Nordea and London Business School

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Nordea and London Business School: The Strategic Leadership ProgrammeDeveloping a pipeline of next-generation strategic leaders

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Executive Summary

It’s 2011 and Nordea Bank faces a number of challenges.

Digitisation, changing customer preferences and new competitors are changing the post-crisis landscape.

A new generation of strategic leaders is needed to deliver Nordea’s mission:

Together with London Business School (LBS), Nordea empowers its next-generation leaders to:

¢ Think strategically about the future and about customers

¢ Align functions and strategies to the overarching Nordea Future Relationship Bank Strategy

¢ Build trust across the whole business

The result is the Strategic Leadership Programme (SLP).

To lead the future in European relationship banking

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Executive Summary

10 cohorts

of upcoming Nordea leaders have passed through the programme. The impact on them and the bank has been immediate – and significant.

360 feedback reports great progress in:

¢ driving innovation

¢ integrative, cross-functional thinking

¢ spotting opportunities for competitive leverage

¢ acting on new concepts and insights.

87%

of all participants have acquired key strategic leadership skills and competencies.

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Nordea’s challenge: how do you develop strategic leaders?

Nordea needs a new approach to leadership training that will develop customer-centric value propositions.

Previous attempts have had a positive impact at an individual level. But the time and opportunity have come to do something that will drive change company-wide.

The bank needs a comprehensive programme

that will:

Link to strategy

Work at senior executive and

other levels

Deploy a common language and methodology

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We wanted to enter a new phase and look at the future with fresh eyes. We wanted to establish a common language and unite the functions and the countries within our business.

Henrik Priergaard-Nielsen Managing Director, Nordea

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Bringing in outside knowledge

Nordea develops a Leadership Pipeline Model that will form the basis of its new approach.

The bank decides that the time has come to bring in expertise and knowledge from outside to fulfil these strategic leadership development objectives.

The search for a learning partner begins.

Great leadership in Nordea is the ability to engage and motivate people to reach out for our vision and the ability to set the right team to make it happen

Nordea leadership statement 2011

Onboarding(individal contributor)

Passage Four

Passage Three

Passage One

Passage Two

Individual development

Virt

ual a

nd c

ross

-boa

rder

lead

er

Nordea’s Leadership Pipeline Model

Potential leader

Leading leaders

Executive leader

Leading others

STRATEGIC

LEADER

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We took a long time to choose our learning partner. We looked at competence and track record, rankings, faculty and prestige. We wanted to be sure we chose the best and LBS came out on top.

We made the right decision.

Marianne Siig Head of Leadership Development, Nordea

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Making the diagnosis. Designing the solution

Nordea partners with LBS. Together, Nordea leaders and the LBS Programme team get to work.

Through open dialogue and analysis, they:

¢ Carry out research ¢ Organise design workshops

¢ Arrange LBS campus visits

They diagnose the big issues:

¢ Nordea needs to see past complexity and reach for the bigger picture

¢ The company is better at “what” than “why”

¢ Innovation must be aligned to Nordea’s strategy

¢ Customer focus needs improving

And identify the themes and objectives:

¢ A need for an embedded model of leadership

¢ Heightened awareness of Nordea’s strategy

To develop the solution:

¢ A modular learning programme

¢ Combining on-campus learning, coaching and experiential activities

¢ A learning journey from understanding to thinking and execution

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Nordea wanted their senior leaders to think long-term, about opportunities and threats and shifting priorities, not being embedded in the day to day running of the business. At that level, you need to think about competitive advantage and what your future customers might want and need. You’ve also got to help others understand the strategy too, and inspire people to come with you. That’s strategic leadership, and that’s what SLP is about.

Tim Orme, Programme Director London Business School

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The Strategic Leadership Programme (SLP)

The SLP is a modular learning journey built on clear objectives and actionable outcomes.

Learning happens via:

Analysis of real business case studies

Open dialogue with peers and faculty

Action planning

Coaching

Role playing and change simulations

The Strategic Challenge

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Immediate impact, minimal disruption

Module 1 Inspiring Leadershp – The Heart of Leadership

¢ Reflecting on leadership style, impact on others and building the pipeline

¢ Influencing, engaging, motivating and bi-directional learning ¢ Communicating and building relationships to drive change

Module 2Strategic Thinking – The Head of Leadership

¢ Exploring the competitive landscape ¢ Communicating strategy and influencing upwards ¢ Identifying solutions that create value

Module 3Making It Happen – The Hands of Leadership

¢ Understanding change leadership ¢ Translating strategy into execution and performance ¢ Overcoming barriers ¢ Building programmes that align to strategy

Post-Programme ¢ Immediate impact ¢ Applying the learning

The programme is modular so that participants can balance commitments with professional development.

