The private sector spends billions of dollars to develop skilled leaders because they know the significant return on investment is powerful. In the development space, cultivating leadership is even more vital: leaders operate in environments where resources are scarce, stakeholder complexity is high, goals are multi-dimensional, impact is hard to define and incentives are often misaligned. However, social sector spending on leadership development remains extremely low – 75 percent less than the private sector.

At SDA, we believe investment into leaders can be a force multiplier. With solutions that are integrated, strategy-linked, results-driven, and engaging, it is possible to create powerful teams, promote collaboration, improve talent pools, and enable high performance.

• • Assess and develop high potential and senior leaders. We work to understand organizational aspirations and strategy, translate this into demands on leaders, and assess if the existing talent pool is “fit-for-future.” Based on in depth interviews, and 360 verbal referencing and benchmarking, we create a roadmap to develop high-potential senior leaders, feed into succession planning, and shift top team behaviors.

  • Manage the talent cycle – from manpower planning, culture, organization design and talent governance. We design and implement systems to develop talent through training, incentive schemes, and recruitment. We design workshops and regular evaluations to ensure leaders are steadily improving in line with client needs.

  • Change leadership and change management. We create customized trainings and assessments to help leaders respond quickly and effectively to rapid changes, such as the need for external partnership and sudden fluctuations in funding.

  • Knowledge management and learning organizations. We develop systems and processes to harvest and organize knowledge and inform decision-making through double-loop learning. We help our clients become learning organizations that are able to identify, harvest, store, and reuse knowledge effectively.