3X Growth is a team effort
Phase 1: How our High Potential Leadership Development Framework helped the next line of leaders step up
The Hidden Cost of One-Person Control
We walked into our first meeting at one of India’s pioneers in aluminium composite panels in Kolkata, expecting a conversation about leadership team capabilities.
The MD had aggressive growth plans – 3x revenue by 2030. He wanted to assess if his leadership team could get him there. Because he knew that 3x growth was not a one-man mission. The whole team had to pull together to make that happen.
Yet, the ground reality was that he found himself involved in all decisions from hiring to approvals to fire-fighting.
“Every decision, every escalation, it all comes to me.” he said
This line encapsulated the entire problem.
The MD had become the banyan tree of the company; sheltering, supporting, and shading everything, but also making it impossible for new growth to flourish beneath. Every decision, big or small, landed on his desk. The cost wasn’t just his time, it was organisational inertia.
It was clear that this was not the time for cosmetic changes. 3x growth would only come when they overhauled their leadership structure, redefined the KRAs and leadership competencies, and carved out a clear succession plan.
We could see that when all decisions had to go through his desk, the MD had become a bottleneck.
Assess Today, Architect tomorrow
We began with a blank slate, not names and designations. First, we defined what the business needed, not today, but 5 years from now.
We started by asking the MD a few simple but game-changing questions:
What does success really look like for your leaders?
What’s essential, and what’s just nice to have?
To ensure our assessment was both rigorous and relevant, we followed a structured Leadership Compass framework to identify future-ready leaders and actively nurture them.
The framework is not off-the-shelf. Unlike most behavioural interviews that operate in isolation, this framework is deeply contextual, rooted in background data and tailored to reflect the company’s real challenges, not generic checklists. It digs deep and goes beyond surface level – it assesses not just where people had been, but how they perform when it matters.
We parked ourselves at the client’s office for 3 days of hands-on and immersive assessment centre.
- We designed role plays:
Unlike traditional formats where two participants engage with each other, our assessors played the counterpart roles themselves, live at the Kolkata office.
This enabled a deeper, more calibrated evaluation of what the leader said and how they said it, what they prioritised and where they hesitated.
- We administered strategic case studies:
In one instance, recognising that a senior sales leader was naturally more introverted, we shared the case study ahead of time.
This wasn’t about levelling the playing field, it was about respecting different leadership styles and assessing each individual at their peak.
By giving him time to absorb the data and structure his response, we created space for depth over speed.
This approach helped us differentiate between true capability and surface-level confidence, a critical distinction in leadership hiring.
- We conducted behavioural event interviews:
We wanted to dig beneath titles and talk tracks and understand how leaders have actually behaved in real situations.
These were one-on-one interviews between the assessor and each participant, structured around pre-selected behavioural competencies critical to the company’s future.
We didn’t ask theoretical questions.
Our assessors actively probed to validate demonstrated behaviours: what the leader might do and what they actually did in the past. We unpacked not just what happened, but why they chose that approach and what they learned.
In these conversations, truth lived in the details. We stayed quiet, and let the stories speak.
Across the room, patterns began to emerge: who took ownership instinctively, who sidestepped conflict, who delegated well, and who still clung to control. Tt all came through, in their own words.
And that’s what made the BEIs not just informative, but revealing.
With every data point we collected, we were answering one question for ourselves first: Who’s ready to take the wheel, and who still needs the map?
We knew careers and the future of the company rested on our judgement. A responsibility we don’t take lightly.
Peeling back layers to find the core
Only one leader out of the eight assessed had the complete readiness to shoulder the MD’s strategic role.
What made him stand out?
He could think ahead, drive outcomes, and balance decision-making with structured delegation. In short, he wasn’t just good at his job. He could lead without needing to be in control of everything.
Others brought valuable strengths too: some had people connect, some had agility, and others brought depth of functional knowledge.
But the gaps were also real.
A lack of urgency, low strategic focus, or underdeveloped skills.
We also conducted manager interviews to gather on-ground feedback about each participant.
