Case Study Summaries
Challenge – Trust Issues Impairing Both
Team and Organizational Performance
Overview – The IT department of a large healthcare organization was plagued by numerous problems stemming from a lack of trust on the leadership team.
Approach – Two senior leadership teams undertook 15 hours of training in Collaborative Conversations. This included sessions on social, emotional, and somatic intelligences and their role in self-regulation. They also learned skills to handle conflict creatively.
Outcome - After completing the training, participants reported vastly improved interpersonal relationships, greater openness to new ideas and approaches to work, and a much clearer sense of being guided by the organization's purpose and mission. Many reported that their relationships outside of work also benefitted. Before and after survey results.
Challenge – Integrating a New
Leader into an Existing Team
Overview – A newly hired SVP and his leadership team needed to rapidly bring out the best in each other while achieving ambitious growth targets. We embarked on a four-month coaching adventure.
Approach – A roadmap for the next 24 months was developed and fully fleshed out with detailed responsibilities and action items agreed to and made publicly visible (to the team) for easy tracking and shared accountability.
Outcome – Polled after four months, the consensus was that team conversations were far more productive than they were prior to the coaching and people were consistently hitting their target numbers.
Challenge – Consolidating Departments at a University
Overview – in order to streamline costs and gain greater efficiency, the UCSC campus needed to consolidate 24 separate IT departments into a single entity.
Approach – Using participant-driven methods, we brought together the heads of each department and helped them to make their collective knowledge, concerns, aspirations and burning questions visible in ways that identified the critical path forward. (More here.)
Outcome – The integration initiative was a success by every significant measure. Of 250+ people affected, fewer than a dozen were laid off, several took early retirement and some opted for part-time status through job sharing. The new department kept the continuity of service that was present under the older divisions, and surveys of customers showed a higher level of satisfaction as a result of the consolidation effort.