CASE STUDY
Team Of Teams
Background
A global company's US-based executive team was newly formed following a reorganization. The team faced numerous challenges.
- It was composed primarily of recently promoted functional leaders which caused a lack of direction, inefficiency, and a shortage of trust and candor.
- The executive (the newest team member) brought in to lead the integration of the new product was poorly received - as is most often the case when a change agent is brought in from the outside.
- The team was also oversized, which led to uncertainty about who was responsible for setting enterprise goals and making decisions.
In addition to these factors, The enterprise challenges this team had to solve included:
- hitting their financial targets
- attempting to align to expectations of global leadership while strengthening their US regional strategies
- innovating the organization with AI and the advancement of other technologies
- successfully integrating a new product and discovering that the company's internal operations were ill-equipped and inexperienced (from a technical perspective) as they had never brought a similar product to market
- shifting the company culture to more performance based
The company had been working with a professional services firm that was not delivering the specific, results-oriented coaching the company wanted. This firm pulled the team offline and did a lot of philosophical coaching or coaching to concepts.
The company turned to Bright Arrow to receive coaching "on the field" while the team delivered its work. This prevented time and resource drain by coaching them to learn new ways of getting their work done and coaching alongside them to completion of goals.
Intervention:
Leadership Team Coaching
Bright Arrow's six-month engagement focused on refining the team's purpose, improving processes, instilling accountability and clarity about decision- making rights, and helping the team organize itself in a way that allowed them to deliver on multiple enterprise goals in parallel. This revealed the need to address pockets of interpersonal conflict that were stalling out the broader team.
- Discovery: The initial phase involved a deep dive to uncover challenges not previously identified. This included interviews with stakeholders and team members, as well as an evaluation of team "artifacts" such as meeting agendas and performance goals. The discovery phase identified the top six challenges and top 10 strengths of the team.
- Bright Arrow helped the team systematically work through their challenges, starting with refining their team purpose statement. The team also established new norms and implemented a centralized tool for setting and managing enterprise priorities. They also used a before-action review process to identify likely challenges and learnings from past experiences.
- Team of Teams (ToTs): To increase agility and to begin solving for multiple enterprise challenges, in parallel the team was divided into smaller "team of teams" groups for four-month sprints.
- The newest member of the team was coached privately through a strategy to increase his personal/employee NPS scores and gain better internal traction/alignment.
- Bright Arrow taught the team how to form and disband these groups and to bring their work back to the broader team for feedback or decisions.
- Bi-Weekly Team Coaching: Ongoing coaching was provided to support the entire leadership team, help the "team of teams" deliver on their specific goals, and provide private one-on-one coaching to individual members as needed to help catalyze the team's agenda.
- This real-time coaching helped the team learn and grow while developing more consistent and effective working rhythms.
Outcomes:
The coaching engagement resulted in substantial improvements
Enhanced Team Dynamics: Leaders developed better working relationships, increased trust, and improved their ability to speak with candor. For example, healthy tension between sales and fulfillment is natural and encouraged, however the relationship between two key executives had become dysfunctional. This was well known throughout the business. These two executives were coached through their conflict (even working into the next layer of leadership) to ensure it was resolved fully. The team also moved from a functional to an enterprise-wide way of thinking.
Improved Business Performance: The U.S. division delivered ahead of schedule, and sales numbers increased. The former head of the North American division stated that it was "undeniable that Bright Arrow has figured out something really unique here" about how to work with leadership teams.
Improved Team Cohesion: Within 6 months 360 reviews of the newest team member were significantly improved as was the progress of maturing enabling systems/functions within the business to support the product launch.
Effective Working Practices: The team implemented new processes and a centralized tool for setting and managing priorities. The "team of teams" approach helped the broader team stay connected to its values and priorities.
Conclusion
By providing a new, results-oriented approach to coaching, Bright Arrow helped the company's leadership team overcome its initial challenges. The structured coaching and development provided the team with the tools and support needed to refine their purpose, improve relationships, and create accountability. These improvements not only elevated the team's own performance but also drove better outcomes for the entire organization.
