Developing a new leadership culture for Crowley
Case Study
The challenge
In 2020, the world shifted in response to the global pandemic. Organisations have since been forced to adapt and evolve, especially as people now work in different ways and teams are more dispersed than ever before. In parallel, the climate emergency and the energy crisis are putting pressure on businesses to dig deeper and innovate faster. Leaders cannot afford to let these issues pass them by. They must adapt to the challenges ahead and inspire their teams to deliver differently. Crowley recognised this and wanted the team at Lodestar to develop a way forward that would help their leaders to respond to new challenges and thrive in a new economic environment.
Our approach
Our associates worked alongside the people and culture team and business leaders to design a solution.
The starting point was the existing leadership framework and, of course, Crowley’s brand values: integrity, sustainability and drive. These values are integral to the culture that reflects the Crowley family internally and externally and describe how all employees at all levels and across all disciplines are expected to show up, from administrative employees to seafaring staff. There was a recognition that the significance of the role of leaders justified an additional set of expectations.
In order to understand the context, we conducted a series of semi-structured interviews and distributed a survey across the company, from which themes began to emerge.
Interviewing a representative cross section of senior executives enabled us to get their insights and inputs on what was needed. What surfaced was a clear desire for simplicity, clarity and a pragmatic solution that made sense in the real world. We discovered that the overall “ecosystem” – the means of describing processes and ways of being and working – had become crowded with several other frameworks. These had evolved to meet real business needs but resulted in “too much good stuff” and leaders not always knowing what to use for guidance, or, crucially, what they needed to do.
The next step was to look at how to simplify the ecosystem and come up with a clearer approach to leadership that would reinforce the Crowley culture and most importantly “feel like Crowley” – ie, be tailored to this organisation and its needs. The new ecosystem has 3 components (Figure 1). The values, core processes and safety principles apply to all employees. Our focus then was to design the leadership expectations that would reflect the needs of the dynamic landscape as described above and enable Crowley to deliver its strategy.
The solution
The definition of great leadership has evolved over time. Some of these definitions are well thought through, and some could be described as faddish. What we have observed is that often leaders are asked to make a shift from one way of being to another. For example, in the past, a leader might have been able to spend time being visionary and strategic, setting the long-term approach and leaving the operational side and execution to others. They would have focused on strategy OR execution, but not both. Now, leaders need to be in the big picture AND across the detail, flexing these skills where needed as highlighted by Blair Sheppard (1).
As another example, the pandemic has driven a recognition of the importance of empathetic leadership; greater knowledge of teams and team members, and how to support them. This needs to be balanced with challenge. An empathetic leader still needs to be courageous and able to have difficult conversations to maintain high standards, develop the team, provide stretch opportunities, and drive delivery. We have termed this ‘Balanced Leadership’.
Based on this concept, leader insights and feedback, a framework of leadership expectations was recommended, representing the key balances that Crowley leaders need to strike. These were:
- Collaborative AND Accountable
- Locally Savvy AND Globally Aware
- Empathetic AND Courageous
- Operationally Focused AND Strategically Driven
Each of these pairs is underpinned by a high-level descriptor and a set of indicators to help leaders understand what ‘good’ looks like for each component of the pair and what would be expected according to level. It is also important to reinforce that these expectations for all managers and leaders co-exist with the Crowley values. After all, values are for all, and these pairs are additional for those with people responsibilities. The simple language, small number of attributes and transparency on what ‘good’ looks like also enables those aspiring to become a Crowley leader to understand what is expected of them in the future and plan a development path that supports this.
Making it stick
At the outset, the Crowley team were clear that they wanted to create a red thread throughout all their people processes. To that end, new leadership expectations are being integrated into their approach to performance, selection and development. If you would like to find out more about this project and how we could help your organisation, please contact us.