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As a global leadership and change consultancy we focus on creating now, what leaders need next.
Whilst we do have a library of standardised and hybrid solutions that allow our clients to react quickly and efficiently to changing market demands, we also create customised leadership solutions that deliver impact and value.
Our bespoke, scalable solutions fit our clients’ strategies to evolve a learning and development maturity.
Transitional stage
This was the case for one of our clients based in Europe and the Middle East who found themselves in a critical transitional stage of their business growth.
With a changing market and technological advances, they needed to address a change in strategy in order to achieve a successful transition to reach future goals.
Growing pains challenge
Their growing pains challenge included:
- How to transition through a technological revolution
- How to hire digital experts, a more diverse workforce and ‘out of the box’ thinkers
- How to bring together the existing workforce with new hires
- How to avoid conflicts in working, thinking and culture
- How to collaborate, to speak ‘one language’, accept and mutually drive one strategy
- How to encourage all employees to think and act as entrepreneurs as old hierarchical command structures become obsolete
Our customised approach
To work through the above challenges, we created a face-to-face two-day programme in central Europe for the client.
During the training we worked with the client on these three main areas of focus:
- How can we collaborate better as a CCO Leadership team?
- How can we encourage and enable our teams to become a more solution-focused organisation with a solution-focused culture?
- How can we collaborate better with other departments to create effective cross functional collaboration?
To drill down further and guarantee a successful team and transformation development we shone a spotlight on the following topics.
Strength and polarity thinking
The client had a diverse team made up of a variety of histories and strengths. We worked with them to focus on appreciating their strengths, rather than focusing on any perceived gaps or shortcomings, to create positive and constructive momentum.
For example, we suggested focusing on their polarities with a positive lens, appreciating and discussing the strengths and challenges of the ‘old world’ and the ‘new world’. Team members were then able to appreciate both sides leading to a positive change-story moving forward.
Outcome:
- Change mindsets towards ‘old’ and ‘new’ business
- Increase tolerance and mutual appreciation
- Agree on a language for change in their business
Peer-Support for creating sustainability
We believe in the power of mutual exchange, collaboration and support. We helped the team members set-up small, diverse and powerful peer-groups that will now meet on a regular basis to discuss important leadership aspects that are often forgotten in operational daily business.
Outcome:
- Build deep relationships with peers and solve personal, leadership and other business challenges
- Create a way forward to guarantee collaboration and support
Working on transformation
After our first briefing call, it was clear team challenges were being exasperated due to the changing nature of the business. We suggested a change of focus away from specific team topics to the stakeholder’s (CCO team) transformation journey. With this approach we were able to highlight resistance, leadership and ‘soft’ topics (trust, communication, collaboration, influence, respect and openness).
Outcome:
- Visualise your current change. Derive decisions and actions to drive the change and reduce stakeholder’s resistance
- Address and solve team and ‘soft’ challenges related to change
The Power of Networks
A growing organisation will always be reliant on its internal ability to collaborate. For this client we looked at the current networks – beyond the formal and designated relationships – of each CCO team member. With a Leaders Network Diagnostic, leaders were able to see the strength and weaknesses of their network and derive clear actionable insights of how to improve their network strategically to meet business objectives.
Outcome:
- Make your networks transparent and know which networks to deepen, to extend or to build for business success
Behaviours
Old team dynamics and set patterns are difficult to shift. By visualising team dynamics and common team behaviours, we implemented new behaviours to follow that will make a difference and will change the team-culture. In addition, we highlighted the client’s business needs and behaviours to pave the way to a more solution focused team culture.
Outcome:
- Detect counteractive behaviours to collaboration and change and define new ways of doing things
- Visualise team dynamics, needs and behaviours to increase trust and transparency. Change behaviours towards increased collaboration
In order to achieve the above outcomes, we customised our approach to include the following methodologies and frameworks:
- Change and Transformation – using simulations and change-cycle theories
- Polarity Thinking – an innovative way to challenge how change is perceived
- Psychometrics – using FIRO-B ® team needs psychometrics
- Organisation Network Analysis – with leader network diagnostics
- Peer-Group Support – with a reciprocal coaching framework
During the intense and rewarding two days there was a clarity and transparency to the discussions, not evident before. The client felt they concluded the programme with a multitude of tangible and practical outcomes. And, most importantly, the senior leadership team had a series of actions to put into place to answer the business-critical transformation development challenges facing the organisation.