Public Services Provider | Executive Leadership Team | Alignment

Summary

An outdoor workshop in the New Forest for a new FTSE-100 Exco to define and launch their high-performance journey.

Back story

A FTSE-100 company had recently reshaped its executive leadership team in the face of a challenging situation. It was imperative that this team of internal promotees and external hires gel together and spin up their collective leadership capacity quickly.  There was lots of language around escaping the present situation and driving towards a gold standard of performance.

The ambition the team wanted to reach for

  • Team members to really get to know one another
  • Define how we need to be as a leadership team to really drive this business forward

Solution and outcomes

Pre-event 1-2-1s were conducted to identify team issues, and to tap into individuals’ experience of high performing teams and their specific contribution to this success.

We created an experiential and metaphorical journey through the New Forest to the South coast with the dual themes of “escaping the present” and “driving towards gold standard”.

“Dave and the team were great – very enthusiastic and showed a good understanding of our business and provoked and stimulated good debate amongst our group”.

This was underpinned by a facilitated inquiry into what these terms meant and the values, behaviours, and ways of working the team needed to define and fully buy into.

The journey began with an escape from a maze and three sub-groups walking along different paths (i.e. the current situation).

“A really positive starting point for the team and provides a good platform from which we can move things forward.”

Next, they travelled on tandem bikes as two groups (new technology, faster pace).

Finally, they travelled as one team on a one bus (echoes of Jim Collins’ “Good to Great”) to arrive at a South coast beach (the journey to “gold standard”).

“Activity based sessions created a lot of energy and enthusiasm – showed how we can work as a team, great for building trust and appreciating each other.”

From here they looked across the English Channel to the market opportunities in Europe (the next strategic journey).

Increasingly small-scale maps were used to trigger discussions around strategic versus operational plans, and the levels of detail required to communicate effectively to stakeholders and staff.