"We knew that by implementing a process to identify potential leaders in a consistent fashion would greatly enhance our succession planning efforts. We are a growing company in a very dynamic industry…we need to make sure we have the right people in the right place and trained the right way for our customers. This is especially true for anyone with the great responsibility for leading people. We connected with OA based on their experience helping companies implement leadership development programs. They have a solid methodology for identifying leadership competencies, defining them, and helping organizations integrate them into their succession planning process. They started by meeting with our management team and high potential employees. Using the information they collected, they were able to develop a chart that states our competencies and describes what they mean, both at the staff level and manager level. Then they helped us implement this by assessing our current staff so we could identify opportunities for leadership development and become more focused on helping those who are struggling. Now that we have a solid understanding of what our employees’ strengths and opportunities are, we can develop and implement targeted training and development activities focused on reinforcing where they are strong and helping them where they have challenges. This approach ensures our people are getting the help that benefits them in their career and that our resources are devoted to activities that have a direct link to what we want to achieve. Not only will this work help with our succession planning and employee development work, it will help with our recruitment, performance management, and coaching efforts. OA’s work has given us a roadmap to help us make our managers even better."