Acentia Client Case Studies

SITUATION

This case study situation describes a start-up organisation wanting to protect their ‘family feel’ as they prepared for company growth through their business strategy. In addition, on further discussion with this business, it was also clear that the company wanted a workplace culture which enabled attraction and retention of critical talent in the future, and ensured a high level of organisational resilience through a robust leadership capability approach.

ACENTIA APPROACH TAKEN

To ensure that the company was able to achieve the above objectives, the Acentia consultants engaged an approach that included the use of the Acentia Secret Sauce toolkit, the Teams toolkit and a Workplace Culture Discovery Day using the Acentia Assessment method. 

With the support of the Acentia consultants and the use of the Secret Sauce toolkit, the company explored the special uniqueness of their business, or in other words, what their employees loved about the organisation. The purpose of this approach was to establish in a clear and compelling manner, which Secret Sauce concepts employees most valued about the organisation, so that the company could invest and build strength into these concepts, and also firmly protect the family feel, as the business grew. 

With the use of the Workplace Culture Discovery Day data, the company was able to establish their ideal workplace culture, which included a ‘Great Place to Work’ checklist aimed specifically at the attraction and retention of profiled, ideal talent.  In addition to this, the business owner and his senior leaders undertook a Team Charter process from the Teams toolkit to establish their key leadership responsibilities in bringing to life the secret sauce concepts, the deployment of the Great Place to Work plan and leading the company in a way that ensured robust organisational resilience.  

IMPACT

With the establishment of an intelligent workplace culture and a robust foundation for growth, the company owner secured the necessary funding to commence the execution of the business strategy. We wish him and all this business’s team members the very best for the exciting adventures that lay ahead for this incredible, cutting-edge company! 

SITUATION

This case study situation unfortunately involved a complete breakdown in the relationship between the CEO and the Governance group due to trust and confidence issues. The situation was further complicated by similar issues between the CEO and the Executive team members, and this was at such a problematic point that the relationship between the two management parties had become untenable. 

Eventually through a mediated process, there was mutual agreement for the CEO to exit the organisation, but not before there was significant collateral damage across the organisation, at all levels, due to the breakdown in governance and management relationships. This damage included a severe lack of both strategic and operational, aligned leadership at the Executive level. This in turn, had the consequence of mixed messaging, holistic confusion, frustration, uncertainty and fear, and demotivated inaction at other levels throughout the organisation. Over time, this level of damage ultimately led to a significant loss of productively, which resulted in external, problematic brand and reputational issues for the organisation, across a wide range of stakeholders.  

ACENTIA APPROACH TAKEN

Given the significant level of complexity involved with this situation, it was confirmed that the Acentia consultants undertake a facilitated, comprehensive ‘push the reset button’ approach using the workshops, tools and techniques contained within the Acentia framework. This included a phased approach, whereby, as a first stage, the Acentia consultants used the Acentia Strategy toolkit to facilitate the Governance group through a reset process to redefine and establish a core purpose, envisioned future, and overarching strategy for the organisation. The Acentia consultants then partnered with the acting CEO and Executive team members to reestablish an aligned leadership approach across all levels, using the Acentia Leadership Capability toolkit. 

Once there was clarity of future direction and all the leaders were aligned to this direction, Acentia consultants then partnered with the organisation to implement the Acentia Core programme. This included an assessment of the organisation’s workplace culture, before creating a bespoke Culture strategic plan aligned to the core purpose, vision, strategy and unique features and the establishment of an in-house Culture team responsible for the deployment of the Culture plan.  

IMPACT

The impact of the ‘push the reset button’ approach has over time bought a significant level of calm and clarity back to the organisation, with the turnover level down and the quality and productivity levels up. People feel safe, can innovate in their roles, team members can question the status quo in a continuous improvement way and everyone has remembered how to laugh and have fun again, an extremely important aspect of any working environment.

SITUATION

This case study situation involved a technical team that while producing okay results, were not quite gelling as a team on the interpersonal front, resulting in unnecessary tension and confusion and some team members not feeling valued. This team had previously experienced an internal company team development initiative, which unfortunately had not resulted in any substantive change to how the team members interacted with each other. So, it was particularly important from a buy-in perspective that these team members had the knowledge and insight that undertaking a phased programme of team development over a lengthier period, would have a much higher likelihood of success.

ACENTIA APPROACH TAKEN

Equipped with the Acentia Teams toolkit, the Acentia consultants began the team development journey by having the team discover and explore their own, and then each other’s personality preferences. This was followed by the team applying their new preferences insight and knowledge into the practical world of team communication, so they could transfer their learnings back into their day-to-day work environment.  In addition, the team also explored the concept of Emotional Intelligence and again, how to transfer emotional intelligence behaviours back into the working environment, particularly behaviours connected to empathy and active listening. These specific behaviours were to support team members to feel a lot more valued going forward. At the end of this phase, the team developed a bespoke ‘Team Table’, which has the central purpose of enabling a team to build up additional knowledge of each individual team member over time. This was to further support the maturing of this team’s knowledge and ability to perform well together. 

For the next phase of team development, the Acentia consultants facilitated the team members through a Team Charter process to enable the team to substantively understand their team core purpose and associated key responsibilities. In addition, the team explored and established their key team behaviours and what they expected of each other from a work perspective. Once clear on their core purpose, key responsibilities, team behaviours and expectations of each other, the team then worked through a process to robustly transfer all this team knowledge back into the working environment on a daily basis.    

IMPACT

The team members are now much more knowledgeable and aware of how interpersonal behaviours can have an impact in the work environment and as such, they now actively seek to exhibit healthy behaviours that support team performance versus hinder the team performance. With the team clarity relating to their core purpose and key responsibilities, the team members now perceive their work activity as much more meaningful and because of this, have reported feeling much higher levels of motivation and satisfaction in their work.