Between modules, new ideas and concepts are applied at Nordea for an immediate impact.

The application between modules is supported by group coaching.

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Coaching

“ The coach helped me to “crack the code” on why my team sees me as they do and since then the team satisfaction has increased.”

“ The coaching underlined the value of utilising peers as partners.”

“ I made several big decisions based on the coaching I received from the team.”

Participants benefit from both one-to-one coaching with an LBS Executive Coach and from peer coaching from their group.

The coaching supports them to reflect on their development needs, apply what they are learning, develop their Nordea network and develop their own coaching skills.

“ The positive effect on my team is concretely visible in the positive development of employee satisfaction.”

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Follow up

Feedback and demonstration of real-life impact

The strategic challenge

Module 1

Identify a specific challenge you face at work

Modules 2 and 3

Build the tools to diagnose, analyse and solve your challenge

Post Programme

Deploy your solution

The Strategic Challenge is designed to enable participants to apply what they learn on the programme.

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The strategic challenge

“ The outcome of my strategic challenge has been hugely positive. We have much greater focus on our customers. This means we’ve improved our income mix and return on equity, while improving our team and daily work. We’ve seen this in the recent employee satisfaction index.”

“ My strategic challenge was to investigate if a change in structure could generate capital relief. We found that it couldn’t and saved time, money and resources in pursuing a large change programme.”

“ My strategic challenge was to set up an offshoring unit supporting development services. The programme has empowered me to get business buy-in and has given me the tools to motivate leaders in my team in executing change.”

“ My individual strategic challenge has been transformed into one of the elements of the Danish retail plan for 2015 with real impact in sourcing new customers.”

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74%

are better at driving innovation79%

have a deeper understanding of other functions

78%

are better at motivating

others

87% of all programme participants have acquired strategic

leadership competencies.

74%

are better at seeing opportunities for

competitive advantage

Impact

Source: LBS Participant Survey 360 degree feedback

97 %have gained actionable

insights

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The SLP is at the top of our ecosystem and plays a crucial role. From the beginning we wanted to make sure it fit with our leadership pipeline, and it fits perfectly.

Our leaders are now speaking the same language.


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Tangible results

“ I reduced costs by 12% over a two to three-year period, while providing better service and more deliveries.”

“ I am more focused on setting clear targets and identifying the right leaders to delegate to and trust, and to hold them accountable for managerial work and results.”

“ We added acquisition sales to boost new customers’ inflow, increased focus on high-value added products and closed down commoditised businesses. That resulted in a €5 million increase in annual P&L, with 5% lower headcount and 10% lower allocated costs.”

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Nordea and LBS made a long term commitment to support our strategic leaders’ capabilities to evolve us as an organisation. We measure our success by the strength of the relationship between our learning organisation and the programme developers; the overwhelming and consistently positive feedback from our leaders; and the way in which our diverse business areas’ and functions’ support of the program has increased year-on-year.

Kasper Bas Svendsen, Head of Learning and Leadership Development, Nordea

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LBS and Nordea: a partnership for the future

Since the SLP began, Nordea has steadily changed.

For the first time in its history, the bank has:

The partnership between LBS and Nordea grows stronger with every cohort.

LBS will support Nordea in the two-year roll-out of its One Nordea and Future Relationship Bank strategies.

The SLP has become part of Nordea.

A world-class leadership training package.

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The timeline to success

2011

Jan 2012

Sept 2012

Oct – Dec 2012

Jan 2013

April 2013

June 2013

Sept 2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Initial discussions between LBS and Nordea

Request for proposal from Nordea

Internal Nordea proposal to Group Executive Management (GEM) is approved and contract signed

Diagnostic interviews and design work

Cohort 1 starts

Cohort 2 starts

Cohort 3 starts

Cohort 4 starts

Cohorts 5 and 6 start



Cohort 11 starts

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People moving up through the ranks and those coming in from outside say the same thing: the SLP is the best leadership programme they have ever attended.

This is what we wanted.


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www.london.edu/corporatelearning