Client need
- The Asia Executive Committee of this leading luxury brand includes MDs from the Middle East, Singapore/Thailand/Malaysia, Australia and Korea as well as the heads of three support functions: Finance, HR and Operations
- There is a strong willingness for this team to start working together on regional strategic projects, leveraging their collective strengths: product knowledge combined with a solid understanding of how to drive growth
- However, this team has only met 3 times over the last 2 years and has not yet taken the time to reflect on how they could work together more effectively across this region.
- Furthermore, skills such as thinking outside the box, challenging the status quo, visioning/long-term strategic thinking and risk taking are missing. Whilst t there is a clear alignment of what makes the company strategically different, there is not a shared view of the regional strategy for APAC
- To address these challenges, the regional CEO invited us to design a strategic offsite for himself and his ExCo members so they could start working as a team, define what their common strategy should be as well as agree a concrete action plan to execute this strategy.
Solution
- The assigned Accelerance facilitator conducted interviews with each Exco member which allowed us to understand:
- What each ExCo member believes would make this team successful
- What could be the blockers and enablers of the efficient execution of a common strategy
- Any leadership issue that should be addressed as a group
- What each of them is willing to contribute.
- Working in pairs or trios prior to the event, Exco members were asked to define what the region strategy should be, with a view to present their reflections during the off-site and accelerate the process.
The offsite day aimed to achieve two key objectives:
- Creating a better cohesion: Via the “Self portrait exercise” each participants opened up with each other and shared more details about what makes them who they are and what values are important for them as individuals.
- Aligning and cascading the organisation strategy across the region: The CEO shared his views on the importance of understanding, communicating and cascading the company strategy across the region. In two sub teams the following questions were discussed: (1)-How can we align the implementation of the co strategy across the region? (2)- What regional projects or issues should we focus on together to implement the co strategy regionally? (3)- What decisions should be made locally/regionally?
- Through Appreciative Inquiry, the participants discussed in details for each project the scope, the enablers, the blockers, the objectives, the success measures, the action plan and the project structure.
Impact
The success of this offsite would be measured in different ways:
- How well does each ExCo member know each other at the end of the day
- How well do they understand and apply how they can best work together as a regional team
- Regional topics and projects have been identified and ExCo members committed to leading and supporting the implementation of these projects
- ExCo governance and processes have been agreed
CLIENT TESTIMONIAL
“We have asked Accelerance to work with us for a key project dedicated to our managers in the MESA region. They came out with the right practitioners who provided us with their strong experience and background in leadership and talent development. I must say that the result was a big success and the on going impact is still very positive for our teams’ growth. We shall work together again for another project.”
HR Director (Middle-East South Asia)
