ALIGNING AROUND THE CASE FOR CHANGE
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Keys areas of intervention

Producing an organisational and leadership team diagnostic—

Assessing limiting beliefs that hinder the change sought after—

Aligning a team around a call to action—

A key element of any change work is to clarify - what for? Separating symptoms from root cause. What is the question you are trying to find an answer to, remembering that we cannot solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them? 

… LEGAL FUNCTION SEEKS TO ENHANCE ITS ADDED VALUE TO INTERNAL CLIENTS …

—Case study

The Leadership team needed to further enhance the value of internal legal services. After in-depth discussion on how to best achieve their goal, the team agreed on the meaning of added value to clients. They realised that simply delivering a client focus training to their 150 in-house lawyers would not address their challenge. Instead a series of workshops were organised between the leadership team and the lawyers to identify barriers and opportunities to raise their level of contribution and impact on client work.

… A MANAGING DIRECTOR RUNS OUT OF IDEAS TO RAISE THE PERFORMANCE OF HER BUSINESS UNIT …

—Case study

After having set up a new organisation, hired key people from the outside, organised regular town halls, raised welfare and training offer for all staff, a managing director is stuck in bringing the performance of her €300 million business unit to the next level. After a 4-month organisational diagnosis across various levels in the organisation, it was found that the process for setting performance/budget target was too complex and not owned by everyone (typically the marketing team set the goal but the sales team have to deliver on the figure). As a result, the budget process was modified into a joint target setting effort.

MAPPING THE INFORMAL ORGANISATION
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Keys areas of intervention

Identifying impacted structure, stakeholders and roles—

Understanding patterns of interaction and drivers of current behaviours in the organisation—

Considering organisational design implications: governance, leadership development and behaviours—

Whether it is with teams or broader organisations, any change related work requires to understand not only the formal organisation but also the invisible and informal organisation that drives so much of behaviour, engagement and ultimately performance.

… A 1 BILLION EURO FAMILY BUSINESS REVIEWS ITS APPROACH TO MANAGING ACQUISITIONS…

—Case study

The CFO and General Counsel wanted to review how they functioned as the company was going to significantly increase growth by acquisitions. The work required an analysis of the department internal working relationships, leadership styles of the management team and understanding patterns of complex interaction with internal stakeholders such as geographic CEOs. By the end of the 6 month project, the client had a better understanding of enabling and hindering patterns of behaviour in the required change process which set the basis for a more trust-based cooperation.

… A RECENTLY CREATED GLOBAL REGULATORY TEAM NEEDS TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO BEST WORK TOGETHER…

—Case study

The team under pressure by their CEO to become quickly operational faced the difficulty of being spread across 3 continents and with infrequent physical meetings. Groundwork was undertaken to build a collective leadership by engaging in a number of facilitated dialogues to help the team identify areas of inter-dependence, autonomy, and agree on working principles to facilitate virtual teamwork and collective decision-making.

TRIGGERING CHANGE
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Keys areas of intervention

Shifting patterns of collaboration, working with the points of resistance, generating alliances—

Anchoring the change by experimenting and role-modelling new behaviours—

Developing a capacity to tolerate uncertainty and complexity that comes with change—

As ways of working are being challenged, organisations enter a transition phase between old and new. This transition phase requires attention to ensure a well-thought out plan does not get derailed.  

… HOW TO EFFECTIVELY PERFORM IN A HIGHLY NETWORKED ORGANISATION…

—Case study

A newly merged marketing division at a global aviation group realised they needed to reinforce the next generation of leadership talent. A week-long leadership development programme was developed to support participants in managing a highly networked organizations in which leadership « without authority » needs to prevail over role-based authority. The programme also integrated dialogue with senior management to bridge the gaps around expectations of leadership. The overall design was guided by the need to balance the need for coherence across the global group with sufficient autonomy to manage country specific clients.

… PREPARING FOR A MAJOR SHIFT IN A COMPENSATION SCHEME AT A LARGE PARTNERSHIP…

—Case study

A firm seeks to build support for a major shift to how its partners are compensated to reflect post-financial crisis market conditions. The work involved a long on boarding process of key stakeholders and careful management of the major pockets of resistance to the proposed changed. An important focus point was ensuring the fairness of the new system, both in its intention and actual application.