Situation:

As part of a major UK transport hub, our client was facing an unprecedented period of transformational change and growth. Organisational maturity and readiness to fulfil this required a sharp focus and effective Leadership Teams.

Multiple strategies and plans were robust, with projects progressing, however in the absence of ‘one plan’ the Leadership Team were facing the risk of having ‘blurred lines’ in delivery of current transformation initiatives and potentially conflicting views, agendas and preferences.

Task:

We were invited to support the Leadership Team over six months with their co-creation of one 20/21 cross-functional strategy, a revised delivery model to incorporate a new structural change and their supporting narrative to engage the next level of leaders.

Co-creation at this level is demanding of time and therefore we needed to support their group effectiveness and personal awareness so that they were able to achieve a healthy level of conflict throughout the process.

Action:

Across three workshops with the Leadership Team, we created space to slow the team down and physically experience their collective landscape of multiple strategies, varying horizons and key initiatives.  From the point of ‘seeing all’, we facilitated a process of five steps to (re)clarify the role they play in the wider organisation’s growth (their ‘why’/purpose) and the milestones of work that is collectively required over the next 2 years to achieve this (their ‘what’/strategy).  To accompany this, the team established a visual version of their revised delivery model, with clear accountabilities and tested it with real life scenarios to challenge their own thinking.

Achieving alignment and engagement around the plan was critical so the team worked in pairs and small groups to prepare and practice their own narratives in readiness to bring the plan to life and create belief.  We used our Springboard Event™ approach to help them host ~100 of their direct reports, share the future direction and allow them to understand, explore and test the priority areas that provided the ‘one team’ approach.

Result:

As a result of the ‘task’ work carried out by the Leadership, the function now focuses and operates around one plan, with greater understanding of how work is delivered across shared resources.  The plan created is neatly aligned to the wider business strategy and in a format that allows internal tracking to be consistent and meaningful.

At a ‘maintenance’ level, feedback from the Springboard Event™ identified that the Leadership Team are now seen as ‘on the same page’ and viewed more as a collective rather than group of functional leaders.  For the team themselves, the team have established a tighter way of connecting, achieving commitment behind group decisions and a way of working through healthy conflict.

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