Success Profiles Drive Leadership and Operational Excellence at Australia’s Largest Convenience Retailer
The Brief
Future Leadership was engaged by Australia’s largest convenience retailer to support its transition from a fully franchised business model to a hybrid model with both franchise and company-owned stores.
A critical aspect of this transformation was the need to shift and reset the mindset of Retail Operations leaders, redefining roles, responsibilities, working practices, and success factors essential for outstanding leadership and job performance.
Improved Employee Engagement
Companies that undergo successful organisational transformation experience a 30% increase in employee engagement. Engaged employees are more productive, less likely to leave, and contribute to a positive workplace culture.
Reference: McKinsey & Company, "The People Power of Transformations" (2018)
Financial
Organisations that successfully implement transformation initiatives see an average 25% improvement in their financial performance, including revenue growth and profitability.
Reference: BCG, "The Role of Leadership in Transformation" (2020)
Return on Investment (ROI)
Transformation projects with effective change management practices are six times more likely to meet their objectives and achieve a 143% return on investment (ROI).
Reference: Prosci, "Best Practices in Change Management" (2019)
Reduced Time to Market
Organisations that undergo successful digital transformation reduce their time to market by 20-50%, allowing them to bring products and services to customers faster and stay competitive in rapidly changing markets.
Reference: Deloitte, "Digital Transformation: A Roadmap for Billion-Dollar Organizations" (2021)
The Process
Future Leadership proposed a two-part solution:
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- We conducted a series of interviews with incumbents and stakeholders in Retail Operations. The purpose of this qualitative research was to seek valuable input to inform expectations of role success for Retail Operations leaders and to ensure our client understood what success looked like across the states, districts, and stores. Future Leadership created a series of Success Profiles describing role purpose, critical experiences, competencies, attributes, knowledge, and skills, and performance differentiators required for success. These Profiles helped to ‘define the new standard’ of work practices to in turn support the transformation. Future Leadership then made a series of recommendations for how the Success Profiles could be applied across the employee life cycle and be used as the standard against which Retail Operations recruits, selects, develops, assesses, rewards, and appraises talent.
- We then designed a fit-for-purpose insight and diagnostic process mapped to the Success Profiles for five key roles within Retail Operations. The purpose of the insight and diagnostic process was to:
- Provide incumbents (66 participants across five roles) with the opportunity to significantly increase their self-awareness through receiving comprehensive feedback on their strengths and development opportunities against the revised success factors and role responsibilities.
- Provide the organisation with robust, objective, and independently sourced information on workforce capability (current versus future requirements) and person-job fit to support talent management initiatives.
The Future Leadership methodology comprised a customised multi-rater survey incorporating two levels of manager feedback written to align with the content of the Success Profiles and measures of verbal, numerical, and abstract reasoning. Structured, triad feedback sessions were held with Future Leadership, each participant, and their Line Manager to build Individual Development Plans, and the organisation was provided with a Group Report outlining individual and cohort-wide strengths and development opportunities.
The methodology was very well received. All participants agreed they felt supported by Future Leadership and their Line Manager during the feedback process and reported increases in self-awareness, motivation to develop, and role clarity.
The Advisory Team's Impact Across Clients Through Survey Feedback
32% Increase in Self Awareness
Individuals’ awareness of motives, values, strengths and development needs
21% Increase in Motivation
Individuals’ motivation to apply learning, insight and further develop
27% Increase in Confidence
Individuals’ confidence in their abilities and impact as a leader
30% Increase in Role Clarity
Individuals’ clarity around success factors associated with their role
The Outcome
The methodology was highly successful, with all participants reporting increased self-awareness, motivation to develop, and clarity in their roles.
The success of this project led to the continued partnership between Future Leadership and the retailer, including the design and delivery of the SPARK Leadership Development Program and similar processes for the Commercial and Business Assurance teams.
We recently partnered with Future Leadership to define and reset the success factors of operational roles within our business and to ensure we support the development and performance of key field roles in order to achieve improvements in sales, profits, and operational standards. I would highly recommend Future Leadership as subject matter experts, and I would have no hesitation in recommending them for any business looking to develop their people strategy."
"Delightful to work with you! Thanks for all your hard work & going with the flow!"
