Case Study: Leadership Assessment at Robinson Insurance Agency

Todd Robinson, president of Robinson Insurance Agency, couldn’t be happier. The company that Todd’s father, Edger, started thirty years ago is prospering and poised for future growth. Over the past three years, Robinson Insurance has successfully purchased two regional insurance agencies whose owners were ready for retirement. The acquisitions went smoothly, and the firms merged under Todd’s capable leadership. The company now has 13 branch offices, in five different cities, in the greater Portland metropolitan area. The headquarters office—the site of the original Robinson Insurance Agency office—is located in the bustling downtown district in Portland, Oregon.

At 56 years old, Todd Robinson has earned a reputation for being a savvy businessman and a successful entrepreneur. He hopes to acquire at least one other small agency in the next year—a move that will expand the company by two additional branch offices in suburban Portland neighborhoods. However, managing the company is beginning to consume more and more of Todd’s time and energy—time he would like to spend with his family. Todd realizes that he needs to identify potential middle and senior management leaders within the company who can be trained to play a larger role in both day-to-day and strategic decisions.

Todd knows that selecting individuals to fill future leadership positions will be extremely critical to the long-term success of the company. He wants to ensure that the individuals who are identified for growth opportunities have the knowledge, skills and abilities to move into new middle and senior leadership positions as these positions are created. He also wants to ensure that the new leaders will possess and exemplify the “Client First” philosophy that characterizes the company. Frankly, he has concerns that some current managers—especially those from the agencies purchased by Robinson Insurance—may not fully share the company’s values and may only give “lip service” to the company’s customer-oriented values and practices. However, with 13 branch offices, Todd isn’t as familiar with each manger’s potential as he would like to be.

Thus, Todd has retained your services to help plan an assessment-based professional development program. The goal of the program is to identify people within the company who have the potential for greater levels of responsibility and authority, and then to invest in these individuals by providing training and other professional growth opportunities. Todd also wants help creating a succession plan to position the company for long-term success, even after he retires in five to eight years.

In a paper of at least 1750 – 2100 words (or 7-8 pages) in length (excluding title, abstract and reference pages), describe a comprehensive assessment plan for the company, including a sound defense of the feasibility of the plan, to meet the company’s leadership development objectives. In your paper, address the following:

1. Discuss the key factors for identifying leadership potential.
2. Identify an assessment-based approach for identifying potential among the managers at Robinson Insurance Agency. Describe how assessment processes and assessment instruments can be used to identify potential leaders and their leadership development needs.
3. Include in your assessment approach at least three specific assessment instruments to evaluate leadership potential, justifying the use of each assessment instrument for its intended purpose.
4. Identify the outcomes, data or information produced by each assessment you propose in your plan, and review the considerations for facilitating feedback from each type of assessment.
5. Provide details of practical considerations of your plan, such as who will implement which parts of the assessment plan (an insider, an outsider, or a combination of both), what type of certification may be necessary to administer each assessment, and how the managers within Robinson Insurance will be consulted and involved in the assessment process.
6. Identify the potential legal ramifications that may arise if Robinson Insurance Agency implements an assessment-based approach to identifying potential. Discuss ways of ensuring that the approach you recommend for the company is legal and justifiable.

You do NOT have to create a training and development plan for the identified future leaders; you only need to detail the assessment component of the plan and describe how the assessment information might be used to design the development activities.

In addition to your Scott and Reynolds (2010) textbook, the assigned articles for the course, and any Internet sources you reference to gather information about the assessments you have chosen, reference at least five additional scholarly sources (academic journal articles) to support your plan.