Case Studies

Construction - Business Development and HR Directors

Issue: This leading construction company wanted to improve its competitive position by building customer relationship capability in the front-line staff of two of its UK operating companies.

Objectives: To give more than 500 managers and customer facing project staff the up-to-date awareness of their customer's needs, and the skills to build collaborative relationships with them.

Deliverables: We interviewed key customers, and non-customers, from the industry to produce a challenging DVD of customer needs. Alongside the client's own customer feedback, facilitated group work and discussion highlighted areas of strength and weakness, leading to improvement action plans. Last, we packaged the programme for train-the-trainer roll-out in the operating companies, and supported this with coaching support and comprehensive documentation.

Oil & Gas - Director Environmental Operations

Issue: This company set the industry pace with its environmental position in the early 2000s and remains highly committed. However, high profile incidents, and demanding operating standards, necessitated a review of future options with critical internal stakeholders.

Objectives: To engage critical stakeholders in the organisation in a review of strategic options in a way that would deliver high standards of operation and reflect business reality.

Deliverables: Engagement workshops were run in the United States and Europe with extensive business representation. These workshops challenged participants to evaluate the status of the organisation’s environmental commitments in the light of high profile incidents and external comment. Facilitated group work and discussion identified where existing action needed to be strengthened, helped to prioritise strategic options and proposed further geographic engagement.

Client: Not For Profit & Charity - Finance & Corporate Services Director

Issue: Already a high-performing organisation, this charity needed to get wider engagement of key staff in its corporate strategy, and produce a 12 month operational plan that shifted from business as usual to strategic delivery.

Objectives: - understand the strategic intent - engage key managers and stakeholders - deliver a robust operational plan linked to strategy - support and coach the internal team - provide a repeatable, sustainable process for the client

Deliverables: A series of workshops with directors, key managers and stakeholders delivered a comprehensive operational plan. The process ensured that operational milestones added value and was clearly linked to strategic delivery. These milestones were internally consistent with resource, budget and dependencies and clearly owned in the organisation. Individuals understood the overall strategy and were strongly committed to the milestones as a result of the engagement. At the conclusion of the project these milestones could be linked to a vital few measures of strategic progress.