Case Study Dynamic Leadership Team

Talent Mapping (GFG Alliance)

Published 19 December 2019 - ID G00713042 - 13 min read

Initiatives:

 Current and Future Leadership

To assess talent needs in constantly changing contexts that traditional

leadership assessments can’t account for, GFG Alliance created a new
approach to mapping talent on leadership teams. L&D leaders can use this
case study to apply GFG Alliance’s principles to their own leadership
strategies.

 Company Name: GFG Alliance

 Industry: Mining, Trade
 Headquarters Location: London, U.K.
 Revenue: Over $20 Billion

 Employees: Over 30,000

Overview
Realizing that a traditional leadership assessment couldn’t tell them about leaders’ current
capabilities in constantly changing contexts, culture and performance (C&P) leaders at GFG
Alliance created a new, dynamic team talent mapping approach to assess talent needs. GFG
Alliance’s talent map assesses leaders against their business unit’s or function’s relevant business
objectives as well as the company’s values. The map looks at leadership capabilities collectively
and individually to understand leadership talent holistically. GFG Alliance’s approach can help
L&D leaders identify talent priorities in specific contexts and keep HR strategy relevant to
leaders’ changing and idiosyncratic roles.
Solution Highlights
 GFG Alliance focused its assessment criteria on leaders’ context-relevant business
priorities and the company’s core values to understand its current leadership
capabilities dynamically and in context.
 GFG Alliance evaluates the leadership capabilities of each business unit and function
holistically to gauge collective leadership capabilities throughout the organization.
 GFG Alliance’s assessment framework ties capability needs to business priorities in
leaders’ businesses and functions to help C&P understand current leadership
development needs and reassess needs in the future.

Challenge
GFG Alliance has experienced significant and constant change in its short history, acquiring new
businesses frequently. As a company comprising multiple holdings, GFG Alliance recognized an
early challenge: It would have to reconcile the talent and leadership capabilities of its newly
combined leadership bench. Leaders from the acquired companies brought a variety of skills and
capabilities from their former positions, but C&P leaders at GFG Alliance needed to understand
how those leaders would meet their new company’s objectives. C&P leaders also needed to
quickly learn where delivery of GFG Alliance’s business plans was at risk unless capability gaps
were plugged.
To understand what it could do in the short term to ensure leaders succeeded in their roles, GFG
Alliance needed to assess leaders’ capabilities quickly and holistically — and within the nuanced
business contexts across its portfolio of businesses. And because the ongoing change GFG
Alliance was experiencing was unlikely to stop, it needed an assessment that would stay relevant
as leaders’ contexts continued to change.
Simply updating its leadership competency model with a new set of capabilities and behaviors
that reflected its new leadership needs was insufficient; a competency model that was inherently
static couldn’t adapt as business needs changed or measure potential in a consistent and
meaningful way. C&P leaders knew that assessing leaders against a one-size-fits-all model for
leadership potential (such as a nine-box approach) wouldn’t target the capabilities leaders most
needed to succeed in their varying contexts. They also knew that a static leadership model
wouldn’t be able to evolve to stay relevant as business needs changed. Lastly, while a
competency model could assess leaders’ individual capabilities and development needs, GFG
Alliance needed an assessment that could account for the organization’s collective capacity.

Solution Overview
As they reexamined the way they assessed leaders, C&P leaders at GFG Alliance thought about
the assumptions that went into typical leadership assessments. They realized that leadership
assessments normally look solely at individual leaders’ capabilities, even though leaders always
work in context with their teams and other leaders at the organization. C&P leaders also realized
that most leadership assessments use a one-size-fits-all model of leadership success, even though
they knew there were multiple profiles for successful leadership.
To assess leaders’ capabilities throughout the organization amid constant change,
GFG Alliance needed a new framework that looked beyond individual leaders and assessed
leadership capabilities dynamically. GFG Alliance’s solution — its dynamic talent mapping
framework — fits on two printed pages and assesses leaders on the organization’s
confidence that they will meet their relevant objectives.
To fill in the map, the top executive and HR partner from each business unit and function fill out
a copy of the assessment for the leadership team of their business area. C&P then uses a color-
coded scale to map leaders’ capabilities against the specific objectives their business units or
functions are prioritizing (see Figure 1). For the purposes of the assessment,
GFG Alliance considers every employee at the organization to be a leader in their own right.
Anyone — from frontline managers to senior executives — can use the assessment to evaluate
capabilities on their teams.
Figure 1: GFG Alliance’s Dynamic Talent Map

Instead of developing a model of leadership excellence by identifying organizational needs and

then assessing leaders against that model with a nine-box or other approach, GFG Alliance
combined the two steps to allow for a more dynamic assessment. With its single assessment
framework, GFG Alliance can identify capability needs in context and objectively evaluate
leaders’ potential to perform in their roles without having to assess potential against an
organizational standard.
As C&P leaders developed the new assessment, they prioritized a few key components:

