Global Financial Services Firm: Transforming Amidst Volatility

Following the Global Financial Crisis, the financial services sector was challenged to rethink what they did and how they did it, fast. Imagine not only addressing the issues that surfaced during the crisis but also implementing transformational strategy, and an aggressive growth agenda while ensuring your people remain fully engaged and motivated. This was the situation for one global financial institution that partnered with Duke Corporate Education (Duke CE) to create a program to enable its top 300 leaders to deliver on their transformational strategy and growth agenda through developing well-rounded leadership capabilities, with a focus on people leadership and collaboration and influencing in a global, networked environment.

The programme took place in multiple global cities and involved executives from global locations while integrating a number of interesting experiences. Leaders were immersed in a courtroom where they had the opportunity to take part in a robust and thoughtful debate about specific issues, ideas and evidence in the context of their business. It provided these senior leaders an opportunity to critically analyze all sides of the issues and foster debate of ideas in a ‘safe’ environment.

Exploring the need to optimize working within a matrixed environment and to effectively lead in a highly networked world had significant implications for this client’s transformational strategy and growth agenda. The inclusion of a multi-part, customized case study was part of this learning solution and became the playing field for these leaders to work with new knowledge and skills. Leaders now more fully embrace and support the strategy and understand their role in executing it and realizing its benefits. They feel better prepared to translate it into their own accountable vision for their stakeholders and are involving their teams in the creation of a shared vision while recognizing how their respective areas fit into the broader organizational picture.