The way we get to the future
will shape the future we get.

Aligning an executive team before redesigning the operating model.

Investment had been committed to a customer-centred transformation, but the executive team was pulling in different directions. Each leader had a different understanding of what the change was meant to achieve and what success would look like.

We began with individual conversations to understand each leader’s perspective and how the team worked together. As we listened, we began to see the tensions that had gone unspoken and the familiar patterns that were preventing the team from leading collectively. We brought these observations back to the group, giving them a clearer picture of what was happening between them and an opportunity to address it together.

We carefully designed the two days to help leaders see one another’s perspectives in a different light. Moving between the decisions facing the business and the relationships influencing them, we created space for conversations that had previously been difficult to have. By the end, the team had agreed its future operating model and was already practising the kind of collaboration it wanted to build across the wider organisation.

Making change credible.

An organisation had started a major programme to improve how its operations ran, with the aim of making it easier for people to get the job right first time. Employees were tired of seeing change programmes come and go, and many felt leaders didn’t listen when they gave feedback.

Programme leaders wanted an internal campaign to explain what the changes would deliver. Having listened to how earlier changes had landed, we proposed starting with the teams doing the trials, supporting them to shape and test the improvements. Once they could show where the new ways of working were getting better results, we could take the change wider.

We designed sessions where the teams who’d tested the changes could tell their story, warts and all. Hearing what worked and what still needed attention gave their colleagues the confidence to speak honestly about what they’d need to make the changes themselves. What they told us shaped how we planned the training, so their feedback made a difference to what happened next.

The change gathered momentum from within the organisation. The first teams had a genuine hand in making the improvements, and their experience helped others see how they could make the changes their own.

Working through mistrust across organisational boundaries.

Several organisations across the system needed to work together on a transformation. Early attempts had left people sceptical that anything would change, so some of the people whose involvement mattered most were reluctant to take part.

We listened to people across the organisations and carefully brought their stories together so leaders could see how their shared history and increasingly polarised positions shaped how they saw and worked with one another. We designed an experience that gave those different voices a place in the discussion, so leaders could work through the proposed changes together and agree an approach before involving more people in making it work.

Once the leaders had agreed an approach, we designed a session for them to share the story of the change as one team. Their colleagues could see the leaders working together, hear how each organisation would contribute and discuss the proposal with them. It was a chance for leaders to show the kind of collaboration they were asking of others.

People who’d been reluctant to take part began helping to design and test new ways of working. By building and sharing the story together, the leaders had begun to change how the organisations worked across those boundaries.