CASE 4

Case 1 l Case 2 l Case 3

Problem: How to help middle managers manage better in an environment of change.
In today’s business environment, customers expect more for less and demand excellence. Competition is intense, and marketplace change is constant.

A national financial services institution’s middle managers and supervisors needed to equip themselves better to thrive within this changing environment. They needed new middle-management development training programs to support and encourage their efforts to maintain and expand market share. Upper management believed this was critical for enabling them to be leaders, today and tomorrow.

Solution: Competency-based methodology, research, and results.
Skarrow Associates worked in-house with staff to identify five key middle management competencies-vision, administration, leadership, interpersonal relations, and technical expertise. Then it analyzed how well middle managers and supervisors performed those competencies. Skarrow staff also researched leadership programs offered by three client companies who excelled in leadership training to stimulate well-informed discussion on the company’s own needs in this area.

The results of this extensive work were middle management and supervisory training programs in which every part was tailored to the company's specific needs. Among other things, the programs offered new team development skills as well as skills for prioritizing resources, setting performance objectives, and enabling managerial decisions to be made at lower levels of the corporate ladder.

Ultimately, more than 500 middle managers and supervisors across three executive levels will benefit from this program.