Topics: Strategy

Implementing a new strategy for growth

The Brief

The client was a diversified publicly listed regional bank and the Group CEO wanted support discussing, designing and implementing a new strategy to enable expansion of services and geographical reach, leverage emerging technology to reach new customers, and improve operational efficiency and effectiveness.

The Engagement

Goldcrest engaged for an initial term of 12 months on a retained basis for 1 day per month, covering regular one-to-one meetings and additional behind the scenes work on specific topics at the principal’s instruction. The central themes of the work were as a thinking partner, providing specialist organisational design and key employee competency frameworks, influencing the Board and executive committee, and developing the mindsets and skills necessary throughout the organisation to execute successfully.

The engagement inspired many related development activities including executive coaching for key contributors, leadership and team workshops, communication training, and an updated performance measurement system to monitor and motivate employees.

The Outcome

The engagement was a great success. Once clarity of purpose and strategy was achieved, the detailed and lengthy process of putting it into practice was undertaken. Throughout the CEO reported feeling more confident in decisions and actions, stepping more fully into the authority that comes with the role.

Develop a more effective executive committee

The Brief

The client was the CEO of a regional bank. They were looking for independent leadership support and advice.  Initially the focus was around issues relating to their team and some particular people challenges alongside some personal development areas around communication and confidence in professional authority.

The Engagement

The initial engagement was for a 12-month term, on a retained basis for ½ day per month. The engagement was primarily online due to location, with periodic in-person meetings. Over time, the scope of the work grew from team and leadership topics into matters of strategy and engagement. 

In addition, we started to work with the wider team in a facilitation capacity, and given we were in different countries, planned regular in-person gatherings where we could make the most of being in-person.

The Outcome

The client found the relationship to be of significant value. They have successfully resolved their team issues, stepped more fully into the authority of their role and are operating at a more strategic level in the business.

Getting the partners on the same page

The Brief

The client was a boutique regulated entity providing accounting and corporate finance services to public and private finance sector clients. The firm had a good reputation, high quality client list and had demonstrated strong growth but the partners were so busy ‘working in’ the business they had not taken a step back, evaluated the strategic objectives and aligned around them.

The Engagement

We began by conducting a round of exploratory interviews with the partners to deeply understand their personal and professional motivations and ambitions to inform next steps. We followed on with 4 half-day in-person strategy meetings to progress thinking and align the team around common goals. The backbone of the delivery was the Goldcrest Strategy Pyramid, which served as a framework to clarify the organisational purpose, create a new group strategy, and identify the key areas of focus to make this a reality. This work was integrated with activities to develop the necessary leadership, culture and teamwork to successfully land it in the business.

The Outcome

The outcome was precious time away from the day-to-day to consider the big questions. Clarity on where interests aligned and diverged, what culture would enable success and what leadership behaviours were necessary to achieve this was gained, along with the motivation to put it into practice.

Reimagining the future of a regional bank

The Brief

The client was a diversified publicly listed regional bank with retail, corporate and capital market divisions that was reimagining group strategy to accelerate growth and increase impact for key stakeholders. The existing strategy had been successfully executed but was focused on traditional activities in the local market. The mandate for the new strategy was to enable expansion of services and geographical reach, leverage emerging technology to reach new customers, and improve operational efficiency and effectiveness.

The Engagement

We began by conducting a round of exploratory interviews with members of the senior leadership team to deeply understand the context, what was working, and where change was needed, This insight was used to craft the agenda for a 4-day in-person offsite. The backbone of the delivery was the Goldcrest Strategy Pyramid, which served as a framework to clarify the organisational purpose, create a new group strategy, and identify the key areas of focus to make this a reality. This work was integrated with activities to develop the necessary leadership, culture and teamwork to successfully land it in the business.

The Outcome

The outcome was alignment in purpose and understanding amongst the senior leadership team, and a clear action plan to accomplish these goals. The new strategy was subsequently approved by the Board and embedded in the organisation with additional coaching, organisational design and communication/team workshops to support the changes required to reach the reimagined future.

Refreshing strategy and leadership for the next chapter

The Brief

The client was a privately owned asset manager that was looking to build on historic success with a strategic shift in the face of a changing commercial environment. The organisation was new to working with an external specialist in this way and were cautious about the investment and the benefits. Despite this reticence, continued business success required a fresh approach and that was demonstrated by the executive committee’s willingness to try something different.

