The SGN Group owns one of the UK’s largest and most innovative gas distribution networks, operating across Scotland, southern England and Northern Ireland.
The SGN Group owns one of the UK’s largest and most innovative gas distribution networks, operating across Scotland, southern England and Northern Ireland.
SGN had created a new role on their executive leadership team of a Future of Energy Director. This role would lead the development and implementation of the decarbonisation strategy for SGN to position the business for the future.
The FofE Director would be responsible for identifying and maximising decarbonisation opportunities to set and deliver the strategy as part of SGN’s overall business plan.
The successful candidate would need extensive knowledge of emerging energy and the decarbonisation/net zero agenda. The ideal background for this candidate would be from another energy client organisation or a consulting firm providing strategic advice into energy firms.
Reporting directly into the CEO, with the potential to be a CEO successor in circa five years’ time, this was a senior leadership position. Candidates would need to have significant experience leading large teams at either executive leadership, or one level below.
As a new area, that is by definition “emerging”, this role required out of the box thinking to find the best people with the right combination of technical expertise, strategic development, and functional management experience.
Alongside target company research - seeking out senior leaders within the identified talentpools - the research team focused on finding conferences, events, thought leadership pieces and awards. Finding people who had spoken about decarbonisation strategies uncovered a wealth of experts in this exciting area, who may not have fit the brief, but knew people who did.
Potentially suitable candidates were then approached and assessed at interview across four leadership competencies and four areas of relevant experience: building collaboration & partnerships, results orientation, developing strategy, and leading others, energy sector experience, breadth of functional experience, industry network and CEO Potential.
SGN also utilised our personality profiling service to measure leadership ability against six key competencies. The combination of the subsequent OPQ personality report, and our comprehensive candidate report sheets allowed them to make an informed decision about who to progress to interview.
7 candidates were shortlisted out of a longlist of 70 candidates. 2 of the 7 candidates shortlisted were women, with gender diversity on the longlist being c29%. The successful candidate joined SGN from National Grid and had over 30 years’ experience in the energy and utilities market.
