Case Studies
Our Case Studies provide examples of how we work in practice; focusing on a specific client engagement, why we were engaged, what we did and the results. Our ‘SPOTLIGHT ON’ feature looks at a particular service offering that we have implemented at a variety of organisations, providing a more general overview of its benefits and how we can help.
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CASE STUDY ONE
Transforming a workforce culture from ‘delivering for today’ to ‘building for tomorrow’
Client: Chief of Staff
Industry: Financial Services
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A titan of the industry losing their competitive edge, with a workforce resistance to change and lacking the growth mindset to take the company into the future.
Organisational Context
Our client’s industry faced significant disruption and the core business was not investing enough in new technologies and practices to keep them ‘ahead of the game’. Competitors were beginning to move ahead of them both in systems and service capabilities, plus several new entrants in the market were gaining ground and were not shackled by legacy system issues.
The business had an exceptionally loyal workforce with a significant portion of the middle to senior levels working in the organisation for over 20 years. Although hardworking and diligent, new thinking and change were not their preference.
Despite the considerable size of the business-line, with employees across multiple international locations, the business had only 1 dedicated Human Resource generalist, and a small training team focused on technical training. Of particular note, they had not undertaken any management or leadership development activities aside from ad-hoc training for the most senior roles.
The internal chief of staff reflected on the programme of activities required to affect rapid transformation in the business. They understood that it was not a matter of just ‘rolling out’ strategic and operational changes. A mindset change was required. There were a number of organisational mechanisms and levers needing to be introduced in order to signal, support and sustain this transformation.
Services provided by the Bibi Partnership:
The programme of activities required to affect such a rapid, sustainable change was tremendous. It required an extra pair of hands from someone who had a good level of seniority, could build relationships and would supplement the leadership team by bringing broader external experience into the business. The Bibi Partnership worked hand-in-hand with the internal Chief of Staff to deliver solutions that propelled the culture into a growth mindset and encourage the behavioural changes required.
Services provided:
• Sounding board and advisor to Leadership team
• Writing/editing of strategic communications
• Co-developing of new Business Principles
• Designing of Leadership Development Framework
• Designing and delivering of accelerated senior and emerging leadership development action-learning programmes
Impact:
“The Bibi Partnership Chief of Staff fitted seamlessly within the team and was accepted by both the newer and longer-serving team members. Bringing innovative thought, model teamwork, energy, diligence and care, her value was immense. She knew when to lead, when to facilitate and when to coach.”
Within 6 months of engaging The Bibi Partnership, the business’ workforce began to show new energy that was future focused. The general business conversation changed from ‘What do we need to do right now’ to ‘Where are we going and how are we going to get there’. The new Business Principles were simple, but explicit enough to guide the workforce towards the standards required to deliver on the newly developed business strategy.
Within fourteen months, 108 senior/middle managers had undertaken one of the accelerated action-learning leadership programmes. The vast majority of whom had been in the same organisation for over 20 years and had never participated in a developmental programme.
The business is flourishing and has retained its lead position in the industry. The ‘infrastructure’ introduced by The Bibi Partnership remains, and the Trusted Advisor relationship continues today.
“I didn’t want to bring in consultants who would deliver solutions based on pre-designed frameworks. I was looking for someone who would have objectivity, with strong relational abilities to work with all the members of our team and help us develop the best customised solutions based on our specific needs…”
Managing Director, Financial Services
CASE STUDY TWO
Leading & retaining a virtual/hybrid workforce requires confident, emotional engagement
Client: Chief of Staff
Industry: Financial Services
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As organisational energy diffuses, leaders are feeling the strain of managing dispersed teams.
Organisational Context
As with many businesses that endured covid, the last few years dramatically changed our client’s workforce ecosystem. Their usual energising office hubs were replaced with a virtual/hybrid set up. Managers were at a loss on how to recreate the camaraderie and mutually supportive dynamics experienced in a physical place of work. They felt they were now managing a number of individuals, rather than a team.
Our client was concerned that their managers were under substantial strain. Many vocalised that they were feeling unrelenting pressure to be a constant ‘energising hub,’ and had exponentially increased the number of interactions and touch points with their team. Their stress was magnified by concern for the wellbeing of their direct reports through covid, plus a major company announcement meant they were experiencing significant turnover of staff which increased their burden.
