Partnering With the World Bank President to Accelerate Global Impact
The Crossland Group's multi-year engagement with the World Bank Group illustrates the transformational approach we take in partnering with social and private sector clients around the globe. When Crossland first began working with Jim Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank Group, the organization needed an external perspective to address multi-stakeholder global challenges, such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic, particularly at a country level. They lacked the internal capability to accelerate the type of large-scale change their clients needed.
Working directly with the president and his chief of staff, Frannie Léautier, Crossland accelerated the alignment and implementation of the World Bank Group’s strategic priorities. We began by building a coalition of savvy mid-level leaders across various sectors in the Bank. These leaders were able to provide the president with the insights and mechanisms he needed to identify initiatives requiring integration and accountability. It also enabled him to build processes to sustain change throughout the Bank. Crossland then focused on mobilizing the Bank’s key stakeholders. We did this by developing structured convenings of internal and external groups at a global and country level. Using Crossland’s Accelerating Change Together (ACT) process, which is designed to break down functional and geographic silos and compress problem-solving and implementation time, we reshaped the Bank’s learning strategy to better develop staff and provide learning opportunities for clients. Finally, we helped the Bank build an integrated organizational structure to accelerate sustainable change on issues ranging from poverty reduction to infant mortality to youth unemployment.
Significant cost savings and more integrated opportunities
Our impact was widely felt. In the first year, our efforts revealed inefficiencies and overlap between sectors that led to significant cost savings and more integrated opportunities with the Bank’s clients. It helped the President realign the budget to relevant strategic priorities, improve cross-sectoral work, and led to a collaborative partnership between Crossland and the World Bank that continues now, over a decade later.
Leader Testimonial
Dr. Frannie Léautier, former Chief of Staff to the President of the World Bank
"My first engagement with Crossland was in 2000, when I became a new director of World Bank Infrastructure. I was tasked with turning around a fund in the Bank’s portfolio. Crossland engaged people from around the
Bank who needed to be part of the process, which gave me the ability to influence action across far-reaching areas of the Bank. The result of this initial engagement was that the fund in question went from worst performing to best performing within a year!
Since then, I have worked many more times with Crossland through my partnership with Teri Riddle, who I consider to be my professional trusted advisor. Teri’s leadership style is to listen—both down and across an organization. In doing so, she becomes aware of “blockers” and obstacles to change. She is able to move through these obstacles to get to really nailing down implementation, following through, and tracking metrics. I often wondered how Teri had the patience to see projects through to the end and not get flummoxed by “blockers.” In hindsight, I believe it has to do with Teri’s experience as the CEO of a hospice, and her naturally calm approach. It is a great attribute. It comes through in her structured questions and in the rapport she builds with the people she’s working with. In short, Teri offered me leadership therapy … I’ve met lots of people, but few with whom I’ve had that much rapport.
Through Teri's guidance, I have learned that there must be patience in achieving results in what are naturally long-term projects. I’ve learned how to balance the urgency for change with an acceptance that the change process that all stakeholders must go through takes time. Teri has helped me develop my own leadership capabilities by using a calm approach and a reliance on methodology and structure to drive desired outcomes. One of the biggest advantages Teri provided for me during my tenure at the World Bank was her ability to see the bigger picture and provide information to me about what was going on in other areas of the organization—information that was simply not visible to me as a leader. As a result, every year we worked with Crossland, we got a budget increase and saw results in every one of our efforts."
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