 A focus on dynamic business priorities and core values

 Evaluation of individual and collective leadership capabilities in context
 Identification of context-specific talent priorities in real time

A Focus on Dynamic Business Priorities and Core Values

Select assessment criteria that will stay relevant through change.
In developing their dynamic talent map, C&P leaders at GFG Alliance first needed to consider
the criteria on which they would assess leaders. They knew an assessment of leaders’ potential
against a static model couldn’t target the relevant capabilities needed in every business context.
Instead, they decided to ground the assessment in criteria that were immediately relevant to
leaders’ success in their roles at GFG Alliance — specifically, their business units’ or functions’
strategic objectives and the company’s values.
But how could GFG Alliance’s C&P team capture leaders’ relevant and immediate business
priorities at scale and at speed? Recognizing there’s truly no way to capture these evolving and
emerging business priorities through traditional nine-box processes and capability
frameworks, GFG Alliance used the strategic plans developed by each business unit and function
— their “balanced business plans” (BBPs) — as the basis for the assessment. These business
plans are designed to balance various categories of objectives, including financial results, safety
and environment, engaging people, and building talent and capability (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: GFG Alliance’s Balanced Business Plans

These BBPs are not only used to plan for strategic objectives in a balanced way but also feed into
the dynamic talent map. Leaders use their business unit’s or function’s BBP objectives as the
talent map’s core assessment criteria.
Realizing that focusing solely on business results could allow leaders to lose focus on their
teams’ needs and the organization’s values, C&P leaders decided they needed additional
information to truly understand GFG Alliance’s leadership capabilities. To balance driving
business results with encouraging the right behaviors among leaders, GFG Alliance also
evaluates each leader’s alignment with the company’s core values. These values act as “guiding
beacons” for consistent conduct throughout the organization through times of turbulence and
change. GFG Alliance’s core values are:

 Family — “We will embrace all stakeholders as members of our extended family.”

 Sustainability — “We will operate our business to perform over time and build a legacy
for the future.”
 Change — “We will be courageous, maintain an open mindset and continually challenge
the status quo.”
By including BBPs as well as company values, GFG Alliance’s assessment criteria balance
immediate business needs (by evaluating leaders’ ability to meet relevant business objectives)
with long-term business needs (by assessing alignment with company values). And by evaluating
leaders against these outcomes instead of skills and competencies that seek to predict these
outcomes, GFG Alliance’s assessment ties more directly to current business needs than a typical
assessment approach could.

Evaluation of Individual and Collective Leadership Capabilities

in Context
Assess leadership teams’ abilities holistically.
In trying to understand the holistic capabilities of leadership throughout the organization, GFG
Alliance settled on a few principles its assessment would follow:

 Assess leaders in the context of the business units or functions they lead.
 Assess leaders based on their business unit’s or function’s specific strategic objectives
rather than use a more generic set for the entire organization.
 Produce a first-pass, “gut” confidence assessment that can address the needs of input
scale and speed; refine assessments with employee data in the future.
 Assess leaders side by side with their peers.
 Assess downward to understand the capabilities of leaders’ extended teams.
 Have leaders discuss assessment findings openly with their peers in other business units
and functions.
 Keep assessment principles flexible to remain relevant in multiple contexts.
C&P leaders at GFG Alliance use copies of their assessment to map the capabilities in each
business unit and function. By assessing each business unit and function, they ensure evaluations
are grounded in leaders’ specific contexts within the organization. This also enables them to look
at collective leadership capabilities and not solely individual leaders’ capabilities.
C&P starts by having the top executive and the HR partner for each business unit and function
list the members of the leadership team for their business area at the top of the talent map. On the
left side of the map, executives write out the strategic objectives from their business units’ or
functions’ BBPs. Working with their HR partners, executives then gauge their confidence in
each direct report’s ability to meet the relevant BBP objectives (see Figure 3). Next, they
evaluate each direct report’s team on its ability to meaningfully contribute to meeting the
relevant BBP objectives. Leaders are only assessed against the objectives they are accountable
for; if a leader will not meaningfully contribute to a particular objective, this box is left blank.
GFG Alliance’s assessment uses a color-coded scale where red conveys low confidence, yellow
conveys partial confidence and green conveys high confidence. This simple scale gives a
baseline confidence assessment of each leader’s readiness to accomplish a given BBP priority.
GFG Alliance also ensures executives and their HR partners rate only their current “gut”
confidence level as the first pass for the talent mapping assessment, allowing C&P to
accommodate current needs at scale and speed.
Figure 3: Sample Evaluation Using GFG Alliance’s Dynamic Talent Map
In addition to assessing individual leaders and their teams, GFG Alliance assesses leaders side by
side with their peers to identify collective opportunities for success and collective risks (where
capabilities are lacking). This side-by-side assessment enables C&P leaders to understand
leaders’ capabilities relative to their peers based on each leader’s specific strategic business
priorities. This allows GFG Alliance to identify individual leaders’ capabilities relative to one
another and evaluate the collective capabilities of each leadership team to accomplish each
objective. GFG Alliance also looks downward on leaders’ teams to understand the capabilities of
the team leader as well as the team as a whole to meet the specific strategic priorities they are
tasked with delivering.
After mapping each executive’s function and business unit, GFG Alliance has executives
collectively discuss what they learned from the assessment exercise and what actions they can
take. Leaders identify the main risks, opportunities and threats based on their talent maps and
consider how they can use the talent on their teams to accomplish or exceed their strategic goals.
In creating this new framework for thinking about and discussing talent, C&P leaders at GFG
Alliance hope to create more transparency and openness about talent capabilities and needs
throughout the organization.
To allow for change in the future, GFG Alliance keeps its assessment principles flexible. GFG
Alliance used its dynamic talent mapping framework for the first time at an off-site with its top
30 leaders to identify talent risks and gauge leadership capabilities throughout the business.
Following the success of this initial launch, leaders in some areas of the business have deployed
maps in their own business units to look more closely at capabilities across more of their teams.
GFG Alliance also anticipates using the same framework in a digital version that will assess
leaders against their business units’ or functions’ objectives using new inputs, such as employee
engagement data and network analysis of collaboration on leaders’ teams. Ultimately, GFG
Alliance plans to create a version of the talent map that replaces the manual assessment
component with continuous data inputs, allowing for a real-time map of the organization’s
collective capabilities.

