The Hidden Barrier:
It’s Not Skills or Capabilities,
It’s Mindsets

Global Business Services (GBS) leaders know the levers to drive performance – cutting-edge technology, streamlined processes, and top-tier talent. You’ve done it all – optimized, automated, offshored, re-engineered yet performance gains plateau.

The missing piece? Aligned mindsets.

Skills and structures matter, but unless your teams think about work the same way – prioritizing the right outcomes, aligning behaviors to strategy – you’ll never unlock the full promise of GBS. Misaligned mindsets show up everywhere: resistance to change, endless escalations, fractured delivery, lack of enterprise credibility.

When leaders and teams align on the mindsets that matter, performance shifts quickly from incremental to exponential.

Introducing the GBS Mindsets Assessment

The GBS Mindsets Assessment – developed by Everest Group in partnership with Deborah Kops of Sourcing Change – is the industry’s first diagnostic tool designed to measure and align the mindsets of GBS leaders and teams.

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Through a detailed, evidence-based survey, it reveals:

  • Which mindsets leaders believe are critical to performance
  • Whether teams share these mindsets – or not
  • Where alignment gaps are undermining outcomes
  • How “on the ground” conditions stack up against leadership intent
  • What interventions are required to close gaps and accelerate results

When mindsets clash, outcomes crash

Your GBS may have world-class automation, the right organizational design, and the best talent. But if your leader prioritizes agility while the team is wired for compliance, or if your team values speed while the enterprise demands data discipline, friction will inevitably slow progress.

 

Mindset alignment makes the difference between:

 

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    Executional and transactional vs. strategic and value-creating

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    Delivery unit vs. enterprise change agent

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    Talent graveyard vs. leadership crucible

“You can have the strongest skills and capabilities in the world, but without an aligned mindset, optimum performance is impossible. When teams share the same priorities and align their behaviors behind them, only then can you unlock the full promise of GBS.”

Kops Deborah
Deborah Kops
Principal and Co-founder – Sourcing Change

Proof in Practice

Leading global organizations – across industries and geographies – have harnessed the power of the assessment to help them uncover blind spots, reset leadership alignment, and build a GBS culture that can perform under pressure.

Our clients use the results to:

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    Reframe how leaders talk about priorities

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    Design interventions to shift behaviors

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    Build stronger cases for enterprise support and funding

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    Create GBS career paths that attract not repel enterprise talent

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“The GBS Mindsets exercise was invaluable to me in understanding what our stakeholders expected from GBS and whether or not my leadership team and I were on the same page about how to best meet those expectations. It also gave me key insights into how the mindsets of my direct reports aligned with the roles they were playing. I will use this to make fundamental changes in how we approach our customers and how we deploy people to best take advantage of their value focus.”

Rob Bradford VP of Global Business Services (GBS) Kimberly-Clark

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“GBS Mindsets turned our hunches into hard, yet impactful truths – and gave us the clarity to act. It showed us where we stood, confirmed what we suspected, and aligned us on where we’re headed. The results were immediate actions that sharpened our focus, strengthened the unity in my leadership team and created real momentum and confidence that we’re all moving in the same direction. The best talent and strategy can flounder if there is misalignment in mindsets.”

Erin Vincent Vice President, Sonoco Services (GBS)

Your Move: Flip the Switch

Whether you’re setting up a new GBS, recalibrating after a pivot, or simply frustrated that performance has plateaued, the GBS Mindsets Assessment is your roadmap to better alignment and greater outcomes.

Set up a conversation with our Mindsets experts

 
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Driving GBS Performance: Skills? Capabilities? No, It’s Mindsets

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