Forging Tomorrow’s CEOs: Building a Leadership Pipeline
THE CHALLENGE
The company has a proven track record of incubating tech start-ups and transforming them into independent businesses. But as these ventures grew, a new challenge emerged: a shortage of top leaders ready to step into the CEO role. The incubator excelled at launching companies but struggled to grow its own future CEOs.
What we did
Acumen helped the client to develop a coaching program tailored specifically for future CEOs. We:
- Identifying six critical CEO skills: proximity to the problem (deep customer insight), commercial acumen, investor and stakeholder management, energizing people and teams, self-mastery, and resilience with learning agility
- Assessing high-potential leaders through a rigorous process to pinpoint strengths and areas for growth
- Matching each leader with a coach—both local and international—to accelerate their development and close competency gaps
Impact
Coaching was widely praised for its practical value and relevance, with post-coaching evaluations showing measurable improvement in key competencies, as rated by both supervisors and the leaders themselves. By investing in a structured competency model and targeted coaching, the company is now equipped to grow its own future CEOs—ensuring that every new venture has the leadership it needs to succeed.
