Facilities Management | Senior Leadership Team | Accountability
CONTEXT…
Our client, a scaling facilities management group, had ambitions to double revenue within 3 years.
PROBLEM…
Growth was stalling. And they had recently lost a big client.
Barriers appeared to include a lack of commercial acumen, poor collaboration, and a lack of mutual accountability amongst senior managers.
Too many inappropriate issues were being elevated to the Founder & MD to deal with. He was experiencing overwhelm. This threatened his health and capacity to lead strategically.
This was being sensed more widely across the business. There was a risk that his best people would leave.
SOLUTION
The Founder & MD identified the need to establish a Senior Management Team (SMT) to shoulder the operational load and free the 3-person executive team (ET) to develop and oversee delivery of the group’s strategy. Both teams would need to work closely together.
We were brought in to enable this integration. The diagram below shows the structure of the inquiry-based programme we delivered over a period of 3 months.
Working with the Founder & MD we identified a “big question” that would guide the process. This had three elements to it.
“What is it for us to lead fully within our delegated freedoms to create the space for the collective work needed to grow the business to £30m by 2027? What behaviours and ways of working must we let go off, hold on to, and put in place inside the next 3 months? How will we hold ourselves accountable for this much needed step-change in leadership effectiveness?”
The questionnaire sought colleagues’ lived experience of successful team working and views on what was needed of the ET and SLT in order to deliver on the ambition.
The workshop built further connection and trust between colleagues as a foundation of the conversations needed going forward. The key outputs of the 2-day event was a combined ET and SMT charter which captured purpose, ambition, behaviours and ways of working; and the areas for development needed to deliver on the agreements made in the charter.
The workshop converged on 4 priority tasks which were scoped as projects and implemented on a self-led basis the workplace.
See Team Charter and Development Actions here.
“Seeing the Leadership Charter take shape felt like a solid, tangible result
of the rich conversations that were taking place.”
OUTCOMES AND RESULTS
A process like this can generate a lot of self-reflection around one’s role in the context of the company’s ambition. And as expected, one colleague decided to depart the company.
Another colleague was invited to apply for newly established role as Chief Operating Officer, thus creating space for the Founder & MD to lead more strategically, and providing the oversight to deliver on the agreements made in the Charter.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Email info@freshairleadership.com to set up a call or just go for it now and call 07776 153428 to explore how we can help you develop more effective collective leadership in your organisation.