This organisation promotes the development of creative companies in England. Its mandate is to be a ‘think/do tank’ for the creative industries.
Introduced by the Board to work with the CEO and the SLT (the executive strategic board as opposed to the governance role of the actual board) to build better teamwork whilst supporting and developing the SLT in terms of strategy formulation and delivery. The main friction was this…pushing strategy through the business sometimes felt like walking through treacle.
The intervention, as we often recommend, was to start with the top team - this meant the SLT undergoing team coaching to create clarity, alignment, openness and better ways of working. We used PROPHET to assess the capability of the leadership team to initiate, design, execute and improve a strategy, and, assess the degree to which team members are deployed effectively playing to their preferences and strengths. Tactical execution was identifed as an Achilles heel in terms of preference o fthe team as a collective.
This led to the layer beneath being developed. Top talent was identified using recognised methods and a 6 month leadership programme was designed and developed - ‘The Stepping Up Leadership Development programme’.
We also assessed and gained cultural insights to understand the culture better - what to work with and what needed change. We used the Cultural Orientation Framework and Brand with Values - The Culture Decoder™, to gain further insights into what aspects of the culture needed to be leveraged and what aspects needed fundamentally to change. Further interventions were instigated to support this including multiple sub team away days and individual coaching for various seniors to galvanise engagement towards business strategy.
A tailor-made programme built on our unique Less Friction, More FlowSM methodology, a proven organisational experience approach that uses tried and tested strategies to oil cogs, solve frictions, and help get people into flow.
The executive team reshaped itself and became more strategic. They had a layer underneath them that could support execution and people felt more engaged to the business strategy. It also empowered the business to re-engineer its stratgey and acquire another organisation. Several years later, we continue to work with the newly merged organisation and its leadership.