skip to content

Case studies

'Not all of the assessments were positive assessments - in my view, that has added to the credibility of the exercise. The face validity of the process was very high.'

Avery Duff, International HR Director, Rolls-Royce

Rolls-Royce
Identifying the successors to Managing Director roles globally

Summary

An assessment approach to best identify the successors to their 37 Managing Director roles globally

Client Need

Rolls-Royce wanted to validate the leaders on the succession list for their 37 Managing Director roles across their global business.

Our Approach

We were asked by the Global Talent team to design an approach that would not only best identify the successors but also fit within their culture. We began by tailoring the Rolls-Royce High Potential Indicators for use within an assessment process and  linking them to our benchmarked competency set and assessment exercises. We designed an additional exercise for our senior business simulation to fit with the future demands likely to be faced in the MD role. Each person on the succession plan had a full day assessment comprising:

  • In-depth interview focusing on current role and major achievements over the last three to five years;
  • Business simulation (over 4.5 hours) covering a strategic review of a global business, meeting with a country manager to discuss an investment opportunity and a meeting with global heads of function to work on an M&A opportunity;
  • Personality questionnaire (administered online before the assessment and used to formulate hypotheses to test in the interview) and an advanced verbal reasoning test (numerical ability was tested through the business simulation).

We took leaders from around the business units, from different geographies, eg US, UK, Hong Kong, and from different types of business eg manufacturing, R&D, JVs through the assessment process. Each participant received an in-depth report, detailed feedback on a 1 to 1 level, followed by development planning involving their line manager and HRBP

Results

Following a successful pilot we spent the next 18 months assessing the senior managers on Rolls-Royce’s global MD succession plans.

The business has been able to improve the succession plan itself and succession moves have become more managed – senior people are being developed well ahead of moves into MD roles and offered the right support once they do make those moves. The business has been able to uncover some ‘hidden’ talent and move those individuals more quickly through the organisation into business critical roles.

Print page