They had implemented a number of initiatives to support their employees such as wellbeing sessions, tips for how to manage hybrid teams and allowing managers to be flexible with working hours. However, the impact of these appeared to be minimal. Their managers still felt overwhelmed, out of control and questioned their abilities to motivate and manage a predominantly ‘working-from-home’ workforce.
Services provided by the Bibi Partnership:
Discovery
We were asked to identify the root dynamics of managers’ stress and provide recommendations and solutions to resolve them. We discovered the following:
Managers measured team performance in terms of meeting production/commercial targets. Most managers lacked the explicit, nuanced behavioural performance language necessary to create and instil standards
When in the same physical workplace more natural, immediate, informal, collaborative and supportive dynamics existed between the team members. When working in hybrid scenarios there were no mechanisms in place, or understanding of how to create, similar collaborative supportive dynamics
New team members had difficulty assimilating into the organisations/team culture and felt no sense of belonging
When team members underperformed, managers were stressed about how ‘personal’ they could be when enquiring about their home working circumstances
Many tenured team members felt a loss of organisational identity, a lack of team unity and cohesion.
Team successes, once being a warm and shared in-person experience, had become 10 mins of congratulations on a virtual call. Bad news was also hitting team members harder in the more insular conditions
Solution
We designed and delivered a couple of key mechanisms to help support managers, but also to enhance the organisation’s culture for a dispersed workforce:
We created a script for behavioural standards that were aligned to our client’s business principles. This provided managers with more explicit behavioural language around a high-performing team
We delivered ‘Leading High-Performing Teams’ action-learning sessions. This comprised of the following modules:
To develop a team management persona that meets the needs of a virtual/hybrid workforce
To learn how to use the high-performing team behavioural standards in varying scenarios to create a sense of belonging, mutual support and increase motivation
To hone emotional intelligence, coaching and feedback skills
Impact:
The new behavioural performance standards have provided the managers with the ability to be more articulate in terms of what they expect from their teams. They are being used in induction programmes; audits for team performance and in strategic communications (town halls, intranet).
So far approximately 60 managers have undertaken the action learning sessions. Participants are now managing to drive performance with their virtual/hybrid teams more comfortably and confidently. The sessions continue.
CASE STUDY THREE
Transitioning SMEs into commercial & strategic trusted advisors
Client: Managing Partner
Industry: Professional Services
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Experts in their field becoming experts in business;
Organisational Context
A leading professional services organisation had engrained linear reporting lines and a reward system aligned to each service line. This meant there was little to no incentive for their subject matter experts (SMEs) to engage in broader strategic conversation with clients, outside of their own area of expertise. Whilst the Managing Partners did not want to change this governance, they knew that there was considerable opportunity to create and deliver integrative cross-consultancy practice offerings, achieving more sustainable strategic outcomes for their clients and improving their bottom-line.
The Managing Partner believed a key vehicle in achieving this objective was to introduce a new executive development programme. The programme aimed to encourage greater cross-practice networking, grow the SMEs’ business acumen & strategic thinking and enhance their relational and conversational skills.
As the central office was limited in headcount and lacked the learning and development expertise required, they sought an experienced resource to co-design the programme. This person needed to have the political awareness and communication skills to work within the complex dynamic of the organisation. They also needed to work with a personal impact training company that the Managing Partner wanted to use for a major part of the programme. On top of this, everything had to be virtual due to covid restrictions.
Services provided by the Bibi Partnership:
• Providing Learning & Development expertise, specifically in the Trusted Advisor space
• Co-designing and delivering an action-learning development programme. All aspects of the programme were grounded in context and supported strategic & commercial intent. This established conditions for more immediate application by the participants of their new skills & behaviours
• Engaging with senior stakeholders for the duration of the programme to ensure contextual, customised design
• Coaching and supporting the programme delivery team, both external and internal to the organisation
• Supporting & upskilling the Managing Partner’s Business Manager to take more of a lead in the Learning & Development space
• Writing/editing communications
• Leading the design and analysis of the 360-feedback instrument
Impact:
The political field that The Bibi Partnership operated in was extremely complex. There were numerous stakeholders and interested partners within the consultancy to navigate, and gaining their buy-in was imperative.
“The Bibi Partnership resource played a key role in preventing a fractious environment, by being objective, calm and good humoured, whilst direct but sensitive in communications. It was apparent that she had no agenda of any kind, other than to deliver the best product for the organisation”
The first iteration of the programme was delivered on time, with good feedback and strong results. Subsequent iterations are taking place and The Bibi Partnership resource continues to play a part in the design and delivery of the programme.
