The client was an internal asset-management unit for a large multinational insurance firm. They had been told they would soon be cut loose from the mother company and were expected to turn themselves into a competitor on the open market, in the process losing their status as mandatory (or even preferred) service provider for the mother company. This put the leadership under enormous pressures and even though the leadership team consisted of very successful and highly capable individuals, it was clear they would need to really come together as a team to successfully pull this transformation off.

In our prior work with the client we had identified a number of organisational, cultural and personal factors that were blocking their success as a team, such as a ‘hero’ culture – celebrating individual success over team-success; a ‘gentlemen’s culture’ – avoiding direct conflict, leaving a lot of underlying tension and problems unaddressed; and a lack of trust in each other’s full commitment to making this transformation work. Our task was to take the executive team through a 4-day off-site to help them work through those obstacles, lay the groundworks for a high-performing team culture, and create a plan to take their entire organisation on the journey with them.

We designed and facilitate a 4-day, intensive off-site with the 6 members of the executive team, basing the design on our previous work with them, an analysis of a survey and individual interviews, as well as their business plan and the instructions they had been given by the mother company about time-lines and expectations.

The off-site was structured around the team creating a ‘battle-plan’ that they could start executing on as soon as the next week. The work on the plan was the ‘scaffolding’ around which we built modules with theory and exercises on the organisational and cultural issues they wanted to address, which they could then directly put into practice in the work we did with them on the actual plan. This created a cadence of theory, exercise and practice that anchored new insights and new behaviours immediately. The momentum and motivation of the team was maintained throughout the 4 days by the (self-imposed) deadline of having to produce a draft ‘battle-plan’ by the end of the off-site.

Our facilitation was a mix of presentation, observation, discussion and feedback (both personal and group), and time-management to make sure the deliverables were all realised by the end of the off-site.

The team produced a practical (and radical) ‘battle-plan’ in the time available and in the process worked through the items that were blocking their functioning as a high-performing leadership unit. This work laid the basis for not just a successful transformation of their business into an independently operating commercial entity, but it helped the team reshape their organisational culture and re-energise their workforce. On this foundation, the client became not just independent, but used its momentum to grow into one of Europe’s largest asset-management companies.

In the words of the CEO: “I have tried to re-think on what exactly made the program so successful and different from other experiences. I believe it is your ability to bring all the components necessary to drive a business together. …

Add to this the ability to bring in very practical methods to achieve this in a period of time I had previously considered to be impossible … I think that the combination of business foundation issues … combined with managerial issues … and the way you have brought these together is quite unique and very powerful.”