Case Study

Executive workshop, focus on coaching for the senior management team for a Wisconsin Divison Cable Company

The Challenge

Our firm met with leaders within the cable company to respond to a request for an executive workshop that would focus on coaching for the senior management team for the Wisconsin division. Several requests for proposals had already gone out to consultants.

The Opportunity

We spent a few minutes to clarify the need and outcome required, and asked if they were wedded to the idea of a one-day workshop. After finding that we were the only consultants who had gone through a discovery process with the staff and the sponsoring executive, we submitted a proposal for their mentoring initiative.

Our design established executive ownership for the process, spaced the action learning across multiple sessions, and incorporated the design into two corporate initiatives that were already in place.

The Response

We met to consider the development of our project team and sponsors. Roles were identified and clarified for the key players. In addition to my role as the external consultant, the Manager of People Development acted as my internal partner. The VP of Human Resources was pleased to play the role as project champion, and the President took on the role as the project sponsor.

Internally, dates were set for off-site meetings and our project team started with the design for the four session series: business case, process design, working personality styles and an application workshop. We were nearly complete with the framework when our meeting with the president identified a major implementation issue – the executives had much on their plate and he did not want this to put them over the edge. We recommended moving forward with the two hour business case session. If the executive team did not want to adopt this initiative as their own after the session, we would not proceed any further.

The project team rose to the occasion and was granted the ability to move the strategic development project forward to deployment. In addition to the initial approval, we felt good about the transfer the ownership for the mentoring initiative from the president to the entire executive team. Our next session date was set, and we moved from presentation on the design to great conversations on key questions that would continue to build ownership for the initiative.

While meeting dates were difficult to come by for the executive team, we continued to forge ahead with the overall design, and development of the executives as mentors. We provided MBTI assessments and feedback, aligned the corporate diversity and succession planning processes into the work, and completed the development process with a pairing of the mentee to mentors, as well as scenario planning on what could most likely occur through implementation.

Once we completed with the executive development sessions, we moved on to the design and implementation for the mentee development session, but not until each executive had personally invited each of them to participate. We briefed them on the initiative, what we were hoping to accomplish, what the process would look like, and what their major responsibilities included.

Preliminary Results

It is too early to finalize a list of organizational results, including the retention of high-potential talent; however, our initial expectations were not only met but surpassed in many respects.

In addition, we offer our clients the opportunity to evaluation their satisfaction with our consulting performance, both quantitatively and qualitatively. One of the best summary indicators is a rating to the following summary question –

On a scale of 1 – 10, how likely are you to recommend this consultant to a professional colleague?

The development manager gave our firm the highest score of 10, with the following comments:

"The potential for this project is very high. We not only developed an effective mentoring process, but put our executives in a position that others would get to know them, and look up to them. I respect Dan for his willingness to customize the program to our ever-changing business needs. He listened to feedback, adapted the program, implemented the changes and demonstrated his commitment to us and to the developmental project. From here, we will continue to engage the senior leadership team to help high-potential candidates succeed and feel valued at the cable company."

From this point forward, we will assess the annual process at two critical points in time. First, will be the opportunity to assess early successes and implementation issues at the one month point, and secondly, benefits will be assessed at a six-month period. Ultimately, we will track the retention and success of participants in the organization.

As a result of the initial success, plans are in motion for directors to be invited into the next wave of development, along with other high-potential talent they will mentor.