Welcome to another edition of Potential. The new financial year brings some exciting news for us in the shape of a merger with a well established leadership, team and talent development company—Agility Consulting Group.

With Andrew Williams and his team we have found a great alignment by way of talent, energy and core values. The merger brings many benefits to Talent Solutions and to our clients. Foremost amongst these is the enhanced capability by way of the experience and track record Andrew and his team brings to our company. Andrew is a well known practitioner in the field of leadership and team development and is in regular demand by some of Australia’s top companies. He has a reputation for thought leadership in this area and the ability to facilitate a shift in thinking when it comes to creating a unique leadership brand that resonates within organisations.

This merger also affords us access to the Lominger suite of leadership and talent management tools. Andrew is a Lominger Associate and is highly sought after by organisations seeking to implement these world class solutions. Talent Solutions will now be able to offer you access to Lominger and with this the results that come with implementing well established research based solutions.

Finally, the merger also extends our national presence with a Melbourne based Director and a permanent presence in Brisbane. This now means that we have full coverage across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. All of this adds up to additional expertise, flexibility and access to a range of innovative leadership, team and talent solutions when and where you need them.

Whilst we have been focused on building our own capability, many of our clients have been doing the same with the vast majority addressing this against the backdrop of budget cuts and tightening market conditions. During the last quarter we have been engaged by an increasing number of government organisations in various stages of transition. Two of these are high profile NSW government entities currently dealing with major infrastructure challenges. We have been working with various executives as they face the challenges of getting the best-fit team members on-board and aligned in an uncertain future. A common approach in these situations has been a combination of talent identification and executive coaching both with individual executives and various team members as they work towards enhancing team performance.

Executive coaching and targeted talent identification and development has been the mainstay of leadership solutions in the previous quarter as organisations target their budgets more narrowly at higher leverage solutions. This usually involves a focus on assessing and developing current and emerging leaders. We are seeing less of a focus on front-line leaders and an increasing interest in graduate and executive level solutions. Our ongoing work with one of the four major banks involves a 12 month solution where we have worked closely with the bank on developing their graduate talent over a series of four one-day workshops and an Emotional Intelligence 360-degree survey and one-to-one debrief. This is beginning to deliver dividends as we notice the graduates adopt new insights and behaviours at the six-month mark.

In addition, we have just commenced a three month assignment with a global bank to help prepare their new Head of Operations for taking on this business critical role. This solution involves a combination of change management and executive coaching as we work to establish a three-month plan to assess the current state of the division and work through a practical implementation plan that will address critical people and structural issues. This is an excellent example of ‘growing your own’ as the bank undertook an extensive internal review to identify emerging leaders. This solution provides not only the development solution for this individual but will also deliver a business critical improvement in back office delivery.

As we work to build a better company through the Agility Consulting Group merger we are confident in delivering a greater offering in the areas of leadership, teams and talent. These are exciting times for our company and we look forward to delivering an enhanced level of capability and sharing our achievements through this newsletter in the coming months.

Michael Collins
Managing Director