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Facing a five-year target to roughly triple the business, an established automotive leadership team used the AQ® assessment to ground a two-day strategy session, and left with a shared, jointly owned plan for building the future.
Facing an aggressive five-year growth target, an established automotive business used the AQ® assessment to ground a two-day strategy-alignment session for its senior leaders, who left with a shared, jointly owned plan and, for the first time, a conversation about building the future rather than reviewing the past.
The organisation is an established automotive aftermarket and components business operating in India, and a unit within a larger industrial group. Decades of steady, incremental growth had built a stable, well-run operation, and a leadership culture more practised at reviewing past performance than designing the future. With an ambitious new growth target now on the table, that culture was the thing most in need of a shift.
The organisation's leadership had set an ambitious target: roughly tripling the business within five years, a step-change after a long history of incremental, single-digit growth. The President knew the number could not be hit top-down. Delivering it would depend on whether his senior leadership team, nine functional and business-unit heads, was aligned behind the ambition and equipped, as a team, to pursue it. He was clear-eyed about the gap. The group had the operating discipline of a mature business, but it had rarely come together to think about the future; leadership meetings reviewed the last month and the last quarter, not the next five years. Before committing the team to a strategy, the President wanted an honest read on where they stood, individually and collectively, on the capabilities a growth agenda would demand.
Left unaddressed, the risk was a familiar one: a bold target announced from the top, nodded at in the room, and quietly unmet. Without genuine alignment, the growth agenda would stay the board's plan rather than the team's, and in a competitive market, a mature business that defends its position rather than extends it tends to lose ground. The cost of inaction was not a weak plan. It was no shared ownership of one.
AQ® Certified Partner Ramesh Srinivasan of LeadFac Solutions anchored the engagement on the AQ® assessment, completed online by all nine members of the senior leadership team ahead of the session. Results were configured as a team report, so the group could read its collective adaptability profile across the AQ® dimensions rather than a stack of individual scores. To keep the focus on the team, the President's own results were deliberately held out of the aggregate, so one strong profile would not skew or shadow the group picture.
The work was delivered as a facilitated two-day session, run without slide decks. The first half-day went to self-awareness: a debrief of the team's AQ® profile, framed not as a scoreboard but as a map of where the group was strong and where it would need support. Rather than presenting conclusions, Ramesh ran the debrief as a facilitated discussion, with small-group breakouts and then a whole-team synthesis, so the leaders themselves named the areas they needed to develop. The remaining day and a half moved into strategy alignment, building directly on that shared self-awareness. After the session, every leader received a one-to-one debrief of their individual results.
To turn awareness into a plan the team could act on, the AQ® data was integrated with established strategy tools: Force Field Analysis to surface what would help and hinder the growth agenda, the Ansoff matrix to test where real growth would have to come from, Porter's Five Forces to widen the team's view of competition, and de Bono's Six Thinking Hats to pressure-test decisions from several angles. The engagement also produced confidential, forward-looking input to support the organisation's leadership-continuity planning.
All nine members of the senior leadership team completed the AQ® assessment online ahead of the session. Results were configured as a team report, so the group could read its collective adaptability profile across the AQ® dimensions rather than a stack of individual scores. The President's own results were deliberately held out of the aggregate, so one strong profile would not skew or shadow the group picture.
The work was delivered as a facilitated two-day session, run without slide decks. The first half-day went to self-awareness: a debrief of the team's AQ® profile, framed as a map of where the group was strong and where it would need support. The remaining day and a half moved into strategy alignment, building directly on that shared self-awareness.
To turn awareness into a plan the team could act on, the AQ® data was integrated with established strategy tools, and the engagement produced confidential, forward-looking input to support leadership-continuity planning.
Before any strategy work began, the leadership group read its collective AQ® team profile, a shared, non-defensive language for how they operate under pressure. Because the President's results were held out of the aggregate, the picture reflected the team rather than its most senior individual. That shared self-awareness, mapped across the AQ® dimensions of Ability, Character, and Environment, is what let the leaders name their own development areas and carry that honesty directly into the harder conversations about where to grow. AQ® gave a mature, review-oriented team a common starting point for building the future.
By the end of the two days, the team had designed the future instead of reviewing the past. Every leader observed that their meetings had always centred on what had already happened, last month's numbers, last quarter's results; this was the first occasion the group had sat together to build what came next. They left with an actionable plan the team owned, rather than a target handed down from the board.
The plan carried joint ownership. Because the leaders surfaced the priorities themselves, through the AQ® debrief and the strategy work, each left accountable for a part of the agenda rather than waiting for direction from the top.
The team also reframed where growth would come from. Working through the Ansoff matrix, the leaders concluded that business-as-usual activity would not deliver a step-change target, and committed to pursuing new products and new markets as the route to it. And AQ® gave the team a shared development agenda: the group identified the specific adaptability areas, spanning all three AQ® dimensions of Ability, Character, and Environment, it would need to strengthen to deliver the plan, turning a set of scores into a concrete focus for the months ahead.
The workshop positively contributed to strengthening our leadership team's shared understanding and strategic direction.
Ramesh is a seasoned professional with around 30 years of work experience in HR and L&D functions in spectrum of industries. He is a certified Leadership Coach from Coaching Foundation India, AQ Coach (Level 1) by AQai, Certified Endorsed Facilitator by International Association of Facilitators, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, DiSC certified, Harrison Assessments certified. Currently, Founder & Principal Architect of LeadFac Solutions and offer solutions in the areas of Leadership Development, Coaching Competency Management, OD interventions and use Group Process Facilitation as methodology.
View partner profile →It had set a target to roughly triple in size within five years, a step-change after a long history of single-digit growth. The President knew the number could not be delivered top-down, and needed his nine senior leaders genuinely aligned behind the ambition and equipped, as a team, to pursue it.
All nine leaders completed the AQ® assessment online, and results were configured as a team report so the group could read its collective adaptability profile rather than a stack of individual scores. The President's results were deliberately held out of the aggregate so one strong profile would not skew the picture. The team profile then anchored a two-day strategy session in shared self-awareness.
The AQ® data was integrated with four established strategy tools: Force Field Analysis, the Ansoff matrix, Porter's Five Forces, and de Bono's Six Thinking Hats. Together they turned shared self-awareness into a tested, actionable growth plan.
The leadership team left with an actionable, jointly owned strategic plan, with each leader accountable for part of the agenda rather than waiting for direction from the top. Working through the Ansoff matrix, they reframed growth around new products and new markets, and they identified a shared adaptability development agenda spanning all three AQ® dimensions of Ability, Character, and Environment.
The engagement was led by AQ® Certified Partner Ramesh Srinivasan of LeadFac Solutions, an India-based leadership consultancy, and co-facilitated by Namita Naik.
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