Challenge
Li & Fung is the largest global end-to-end design, sourcing, manufacturing and supply chain business in the world. They are a publicly listed, fourth-generation family run enterprise that counts some of the biggest brands in design, fashion and retail as their client base.
Set to continue their expansion into Southeast Asia, the company sought to refresh their approach to talent management and their leadership structure to adapt more efficiently to an increasingly digitized ecosystem and faster speed of logistics.
Li & Fung wanted to gain:
- An objective assessment of the current leadership team.
- An understanding of the skills, experiences and behaviors required of leaders to execute their ambitious business strategy.
- A roadmap for getting to that desired future state.
Solution
YSC began by defining the leadership attributes most critical to leading the business through disruption to succeed in the future. These insights were gleaned through one-on-one interviews, industry research and analysis, and reviewing the company’s business strategy. This important step helps us contextualize the world in which the business operates, identifying what qualities should be retained and ensuring the profile of success is future-proofed.
The 14 ExCo leaders then went through YSC’s signature assessment process, including psychometrics, stakeholder interviews and a deep-dive interview to understand their distinctiveness as leaders, and how the executives mapped onto the profile of success.
The executives came away with a clear sense of their unique development priorities to enable them to drive business transformation. They were supported by YSC coaches to help them translate these insights into sustainable behavior change. Collectively, the biggest opportunities for the group included fostering greater trust and collaboration to truly capitalize on their scale – a big market differentiator for them – to ultimately strengthen their agility to align on decisions and adapt quickly to a rapidly changing environment.
To strengthen the talent pipeline and accelerate the culture shift, YSC also assessed approximately 45 additional leaders identified as critical to the business transformation, either because of the critical roles they held or their high potential to lead in the future.
YSC’s 1:1 assessments and coaching work have been a game-changer for Li & Fung. They have helped our most senior executives to see their blind spots and make sizeable shifts in how they lead their people, which has moved us towards a more agile, decisive and collaborative culture.” – Roger Young, Chief HR Officer, Li & Fung
Impact
Through partnering with us, the Li & Fung executive team started to break down silos and collaborate more, as well as fostering and rewarding a one-team culture more consistently. This was achieved through individual coaching with their YSC assessor.
Through implementing YSC’s validated JDI™ Model of Leadership Potential, Li & Fung incorporated more data, rigor and objectivity to their hiring and promotion decisions, helping them to take a bet on the people who have the greatest chances of future success— particularly important at a time when speed is critical to their business performance. This is an area many of YSC’s clients in Asia are directing their attention to, given the continued increase in demand for tech talent across the region.
To drive increased digitization and a faster supply chain, Li & Fung made bold, strategic external appointments to their C-suite to drive their desired outcomes. YSC provided strategic insights into the leadership profiles required to fulfill these roles within the evolving leadership structure.
With YSC’s strategic approach, Li & Fung gained insight into what their leadership strategy and structure needed to look like in order to meet the changing demands of their customers, balancing the company’s heritage with the need for speed, innovation and digitization. Recalibrating their approach to leadership strategy enabled Li & Fung to build the bench strength they need and enable the company to mobilize for future growth.
Find out more about Executive Assessments with YSC...
A business strategy is only as good as the leaders that can bring it to life. In today’s environment of disruption and change, it is increasingly difficult to fully understand and identify the capabilities needed for individuals to be successful in business-critical roles. As roles become more complex, looking at past performance to predict fit for future leadership roles does not suffice.
