for a global insurer. He faced multiple challenges as the markets were not profitable, growth was stagnant, and two markets had lost over 30% of their market share in one year. Most CEOs in these countries had been selected from other countries to execute their current business model. He realized this approach did not work and asked Organisation Solutions to help select leaders that could think differently, transform their businesses and accelerate growth. They targeted 6 markets to start this journey.
“In the past, we selected our CEOs by putting them through traditional assessments and assessment centers. We focused too much on leaders that could execute our business model and not enough on leaders that could innovate and energize our teams. Our partnership with Organisation Solutions helped us identify new leaders that could create new strategies to transform our business.”
The Solution
The line and HR leaders partnered with Organisation Solutions because of our focus on identifying and building capabilities that drive growth. Specifically, we adapted our Executive Assessment process to meet their needs.
First, we built a success profile of the leader, functional and experience qualifications needed for these critical roles. Second, we identified key capabilities needed for each country. Finally, we assessed candidates for six country roles.
Candidates were assessed with the Growth Leader Assessment as well as assessments for derailers and problem solving. We combined this data with an Experience-based interview and evaluated candidates based on the skills needed in each market. This included capabilities such as strategic thinking, driving innovation, growth mindset, pursuing new opportunities, and inspiring others.
This information was used to help select candidates. Successful candidates received feedback that was used to help them onboard into their new roles. Coaching was provided to leaders in the most challenging markets..
Results and Impact
We assessed internal and external candidates for six CEO roles over six months. Over the next year, the investment they made in selecting new CEOs paid off.
Two of their new CEOs turned failing businesses to high growth and were able to regain most of their market share within three quarters. These leaders received coaching that helped them utilize their assessment results to onboard, create new strategies, and align and energize employees to support their change journey.
Four of their new CEOs overcame stagnant to single digit growth rates and achieved double digit growth. Some of these CEOs accelerated growth to 25% and more per year and started to move their businesses towards profitability.
In addition, employee engagement in these countries increased and turnover decreased. New leaders drove digitisation to improve productivity and invested in new business model innovations.
Key Takeaways
Using the Growth Leader Executive Assessment process helped identify CEOs that could ignite growth in six key emerging markets. These leaders helped provide stability to employees in declining markets, identified new growth strategies, and built innovation pipelines that helped digitize their businesses.
There were some challenges. Industry regulations in some countries limited the candidate pool for CEO positions, resulting in small candidate pools. In these cases, the assessments were used to help identify risks and support successful candidates.
Learn how your organization can achieve similar results by contacting us today about our Growth Leader Executive Assessment process.
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