Accelerating growth in a US-based software firm

Context

With the goal of tripling the organisation's size over three years, our client needed to enhance team effectiveness to optimise outcomes, reduce process-oriented bottlenecks, and foster collaboration across siloed functions. 

Key challenges included: 

• Both the CEO and 50% of the team were new to the business, bringing diverse experiences and perspectives – but also creating integration challenges. 

• Leadership was weighted heavily towards the CEO, FD, and CTO, creating tiers within the Executive Team. This was hindering the organisation's agility and pace. 

• The client wanted to shift the team's focus from being process-oriented to being outcome-oriented, creating a more performance-first culture.

• Siloed functions hindered effective collaboration, particularly in areas that required enterprise thinking 

Realising that the existing structure and dynamics could hinder their ambitious growth goals, the client recognised the need for a comprehensive team effectiveness intervention. Their primary objectives were to foster collaboration (in the right areas), improve speed and bravery of decision-making, enhance leadership distribution, and create a growth-oriented mindset.

What we did

We worked with the team members first as individuals to identify strengths, risks and recommendations. We then worked with them as a group across six months, combining structured exercises and experiential workshopping with in-the-moment observation, feedback, and intervention. 

Making commitments - as a team and as individuals 

In the first team session, we discussed the themes that emerged from the individual assessments, using these to develop a set of behavioural commitments to improve team effectiveness:

• Labelling conversations to define their purpose and nature; nominating a chair to manage discussions and focus the conversation on the outcome. 

• Identifying when the team wasn’t collaborating effectively; and asking a series of reflective questions to help them to decide what to do about it. 

• How are we feeling about the level of ‘spice’ – is there a healthy level of conflict/debate? Is there ‘lone wolf syndrome’ at play – are people walking the perimeter, not collaborating and getting stuck in? 

• Should we be debating this or ‘giving it to Leonardo’ – the expert in this area?

• What isn’t being said? How can we open up the conversation and address the elephants in the room or the underlying dynamics? 

• If we need to increase the level of ‘spice’, let’s give 5 minutes of constructive criticism to open up the conversation and break the communication blocks.

The team then settled on a series of task commitments:

• Acknowledged that they weren’t ‘flying at the required altitude’ – and committed to being more strategic, not getting bogged down in operational details.  

• Recognised they might not have the right level of talent at the T-2 level – committed to evaluate whether there were capability blocks at that level that could prevent the SLT from giving them agency and accountability.

• Committed to reviewing the policies that were stifling ownership and getting in the way of distributed leadership; allowing T-2 to take a more strategic focus in order to relieve the bottleneck at the senior team level.

Each team member also made individual task and behaviour commitments. We documented these and fed them back to the team for review and action. 

Building peer to peer muscle

During the intervention, we applied the insights gained from the individual assessments and practised using the new techniques and commitments to address current issues.

To foster collaboration, we engaged in a structured peer-to-peer listening exercise for a specific current problem. This exercise encouraged the team to:

• Identify both spoken and unspoken aspects of the problem.

• Suggest bold actions to address the issue.

• Recognize how unconscious contributions may impact the problem.

• Leverage available resources and skills to better address the problem.

This exercise aimed to develop peer-to-peer observation, feedback, and support to improve collaboration.

The team members have become more outcome-focused and collaborative, reducing dependency on the CEO and FD for decision-making. Increased collaboration across functions is enabling them to tackle complex challenges and grapple with conflict in a cohesive, productive way.