Client Profile

Our client is a multinational company, with headquarters in the US, that manufactures consumer, pharmaceutical and medical device products. At the time of our appointment it was implementing a programme of process, culture and system integration from a major corporate acquisition and at the same time was putting in place a global SAP enterprise resource planning system. All of this was happening within a global mission to reduce operating costs.

 ‘Developing Leadership and Talent’ is one of its four major business priorities that is stated to be fundamental to its long-term corporate growth.

The Challenge

Although a series of top class internal development programmes were available, we were retained by the CIO of the Consumer EMEA division who needed to improve the collaboration between his top IT leadership team through a programme of workshops and personal development. He was seeking something new to re-energize his senior executives and provide them with the resources to invigorate their own teams.

We had to gain a common understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing the twelve senior executives from eight European countries that made up the IT leadership team.  We were to explore both team and individual values; identify the appropriate development needed to introduce new collaborative behaviours that would overcome the current challenges; and to agree on a set of common goals and develop an action plan to achieve those.

Our Approach

We proposed a bespoke 3-phase programme run by two facilitators with complementary skills combining different languages, gender and cultural experiences:

Phase 1

To diagnose the current state by using a mixture of individual interviews and group brainstorming sessions.

Phase 2

To create and facilitate group workshops and individual coaching as appropriate. This model enabled both the team and the individuals to raise their performance through a change in mindset and behaviour.

Phase 3

To facilitate a review meeting between the sponsor and the participants to share relevant insights and learning gained from the programme and on the actions and collaboration necessary to achieve their agreed common goals.

The diagnostic phase uncovered a number of difficult behaviours and cultural differences that were hijacking the success of their common projects.

The Outcome

The group workshops and individual coaching sessions enabled the team to have a clearer understanding of their common purpose and how individual strengths could be used to support each other and the team. Agreement was reached on how to challenge and encourage each other in a respectful way whilst learning from each other and holding each other accountable and responsible. A ‘Mentoring’ and ‘Buddy’ system was introduced.

 The final review meeting concluded that the programme had helped them to be aware and communicate their individual values and understand how those values were a big part of their respective behaviours. It had aligned the values and beliefs that built and supported each individual member of the team with those of the organisation and had provided them with the skills to encourage greater collaboration and co-operation between members of their own teams.