Assessing the leadership capability for a leading scandinavian retailer

The client

Based in Sweden, ICA is a leading retailer with businesses in Scandinavia and the Baltics, each at a different stage of maturity. Historically, even for very senior positions, the business had made appointments mainly on the basis of technical competence for the job. Having embarked on a more focused and performance oriented strategy and having made corresponding changes in structure, the business wished to place a greater emphasis on leadership capabilities in populating the top teams for each business unit.

Edgecumbe’s contribution

With support from Edgecumbe, the company has adopted and integrated a leadership model which they have used to assess and develop the leadership capability of each top team. Existing leadership team members have been assessed, new appointments and redeployments made and key development themes identified as part of a strategic focus on developing better balanced leadership teams across the business.

The outcome

Work is currently taking place to embed the model in related management and HR processes and build a shared understanding of leadership among the thousands of leaders across the business. This has been a major integrated programme with far reaching impact on how the company operates.