How Project One helped Elgin boost its leadership capability development

When solar firm Elgin determined it needed help preparing its leadership structures for scaling, it tapped Project One for help. Estelle Eades, a consultant director from the firm, has explained how it helped to create a more cohesive leadership culture, and help prepare Elgin for future growth.

Elgin is a family-founded UK solar and storage platform with offices in Dublin, London, Sydney and Germany. The firm has ambitions to be the leading solar energy company in Europe – something which has led to a rapid expansion in terms of headcount. The firm had a team of 14 people 18 months ago, but has 85 full-time employees in 2024, with ambitions to grow to pass 250 in the next two years.

This presents a clear set of challenges for Elgin, as it requires significant change across the organisational structure; including the roles, operational processes and skills it needs. It is also bringing significant change to the role of leaders – and effective leadership will be critical to achieving the plans. For example, the C-suite worked effectively across their own layer, but moving forwards, there will be a need for greater collaboration and integration across the broader leadership team, facilitating the flow of information both up and down through the organisation to support effective leadership of the growing teams, risk management and decision-making.

In addition, Elgin was in the process of sourcing private equity funding to support the growth trajectory, which in itself brought additional challenges and additional emphasis on the need for well evidenced governance and risk management. This made getting its leadership formula right even more important. At this point, it brought Project One on board to understand the capability and expertise required to drive growth, while addressing how to improve its leadership structure and succession.

Getting started

Writing about the work via Project One’s website, Consulting Director Estelle Eades said the firm first started to work focusing on “what was needed today”. Hosting a series of workshops, bringing the leadership team together to develop a shared understanding of the vision and the valuable role each will play in achieving it, the consultants helped establish “the foundation for growth by helping the leadership to enhance their capability”.

She continued, “The second phase was focused on what will be needed for tomorrow – delivering a succession plan, leadership and talent programmes, to make sure the next generation of leaders are set up for success in running the larger and more complex business in the future. Firstly, we identified the roles in scope for succession planning – and the list of high performing individuals to be matched against those roles.”

Project One then designed a 360-survey tailored around the specific future competencies for Elgin – and for the top 30 individuals completed both this and a leadership personality profiling assessment.  The data for each individual was then used in a two-hour private session with an occupational psychologist, who worked with them to identify their strengths, development areas, motivations and aspirations. This also provided a wealth of both quantitative and qualitative data for identifying the ‘high potential’ successors for C-suite and leadership roles to determine immediate successors as well as the ‘high potentials’ for the future. The individuals now have great insight and a foundation to develop themselves going forwards – with the support of their managers.

“The third phase would then be about how to achieve the vision and deliver the goals,” Eades noted. “Building out the future state target operating model (TOM) to support clean and efficient growth and to build the roadmap for how to get there. Project One developed a Governance Framework as an early priority in delivery of the TOM, to support the effective decision making and flow of communications. This has included the overall framework tailored to Elgin and its operations, a TOR for each forum, RACI and key roles, timetable by month and year, templates for the inputs for each forum, delegated authorities, and associated rules of engagement.”

The change management approach was key to delivering the cultural and behavioural shift away from decision-making by a small number of C-suite in isolation to strict adherence to decision-making ‘in the room’ under a governance framework.  The aim has been to ‘take people on the journey’ with two stages of ‘test and learn’ to test the inputs and then to complete ‘dry run’ sessions prior to the new investor coming in – with learning sessions and adjustments after each session.  There is also a broader engagement plan and key messages across the business.

Eades added, “The main challenges were first, achieving exactly the right balance of maturity for Elgin and making sure everything was tailored to them to provide the foundation for growth without overengineering anything and second, people’s engagement and time when they were already busy delivering operational work, large deals with clients and growing their teams iii) driving behavioural changes through effective engagement and change management. What made this unique was the scale of the ambition and the depth of talent and energy in this remarkable team for delivering something so fundamentally important for the future of our planet.”

Outcome

The workshop outcomes clarified each teams’ role and contribution, helping to develop “a compelling narrative for each functional leader to share across the business”. At the same time, having the time to work together and build trust in a safe space encouraged the leadership to “show vulnerability… helping to strengthen the team and their appreciation for the different perspectives and styles around the table”.

As well as providing ways to build a more cohesive team in this way, the work has also led to succession plans and contingency plans being put in place – “mitigating a key risk for the business and supporting retention and motivation of key high potential future leaders”. At an organisation level, it has provided the data needed to underpin the delivery of really tailored and focused leadership and succession development programmes to be used to help those people achieve their potential within Elgin.

Eades expanded, “The introduction of a Governance Framework has provided the foundation for improved decision making, effectively using the collective intellectual capital and experience of the Leadership Team and for effective delegation. The original model whereby 2-3 key leaders were making all the decisions and there was minimal if any delegated authority is no longer sustainable as the organisation grows and evolves.”

This has resulted in notable value-add, according to Eades. Elgin had previously been working with Big Four consultancies, and although the firm found them to provide broad knowledge, “their view is often based on historical industry views – which are not necessarily applicable in Elgin as a new business in an emerging industry”, Eades noted.

“Project One are different in that we embed ourselves into the organisation – taking the time to really understand the business and people”, she added. “We bring extensive breadth and depth of experience supporting the design of fully tailored and bespoke solutions, working closely as part of Elgin’s team.”

Backing this up, Ronan Kilduff, CEO of Elgin, summarised the engagement, saying, “My experience is that Project One have deeper experience than other consultancies, a team that has a wide skillset to support us to grow. They’re giving us the tools and the toolbelt to grow.”