The Engagement

The engagement was to design a process to build the trust that would allow the executive committee to discuss the issues that mattered while spending time together, away from the office and the usual Boardroom dynamic. We started with a round of one-to-one interviews that built rapport, enabled the key strategic issues to be surfaced and the crafting of a meaningful agenda for a 2-day offsite.

The offsite was facilitated by 2 Goldcrest consultants who steered the strategic discussion, connected the conversation to the leadership behaviours needed to underpin success, and galvanised the team around their collective purpose. We followed the event with a pair of follow up sessions to track progress, embed
learnings and maintain momentum.

The Outcome

The initial scepticism, quickly transformed into enthusiasm. This allowed a refreshed purpose, vision and strategy considering a fast-changing macro environment, and a more connected team that was able to model the leadership and teamwork required for success.

Senior executive coaching for a COO with a broadening remit

The Brief

The client was a COO at a US-based high-growth asset manager whose scope of responsibilities expanded from the US to Global functions at a time of significant technological, operational and organisational change. The mandate was to turn around the underperforming non-US functions that were critical to organisational success.

The Engagement

A Goldcrest coach with considerable experience working in the asset management industry engaged with the client for an initial 12-month term to support the individual with the challenges that came from the change in role. A series of 1:1 meetings gave the client the opportunity to talk things through, evaluate options and plan decisive actions to resolve a variety of issues. These included managing up, communicating with a globally dispersed team, elevating the competency of direct reports, changing the organisational design and having difficult conversations in an environment of resource constraint and some friction with adjacent functions.

The Outcome

The client reported that they valued the objective perspective brought to the conversations and the measurable outcomes achieved in the business. The engagement was extended for another 12-months to continue the benefit, both personally and professionally.

Is your business strategy fit for the future?

In this rapidly changing world, for any business to thrive, a forward-looking and dynamic strategy is essential. Asset managers are not immune from this reality. Indeed, the pressures on the financial industry are moving at such a pace that a reluctance to strategise and evolve could mean losing ground to more nimble competitors.

In his seminal work, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There How Successful People Become Even More Successful, the US-based coach Marshall Goldsmith examines the notion that over the course of a career, or a business, reinvention is paramount, because what’s asked of you changes. This applies equally to asset managers: business models which may have reaped profits over the past 30 years might not be quite such a winning strategy now.

Many traditional business models were built for comfort, not speed. While profits remained high, why worry about what was around the corner? But the fates of Kodak and Blockbuster are a salutary reminder of what can happen when we fail to respond to the shifting technological trends and customer preferences. As a result, those business behemoths disappeared from consumer consciousness in a bafflingly short amount of time. Clearly their strategy was lacking.

Appetite for apps

At Goldcrest Partners, we believe that there are three main issues for asset managers. In a commercial sense, there’s a permanent change to how much you can charge for your services and what costs you bear which results in shrinking margins. From the customer perspective, a new generation of client is increasingly more intentional, holistic and altruistic about what they want to invest in, with environmental, sustainable and ethical concerns foremost. And there’s the digital revolution, which has transformed how people want to buy and engage, using high-quality technical solutions which give them play-by-play information at their fingertips via sophisticated apps and data platforms.

Put like that, the situation seems daunting, but with guidance this can be an exhilarating time for an executive team to embrace a period of transformation. This is where effective strategic advisory can help facilitate change from within.

End-to-end solution

From initial enquiry to implementation, Goldcrest Partners works with you to help you identify your strategy, and then execute it. For a strategy to succeed – and let’s be transparent, many don’t – it needs to be focused on the right goal, easy to articulate and simple to understand. The inevitable obstacles need to be predicted and the motivation to overcome them mustered.

Through a tailored programme, we work side-by-side with your key decision makers, offering honest and incisive counsel as your team considers the way forward. Thanks to our many years of experience in financial services, we understand your context and the issues your business faces which we combine with coaching and facilitation expertise to enable you to arrive at good outcomes.

Something has to give

There’s a reason we find strategy difficult – it is! But with candour and clarity comes the recognition that something has to give. Our goal is to enable you to design and deliver a strategy which can be distilled and communicated to the organisation in a way that encourages them to unite behind it.

Propelled by a renewed sense of purpose and clear vision, the strategy can then translate into results, an ability to adapt to changing market conditions, and the business can take that crucial step into a bright future.