Defining the leadership attributes for SABMiller’s managing directors

Their challenge:

In context of a strategic shift from being highly decentralised to becoming more globally integrated, the Group Head of L&D saw the opportunity to use Leadership Development as a key lever to enable this change.  

Kiddy audited SABMiller’s existing regional programmes and created a business-focused organising framework, based on the Leadership Pipeline. This leadership framework is now being used to shape the design of the businesses Leadership Development Programmes, with a key focus being the design of a programme to develop their country MDs.

Our solution:

To provide insight into the current leadership development landscape in SABMiller, we engaged regional L&D managers in a review, establishing not only the scope of the challenges, but also the appetite among the L&D community for a fresh approach.

Having gained the support of the HR Executive, we partnered with the Group Head, jointly visiting key markets and conducting around 100 interviews to identify the key shifts leaders are expected to make as they moved between levels of leadership, as well as the ways they will need to act differently in their new operating context. The result of this is the SABMiller Leadership Transitions Framework, which defines how leaders distinctively add value at their level in the organisation, and explains what people need to stop, start and continue as they transition to a new level in the organisation.