Leadership development | Maritime & professional services
Navigating the shift from expert to trusted advisor
Over 3,000 surveyors. Dozens of countries. One ambition: to change not just what Lloyds Register’s people knew, but how they showed up for clients every day. This is the story of a global transformation that boarded ships, broke the classroom mould, and permanently raised the bar on what a development programme can do.
What LR was really up against
The maritime market doesn’t stand still. Clients are more demanding, the competitive landscape more crowded, and the days when technical expertise alone was enough to hold a relationship are behind us.
Lloyds Register knew this. Their global surveyor population – over 3,000 people, operating across vastly different regions, cultures, and client contexts – were already highly skilled in their field. The challenge was presence, not competence. LR needed their surveyors to move from being recognised as experts to being trusted as advisors – the kind of people clients turn to for perspective, challenge, and partnership, not just for answers.
Defining what that shift looks like in practice. Inspiring thousands of people to make it. Measuring whether it stuck. That was the real brief.
The Impact
colleagues reached globally – in person and virtually
strongly agreed that they intended to apply what they learned
average NPS across the programme
The decision that changed everything
A global rollout of this scale and ambition could easily have defaulted to something safe – a standardised e-learning programme, a set of workshops built around a competency framework, a slide deck dressed up as a development journey.
LR chose differently. They wanted something that would genuinely change behaviour on the ground – not throw content at people and hope some of it sticks. That meant finding a partner willing to go to the source before designing a single thing, and to build something worthy of the people it was built for.
Digging deeper to design smarter
Before any concept was developed, the Solvd team went where LR’s surveyors actually work. That included boarding a ship.
Spending time with surveyors in their world – observing how they operated, how they interacted with clients, what the relationship dynamics looked and felt like in practice – gave the programme its foundations. Not assumptions about what trusted advisory behaviour should look like in the maritime context. Evidence.
That proximity revealed the specific moments where the shift from expert to advisor happens or doesn’t: the client conversation that stays transactional when it could go deeper, the opportunity for challenge that gets left on the table, the feedback that never quite lands. Designing for those moments, rather than for an idealised version of the role, is what gave PROPEL its credibility with the people going through it.
Solvd delivered an engaging learning experience that was absolutely critical for our colleagues in terms of fulfilling their development requirements.”
Sharron Pamplin
Chief People Officer, Lloyds Register
What we built together
The programme became PROPEL: a blended global transformation experience built to reach over 3,000 colleagues without sacrificing the depth that behaviour change requires.
Before anyone attended a session, curiosity was already running. A bold teaser campaign – a series of short, targeted videos – raised awareness and built genuine anticipation for the launch. PROPEL announced itself as something different before it had even begun.
The programme’s identity reinforced that from the start. A distinct PROPEL brand – its own visual language, its own tone of voice – spoke directly to surveyors and aligned to LR’s strategic priorities. It felt like it belonged to them, because the people it was built for had shaped it.
The centrepiece of the in-person experience was Immersive Live Drama: actor coaches recreating real client interactions and bringing the outside world into the room. Surveyors didn’t just observe – they practised, engaging directly with personally crafted characters who responded in real time and gave honest feedback. The room became a space where the difficult conversations could happen safely, and where different outcomes could be tried, tested, and learned from.
For the virtual cohorts – spanning multiple regions and time zones – the live drama became a series of richly produced client and colleague scenarios, drawing in perspectives from clients, peers, and surveyors themselves. The global scale didn’t flatten the experience. It expanded it.
Running through both formats was Cards of the High Seas – a physical card game, with a digital counterpart – that walked attendees through the trusted advisor mindset and its behaviours. By presenting differing client scenarios and inviting genuine discussion, it turned the abstract into the concrete and gave people a shared language for the shift they were making.
Between sessions, a Trusted Advisor Toolkit – a digital guide packed with practical tools, prompts, and activities – kept the development alive in the flow of work. Designed to be printed and used on the job, not filed and forgotten.
The results, and the ripple beyond them
2,000 colleagues attended the programme globally – 1,100 in person, 900 virtually. The NPS landed at +47 overall, with in-person and virtual sessions scoring almost identically at +48 and +46, respectively. That last detail matters: it means the experience didn’t lose its impact when it crossed a screen.
85% of attendees strongly agreed they intended to apply what they learned. 81% felt they could practically apply the skills in their role straight away. Elizabeth Pedler, Global People Development Director, described the feedback as simply “amazing.”
The programme also proved something worth noting beyond the numbers: that technology doesn’t have to get in the way of a great learning experience. At this scale, across this many regions, with results this consistent – that’s not a small thing to demonstrate.
What the numbers will show is only part of the story. The deeper measure is what LR’s surveyors now do differently in client conversations, and how that shift compounds over time across thousands of relationships, in dozens of markets, at every level of seniority.
PROPEL didn’t just train people. It changed the standard.
Solvd Together has been integral in shaping our vision for a skills-first organisation. Their insights, expertise and collaborative approach have made a huge impact, and I would 100% recommend them.”
Elizabeth Pedler
Global People Development Director, Lloyds Register
