PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & SUCCESSION PLANNING

Following the worldwide impact of the 2009 global financial crisis, economists are forecasting that the next stage of the economic cycle will see a gradual recovery for many large private and public corporations. Nonetheless, recovery will bring significant challenges particularly for those in the resources, engineering and utilities industries. Our research conducted over the last eighteen months across leading private and public enterprises highlights two major concerns that C-Level executives should be actively considering, specifically:

• The looming skills shortage facing organizations at all levels of operation, particularly senior management; and
• The effective execution of strategic initiatives in an ever more complex business and regulatory environment.

Reputable economists are claiming that we may well experience a two-track economy in this next stage. Serious skills shortages are already evident in all engineering and technical areas of the economy. In Australia, executives point to several factors potentially challenging their control over their business in the coming years, namely:

• The resurgence of the resource and mining boom in the WA and QLD and its potential to siphon-off key engineering and technical staff;
• The massive engineering and management expertise required to build the National Broadband Network;
• The significant engineering and management expertise required to re-engineer existing 3G network infrastructure to support 4G services further amplified by the upcoming radio spectrum digital dividend;
• The imminent carbon tax legislation which will lead to a boom in new sustainability type positions in most of the Top 100 corporations in Australia, draining the existing talent pool in the renewable and public sectors; and
• Reconstruction efforts in NSW, Queensland and Victoria following a series of natural disasters.

Given this unique set of market conditions, C-Level executives acknowledge that they may be lacking effective easy-to-use management tools that enable them to:

• Assess their organization's ability execute and back up key strategies (Do we have requisite strength in strategic areas?);
• Model organizational and human resource options for each strategy (What is the best way to deploy and manage our expertise to achieve our objectives?); and
• Identify risk areas (e.g. technical failure) for execution for close monitoring by executives.

Since 2006, Galbraith & Co. have worked with a number of utility companies and renewable energy agencies to develop succession and internal development plans as insurance against extremely challenging market conditions. These engagements highlighted to us the need for a simple, cost effective program designed specifically for Australian businesses that would allow C-Level executives to rapidly identify expertise gaps in the organisations and to optimally structure their organisation to best address their particular market threats and opportunities.

Accordingly, we have taken our more than two decades experience in organisational reform and developed the ExpertINSIGHT program. The program has been specifically developed to fill the gap between high level business strategy and operational and divisional plans and traditional capability assessment.

Our client base includes major corporations and government departments who are demanding a new level of management planning and control over their key resource, People.

THE ExpertINSIGHT PROGRAM

Many organizations have discovered - either the hard way or too late - that expert wisdom is a key corporate asset.

The ExpertINSIGHT program effectively and efficiently captures key strategy and resource metrics from your business, analyses this data using advanced mathematical modelling techniques and graphically represents the expertise that you already posses or that you will require to address your strategic imperatives both today and into an ever evolving future.

The mapping tool allows C-Level Executives to readily identify in an instant your strengths, your weaknesses and your vulnerabilities in relevant expertise. You then have a clear picture of your priorities for succession planning and capability development necessary to deliver your strategy in both a timely and an effective manner. To achieve these outcomes, our specialist team work with closely with you for a short, intense period on your strategic visions for knowledge and expertise. We create an expertise scale for your industry and for your company and develop a custom survey for key management and staff. The data collected from the survey is then fed into our advanced mathematical model to produce expertise maps for that particular part of your organisation for which the survey was conducted.

The program allows you to order expertise maps for any part of the organization or at any the level of detail that you require. Managers receive a team map which is then used for individual succession planning and capability development. We also provide a Final Report that includes a Strategic Expertise Plan on how you can grow and maintain relevant expertise most cost effectively.

The program can be conducted as a once-off exercise for a particular area of your business that is particularly troublesome or can be instituted as an on-going program to assist your organisation to continually evolve its expertise. The first phase of the ExpertINSIGHT program provides a firm knowledge base. Should the latter option be selected then maps are updated and maintained as management and staff upgrades their expertise or join or leave the organization.

Please contact us if you would like an obligation free ExpertINSIGHT assessment or would like to speak with our specialists.