Redefining Leadership for a Shifting Market

The Situation

The aerospace market is shifting, driven by changing customer demands, increasing supply chain complexity, accelerating technological advancement, and heightened expectations for growth. For decades, the organization had succeeded with a leadership profile built around operational excellence, efficiency, and risk management. While this profile had served the business well historically, it was no longer sufficient for the market ahead. The group president recognized early that the leadership model guiding selection, development, and succession decisions needed to evolve in order to support the company’s growth ambitions in a changing market environment.

The Challenge

Prior to engaging LDW, the group president had partnered with another firm to redefine what leadership success should look like going forward. While that effort confirmed the need for change, the resulting model fell short. It was generic and abstract, well-intended but not grounded in the realities of the business or the specific pressures leaders were facing. As a result, it did not translate into practical decisions about who to select, how to develop leaders, or how to assess readiness for the future. What was missing was a leadership profile leaders could actually use—one that was tangible, measurable, and anchored in the real tradeoffs of a rapidly changing aerospace market. Recognizing that the challenge was not simply defining new competencies, but making them actionable, predictive, and defensible, the group president asked LDW to partner with the business to take a different approach.

The LDW Solution

LDW partnered closely with the group president and senior leadership to take a rigorous, market-informed approach to redefining leadership success. LDW conducted market research and interviewed key internal stakeholders to understand how the external environment was changing and what leadership capabilities would be required to succeed within it. Drawing on this research and LDW’s expertise, the team defined a future-focused leadership success profile. This profile shifted emphasis away from optimizing efficiency alone toward leaders taking real ownership of the business, driving outcomes, thinking enterprise-wide, and adapting quickly in a dynamic market. The success profile was translated into a clear, actionable competency model designed to be used consistently across selection, development, and succession decisions. Drawing on the expertise of industrial-organizational psychologists and assessment specialists, the model was validated through adverse impact simulations to confirm legal defensibility and ensure it could be applied fairly at scale. Preliminary research and analysis suggest a 32–40% increase in hiring accuracy prior to conducting an interview. Using this validated approach, LDW conducted a pilot assessment of a representative sample of general managers and created targeted development plans for each leader aligned to the future demands of the business. LDW also provided the group president with an integrated, enterprise-level view of leadership capability relative to the market shift.

What Changed

While the work is ongoing, early shifts are already visible. Leadership conversations have moved from abstract discussions about the need to change to concrete dialogue about which capabilities matter most, where leaders are taking ownership, and where development is required. The organization now has a shared language for evaluating leadership readiness against future demands rather than past success.

Impact (In Progress)

• Clarity on what future leadership success requires, aligned to market realities rather than historical norms
• A consistent, enterprise-wide competency model anchoring selection, development, and succession decisions
• Data-backed insight from a pilot assessment of the general manager population, informing strengths and development priorities relative to growth demands
• Targeted, individualized development plans designed to accelerate readiness rather than relying on generic leadership programs
• An increasingly clear view for the group president and the Office of the Chief Executive (OCE) of team-level capability gaps, enabling more intentional investment and phased scaling

Client Voice

“Of all of the iterations that I have seen, this success profile is spot on. It is clear, actionable, and pragmatic. You guys get it.”
— Chief Operating Officer