Abstract
Conventional
This ex-government organisation was transitioning to private ownership. Many operational and management functions were conventional in their approach — extremely process driven, somewhat choked on hierarchy and legacy industrial issues.
They were focused on security, for their customers but also for themselves. There was an atmosphere of fear about the place and unspoken rules included ’keep your head down’ and ‘if all else fails, do nothing’.
The organisation was unresponsive and not delivering key services to its customers and stakeholders.
Rational
New leadership had been brought in to change how business was to be done. Rationalisation and change was the imperative. Multiple projects sprang up everywhere to deliver a rational transition to efficiency (KPIs), achievement-orientation (behavioural feedback) and process improvement (lean).
These efforts however were un-coordinated, siloed and key outputs did not connect with next value-chain processes — even members of the executive had unhelpful political agendas with each other that undermined business performance. Frustration mounted in the supporters of ‘a better way’; some gave up.
They were caught in-between conventional and rational and could not deliver key business outcomes.
Relational
We worked with the board, executive and management teams to improve their strategic relationships, to support individuals to be more robust in their interactions and tell each other the truth about what was working for them and
more importantly, what was not, both in their businesses and functions and with each other. A sharing their values and what was important to them made partnership possible. Destructive politicking decreased.
People started to see each other as people. Many also started to assume personal responsibility, as opposed to waiting to be held to account. New ideas started to emerge, performance improvement solutions began to be implemented.
Sustain-agile
We co-designed an evolving strategy process with the MD and Chairman of the Board that ran over 12 weeks. This process was changing constantly in response to the requirements of government regulators and ministers who frequently had unexpected input or requirements.
The strategy process provided a structure for all Board and executive team members to enter into an authentic dialogue with each other, to tell each other their hopes and fears and in that way create wisdom and shared meaning. They also got to make clear to each other what needed to change. All board and exec members had several 1-on-1 sessions to support, challenge and prepare them.
People in the organisation were enrolled into the creation of the strategic direction who had never been asked their opinion before. The whole larger leadership group (55) created a systems-diagram of the organisation’s functions in the context of the new strategy and began to see how they were interdependent and crucial to the business performance and growth. New knowledge of system connections was discovered. Wisdom about how to re-create this kind of outcome was gained.
The organisation had created a new strategy and aligned and mobilised the whole leadership in 12 weeks.
