Case Studies

Introducing a new manager to an existing team

The product management team had been without a leader for almost 9 months. A very experienced person (we'll call him 'John') was hired. His team did not feel comfortable with him. He was also new to the organisation and didn't yet understand 'the way we do things around here'. John asked for help to get his team working better together.

We designed an initial 3 day team workshop on the expectations between John and his team: basic communications skills; expectations; fun session (we went Jet Skiing, which no one had ever done before) for team building and finally work on team vision and goals. The expectations session: worked with team only and discussed all the team's complaints about John and grouped them. The team agreed the message that was to be given to John; they listed 6 expectations they had of him.

Next, we gave John their feedback; shared the team's feelings and encouraged him to share with them what he felt. He also listed 6 expectations he had of the team. Back together, they shared with each other. John chose 3 expectations from the team's list, which he would commit to fulfil and they did the same for him. We returned on a regular basis to review and work further on team development.

We have run this sort of workshop in both the corporate and not-for profit sector in Europe and Asia, especially in introducing a new manager to an existing team.

Discovering client value for a high-tech corporation

A group of high potential senior managers had the idea that replicating existing excellent behaviour within the organisation would raise the share value and they approached us to help them discover what people valued about the company's way of working.

They became interested in the Appreciative Inquiry Method and contacted us, asking us to design a workshop using this method. We designed a workshop, which included clients, partners and suppliers. Together we explored what people liked about the way the organisation worked with them and specifically what their clients and suppliers valued about them. This was then taken further and the group created a collective future based upon the stories that had been shared.

These stories were shared world-wide within the organisation in order to share the learning, a new Excellence Award was instituted which clients/suppliers/partners could nominate people for and some of the stories will be shared with potential clients and written up as case studies on their intra-net.

Emerging Markets Handbook

A high-tech organisation was rapidly expanding into new countries across Europe and Eastern Europe. They faced the problem that they had to have their operations up and running in a very short time. We conceived and co-ordinated a project to produce a handbook to capitalise upon and share the learning from their experience, setting up operating companies in new countries with the entire organisation.

We based it upon the business and HR plans, enrolling the finance and HR people involved from the beginning. We enrolled staff across the organisation - different continents, functions and businesses - to write the document, which is a repository for group learning. It was a struggle to convince senior management to invest time and money BEFORE winning a contract in such a bottom-line oriented organisation and it took several years and major mistakes before it was accepted and used.