The goal was to validate what we observed in the assessments against real-world performance. In over 80% of the cases, feedback from managers aligned closely with our assessment outcomes, a strong indicator that the tools and methods we used reflected actual leadership behaviours, not just test performance.
This added to confidence in the development plans we created for each individual.
Clarity to Capability
We gave the MD more than just successors. We gave him the confidence to let go, because he now had a ranking of leaders he could hand the baton to.
Two leaders are now on focused coaching and development tracks.
One shows strong cross-functional experience and a flair for strategic thinking but struggles with follow-through and accountability. He is being coached on execution and ownership.
The second has the right mindset and leadership behaviours in place but needs mentoring to sharpen his functional expertise.
Growth at this level isn’t just about potential. Tt’s about closing the gap between promise and performance.
Phase 2: How our Organisation Design recommendation recast the future
While these leadership assessments were underway, another set of talent architects were working on organisational design.
To maintain complete objectivity, we created firewalls between both talent architects.
There was initial pressure to fit people into roles based on the existing structure, but we pushed back.
Organisation design does not work if it back-fits people, it works when it supports business needs.
Even the MD underwent a Hogan assessment, giving us clarity on where his own leadership style sits in relation to the future structure.
Once we had addressed the leadership bottleneck, we turned to the deeper issue: the organisational structure itself.
It wasn’t broken. It was just… crowded.
Like a busy traffic junction, everyone was honking, swerving, reacting—but progress was slow. People were everywhere, roles were overlapping, and too many functions ran on instinct, not intention.
Connecting the dots
We saw three systemic issues.
- Roles were created to solve problems, not achieve outcomes.
- KPIs were murky. Execution often duplicated across departments.
- There were strategic blind spots. Which led to no dedicated focus on critical levers like exports, product innovation, or digital transformation.
One hand on every lever
We created a fresh organisation design from scratch, grounded in business needs, not existing personnel.
We benchmarked against 4 peers
We proposed two phased structures:
Interim Structure – Clearing the Clutter, Creating Focus
The problem was clear: There was no clarity on ownership – roles were overlapping, decision-making was scattered, and too many functions reported directly to the MD. 🡪 to tackle this, we introduced industry-standard titles like CFO and CHRO to bring clarity and accountability to core functions.
There were also major blind spots in innovation, exports, R&D, and tech transformation which were critical levers for 3x growth. 🡪 So we added dedicated leadership roles for each of these to ensure these high-impact areas got the attention and direction they needed.
We also created a Chief Growth Officer role, because without someone solely focused on revenue levers and long-term strategy, growth ambitions remained just ambitions.
The interim structure was our first step toward decentralising decision-making, aligning responsibilities, and creating leadership impact.
Final Structure – Embedding Strategy
The earlier structure was crowded and fragmented. Related functions were scattered across different portfolios, and teams lacked shared goals.
To solve this, we consolidated roles into accountable leadership pods, grouping related functions under unified leadership to drive synergy and faster execution.
We proposed to expand the Chief Growth Officer to a complete Chief Sales & Marketing Officer (CSMO) role, to break silos and align all growth-driving functions because sales, marketing, and customer experience had to work as one engine, not three disconnected gears.
We recommended setting up dedicated verticals for Digital Sales, Sales Enablement, Customer Support, and Business Development because each was a critical touchpoint in the customer journey.
These were earlier spread across functions, creating duplication and friction. The new structure gave them clear ownership and alignment.
And finally, we didn’t just stop at structure. We hardwired KPIs into every function. Metrics tied to revenue, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction ensured leaders were not just active but effective.
We anchored the organisation around the customer. Teams were aligned to focus on acquisition, retention, and satisfaction. We helped them move from operating reactively to value-driven, customer-centric growth.
The company was no longer a crowded traffic crossing where everyone honks but no one moves. They transformed into a well-managed highway, where each leader knows their lane, speed, and destination.
While this completed our engagement with a long-standing client, we know this is just day one in a long legacy that the company hopes to leave.
