Case Study
Facilitated team working to encourage collaborative business planning
Overview
The ‘away day’ was attended by 13 team members from Pod-Trak’s London, Manchester and Doncaster offices. Delegates commented on how useful the day was for enabling them to network with colleagues with whom little day-to-day interaction is possible due to working in different parts of the country. The day was also viewed as productive for generating ideas for the team to develop further, and motivation to do so. Team members’ feedback included:
- “It was a very constructive session, which was made easy by Holger”
- “The day was very well structured and well presented”
- “Extremely well delivered day, enjoyable and practical”
- “DISC profiling proved to be surprisingly accurate”
Solution
Well before the day, we met with Pod-Trak’s managing director to understand his and colleagues’ objectives for the day. The main objectives were to:
- Identify priorities for the business over the coming five years
- Develop a strategy to achieve the business priorities
- Analyse Pod-Trak’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats
- Identify critical success factors for the business, and associated key performance indicators, to address and monitor performance against issues that matter most to customers
- Undertake a detailed competitor analysis
- Review market factors that influence what Pod-Trak offers, to whom, and how
- Review Pod-Trak’s core competences to understand better how they can be used to greater effect for customers’ projects
- Understand team members’ personality profiles so that work preferences, including communication styles, could be better geared to effective working
We designed the day to include fun intervals between work sessions, using brain teasers to add healthy competition between team members. We used DISC profiling to aid understanding of team members’ work style preferences. The team commented on how accurate the profiling was in reflecting individuals’ natural preferences, and everyone realised something about others’ communication preferences that they did not appreciate before. There was general consensus that the team members would be able to work better together as a result of their awareness from the DISC profiling.
Challenges
Bringing together 13 busy senior people from throughout the country was itself a challenge, and we had to make best use of the day so that everyone left with the most benefits from their time invested. We designed the agenda for the day to undertake tasks that addressed the priority objectives. Using the DISC results, we were able to divide the team into smaller groups to work on the analyses, reporting back to the rest of the team after each exercise. Since time management was a critical part of our facilitation role, we provided guidance on how the feedback reporting would be best provided, which ensured that everyone’s voice was heard and all ‘angles’ on the subjects were recorded.
Outcome
The feedback on the day from the team indicated the success of the event. We asked an open question to gauge satisfaction levels:
“What score do you think today’s event deserves (out of 10)?”
- 8 from one respondent
- 9 from six respondents
- 10 from five respondents
We produced a detailed report from the day’s findings, including clear ‘So what?’ sections to guide Pod-Trak’s further business planning work. The detailed planning and business improvements arising from the team’s work have enabled Pod-Trak to expand its portfolio of projects, leading to further successful promotional efforts.
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