New Leadership Needed

Supporting a newly acquired business with a succession development plan to deliver business growth.

The Brief

Post-acquisition our client – the founder and current Managing Director – wanted to create a succession plan to enable him to exit his business, leaving it fit for the future.

With no immediate successor, he wanted to prepare his team to run the business without him, navigate the complexities of leading an acquired business, and if possible, find a replacement MD from within his existing team.

Our programme would develop the current leaders as an SLT, challenging and equipping them to successfully run the business, unlock their individual leadership potential enabling them to apply for the MD role if they wished, and support finding and integrating a new Managing Director into the business.

The Problem

The existing Senior Leadership Team had very limited experience of working as an
SLT, no experience of leading within an acquisition context and had been primarily
focused on day to day operational running of the business, working in technical skill
silos.

They needed to learn how to focus on growing the business, as well as run the day to day. How to successfully navigate key relationships within its new parent company to create new opportunities, and crucially how to do that together, as a Leadership Team, all within the context of losing the Entrepreneurial leader that established the whole firm.

“Lemontree worked closely with us, equipping our team with innovative ideas, empowering each member to step into their
leadership potential. Their tailored approach ensured every aspect of this work was not just relevant but impactful, delivering us a strong return on investment. If you are looking to strengthen your Leadership Team, prepare for the future and unlock its full potential, I wholeheartedly recommend speaking Lemontree.”

The Process

Working in close partnership with the MD and the Parent company, Lemontree built and delivered a tailor-made programme to:

Prepare the leadership team for the Managing Directors’ exit.
Provide the Leadership Team with a toolkit, tailored to their specific context, of core models, practical tools, and ideas to increase performance and implement immediately within the business.
Create time to get ‘under the car bonnet’ of the business and identify their strategic plan to develop its performance together.
Unlock the unique potential of each Leader, using 1:1 coaching to help them focus on transforming their leadership and management approach within their own teams, within the business, and with the wider parent organisation.
Create a pool of individual leaders who would be potential candidates, ready to take the MD role.

Key to the success of the programme was:

Creating opportunities to build greater relationships between the parent organisation and the Leadership Team.
Supporting the existing MD plan and navigate their handover of leadership responsibilities to the SLT, as he invested in their development.
Supporting and challenging each leader to see their number 1 team as the SLT, giving them the tools to quickly deliver high-performance team working.

The Results

By Module 3 of 4 it was clear that several of the Team were now ready be considered for the MD role and immediately post programme 2 Joint MDs were chosen.

6 months post-programme and the SLT reported:

The transition period had worked well with the wider team adapting quickly to new ways of working. Fears about the retention of staff were not realised.
As an SLT they now worked more strategically together.
Their team working had evolved to be more collaborative, supporting each other, and coming to better solutions for the business.
They had become aware of their potential and what was holding them back and could therefore tackle blockers together.
Each leader felt empowered and trusted and all voices were heard, leading to better performance.

Because their development programme enabled them to be more strategic in the work they tender for, they are more commercially aware, have better structures in place, and estimate that orders will be up by 50% in the next year.

Their improved leadership performance enabled the business to take advantage of opportunities provided by their parent company and they have now significantly expanded their UK geographical market.

Why Lemontree?

Bespoke Programme

Lemontree spent time understanding the challenges the business was facing and what they wanted to achieve before designing business-specific development plans. Our goal is to unlock potential in both people and businesses and that requires an approach that is tailored, responsive, adaptive, and personal.

Support

Gaining expertise requires time dedicated to trial, error, and growth. We built in 1:1 support throughout this programme to help people see their potential, support them in trialing changes to the way they worked, and held them accountable to develop their learning points.

Members of the Lemontree team were always there to support individuals between sessions and post-programme!