Identification of Context-Specific Talent Priorities in Real Time

Identify leaders’ specific development priorities in context.
After mapping business units’ talent for the first time with the new framework, GFG Alliance’s
C&P team analyzed the data from the completed talent maps to identify areas of acute need as
well as any need for specific capabilities or roles. Beyond this, GFG Alliance’s C&P was able to
assess talent maps from throughout the business in aggregate to identify the most pressing needs
for learning materials and development programs. By analyzing the results of the talent maps and
scanning for common capability gaps across leadership teams, HR can target L&D resources that
will be relevant in specific contexts.
GFG Alliance offers three core leadership programs that support a common basis for
understanding the role, the expectations and the needs of leading at GFG Alliance, irrespective of
level:

 People leadership at GFG Alliance  familiarizes employees with what it means to be a

leader at GFG Alliance.
  Relationship-led leadership identifies practices for building better relationships for
leadership and collaboration.
 Leading performance is GFG Alliance’s offering on helping leaders to better drive and
lead performance.
For additional capability needs, GFG Alliance offers electives that dynamically respond to the
L&D needs of different businesses, leadership roles and levels identified through the talent
mapping assessment. By making capability development flexible beyond the core leadership
development offerings, GFG Alliance allows leaders to focus development on the skills and
capabilities they need in their specific roles and business contexts.
As capability needs change throughout the organization — as a result of evolving business
priorities or changes in leadership team composition — GFG Alliance can reassess its leadership
with the same framework to identify new and changing L&D priorities.
The talent map framework also helps GFG Alliance identify any need for broader HR
intervention in specific teams. For example, the map can identify:

 Leaders who need additional support from their peers on certain objectives because they
are new to role
 Performance issues if individual leaders consistently fail to meet objectives
 An acute need for additional resources or talent if a certain team lacks the talent needed
to accomplish its objectives

Results
GFG Alliance has seen a positive response to its new, dynamic talent map:

 Leaders are thinking about talent as more of a strategic priority than before.
 There is greater awareness of capabilities throughout the organization, reflecting
idiosyncratic business unit and functional contexts.
 More leaders are deploying the assessment independently on their teams as a business
tool rather than an HR initiative.
Unlike most nine-box framework and competency model approaches, GFG Alliance’s talent map
can evolve to accommodate emerging, idiosyncratic business contexts and related leadership
capability needs to meet the emerging contexts.
GFG Alliance’s C&P team sees the implementation of the talent map framework as a three-year
process. With the development of its dynamic talent map, GFG Alliance accomplished its first-
year goal to create a new framework for thinking about and assessing talent at scale and speed. In
the coming years, C&P plans to systematize the talent map so it can be accessed digitally and
applied dynamically throughout the organization. C&P also plans to use data from sources that
may include organizational network analysis, employee engagement data and performance
ratings to support an automated, real-time talent mapping system.
Recommendations
When evaluating leadership teams, L&D leaders responsible for current and future leadership
development should:

 Target relevant leadership needs by evaluating leaders in the context of the teams they
lead, not against a standard leadership model for the entire organization.
 Gather dynamic data about leadership capabilities by assessing leaders against their
specific business objectives and the organization’s values rather than a static set of
organizational competencies.
 Learn about collective areas of opportunity or risk by evaluating the collective
capabilities of leadership teams, not just the capabilities of individual leaders.

About This Research

This research draws from extensive interviews with GFG Alliance’s culture and performance
team.

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Supporting Initiatives
 Current and Future Leadership