Jump-starting a strategy shift

Fierce competition for global clients forced this professional services firm to step up collaboration across practice areas and geographies, challenging their roots as independent, country-based practices.  Within three years, partners from different geographies would need to share leads and cooperate on assignments outside their home countries, and professionals at all levels would be serving new clients in multi-disciplinary teams, often outside their home countries.

We partnered with the leader of Global Learning and Development to translate this business challenge into a series of pragmatic responses.  First we selected a group of partners from around the world to serve as liaisons, and invested time clarifying their views on the coming change. We enlisted them to articulate requirements for professionals at each level of the firm: What would they need to do differently to implement the new strategy and achieve future goals?  Then using a custom-built online self-assessment vehicle, professionals in all geographies identified gaps and chose from pre-populated menus of practical on-the-job development suggestions that would initiate behavior changes immediately, while company- wide skill gaps were identified and learning strategies were formulated.

Defining future requirements at all levels and conducting the global assessments were among the first tangible moves made in pursuing the firm’s new strategy. So in addition to jump-starting behavioral change in a concrete way, the effort underscored the sense of urgency and commitment among senior leadership to taking a new direction.  Moreover, our guidance throughout the analysis of the assessment data revealed global, country-specific and level-specific gaps.  As the firm continues on its path toward global harmonization, the L&D team is utilizing the findings from the analyses to set global investment priorities.   Widely recognized as a success, the project is being emulated in other practice areas within the firm.