Reference no: EM133916919

Assignment:

Remy Lucero, president of Lucero Insurance Agency, couldn't be more satisfied. The company that Remy's father, Edgar, started 30 years ago is prospering and poised for future growth. Over the past 5 years, Lucero Insurance has successfully purchased two regional insurance agencies whose owners were ready for retirement. The acquisitions went smoothly, and the firms merged under Remy'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 Lucero Insurance Agency-is located in the bustling downtown district of Portland, Oregon.

At 56 years old, Remy Lucero has earned a reputation for being a savvy businessperson and a successful entrepreneur. Remy 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 the Willamette Valley of Oregon and in neighboring Vancouver, Washington. However, managing the company is beginning to consume more and more of Remy's time and energy-time Remy would like to spend with their family. Remy realizes the need to identify additional potential candidates within the company who can be trained to play a larger role in both day-to-day and strategic decisions.

Remy knows that selecting individuals to fill future leadership positions will be extremely critical to the long-term success of the company. Remy wants to ensure that the individuals who are identified for growth opportunities have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to move into new middle management and senior leadership positions as these positions are created. Remy also wants to ensure that the new leaders will possess and exemplify the "Client First" philosophy that characterizes the company. Frankly, concerns have arisen that some current managers-especially those from the agencies purchased by Lucero 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, Remy isn't as familiar with each manager's potential as they would like to be.

Thus, Remy 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. Remy also wants help creating a succession plan to position the company for long-term success, even after he retires in five to eight years.

Answer the Following -

• Describe a comprehensive assessment plan for the company, including a sound defense of its feasibility, to meet the company's leadership development objectives.
• Discuss the key factors for identifying leadership potential.
• Identify an assessment-based approach for identifying potential among the managers at Lucero Insurance Agency.
• Describe how assessment processes and assessment instruments can be used to identify potential leaders and their leadership development needs.
• Identify at least three specific assessment instruments that could be used by the Lucero Insurance Agency to evaluate the leadership potential of current staff, justifying the use of each assessment instrument for its intended purpose.
• 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.
• 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 the Lucero Insurance Agency will be consulted and involved in the assessment process.
• Identify potential legal ramifications that may arise if the Lucero Insurance Agency implements an assessment-based approach to identify leadership potential.
• Discuss ways of ensuring the approach you recommend for the company is legal and justifiable.

Do not have to design the training and development plan for the identified future leaders; you only need to detail the assessment component of the plan that would help the company identify people with potential to move into middle management and senior leadership positions. Describe how the assessment information might be used to design the development activities.