“Our Chief of Staff services help you maximise your chances of success by creating an environment that helps your leaders and their teams deliver results.”
CONTACT US
SPOTLIGHT ON: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
Multi-rater feedback as a tool for employee and company growth
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Successful multi-rater performance management promotes a growth mindset culture, supports an equitable reward structure and is a key tool for your employees’ professional development.
What is multi-rater feedback?
Multi-rater feedback (sometimes in the form of 360-degree feedback) is the concept of collecting insights from different levels in your business about an individual’s performance at work. Respondents can be from any relational set; self, direct reports, indirect reports, peers, managers, clients and other business relationships.
The success of a multi-rater feedback programme is highly dependent on the quality of its implementation and acceptance by employees. It requires appropriate communication, training and keeping the process as simple as possible.
Benefits of the process
Multi-rater feedback is a useful organisational tool that has many benefits:
• Promotes cohesive teamwork and builds trust. Being asked to receive and submit feedback on your colleagues, especially your peers, reinforces the feeling of connectedness and interdependency. However, it is key that employees are guided on what appropriate and helpful feedback looks like
• Provides an employee with a range of deeper and broader insights/perspectives of their strengths and weaknesses, giving them more comprehensive feedback to facilitate new learnings and career paths. This often facilitates an average performer becoming a great one
• Promotes a growth and self-directed learning mindset. Knowing that one is likely to receive feedback from several of your colleagues provides incentive for more accountability for one’s own growth
• Helps mitigate bias and promotes a more equitable experience. A greater number of direct insights/perspectives from respondents in different roles, can mitigate potential bias from the person’s manager and improve feedback quality. Importantly, this can help reduce bias in employment actions, such as promotions and bonus distributions plus ensure fair governance around managing poor performance
• Reinforces high performance behavioural standards that are aligned to the company culture by demonstrating where these have been met, or not
Services provided by The Bibi Partnership
• Scope Performance Management needs of organisation/division
• Provide options and potential benefit analysis
• Design multi-rater mechanism, including competency sets, process and questionnaire.
• Design and implement training
• Produce communications.
• IT (360 agency) consultation and set-up of end-to-end process
• Analysis of Performance Management data, providing insight into future Learning & Development needs
SPOTLIGHT ON: GOVERNANCE
How good governance enhances the likelihood of success
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Often governance can be perceived as a practice for larger, well-established businesses with some viewing it as a barrier to agility in an organisation. Equally one might think about governance as a system designed just to satisfy the shareholders of a company. But governance is not all about compliance or how a business is controlled at the top, nor is it just for large corporates.
An organisation’s governance is the structure and framework it has in place to support and enhance the likelihood of achieving its objectives and goals. Governance encompasses a company’s organisational design, policies, processes, leadership practices, and culture. With good governance in place the right people in the organisation are empowered to make decisions effectively and efficiently, paving way for growth.
Governance re-design in a well-established, high growth business
More established companies will often have some, if not all of the components of governance in place. However, unless periodically reviewed, it can quickly become outdated especially in an organisation that is constantly changing through high-growth, re-structures or M&A. For example, a client had undergone a period of rapid growth and was embarking on the development of a new technology. Whilst focus was pulled towards this new technology, the incumbent technology, that served the majority of the client base, was given minimal attention. There was no clear process for decision making, leading to wastage of time, effort & expenditure and giving rise to an increasingly frustrated loyal client base and workforce.
The Bibi Partnership worked with the client from top down, starting with the strategy of the business to determine the long-term goals of the company, and its technology. A body of work was then carried out to re-design the governance framework to ensure that both the BAU and new business were being enabled efficiently, and not stifled. This included defining business principles, re-organising talent and setting up new decision-making forums and processes to ensure the right people were empowered to drive the company forward.
Setting up a governance framework for a new business
When growing a new business, governance is rarely at the top of the agenda however a lack of governance in a high-growth environment can quickly become a hinderance and lead to an undesirable culture. Many companies in their earlier stages will also be seeking investment, and when assessing a company, investors will often look at how an organisation is governed.
When working with a fintech start-up that was set for rapid expansion, the leadership was concerned their close-knit culture was under threat. Equally the team were keen not to implement cumbersome governance, as this was seen as prohibitive to their agile development culture. By clearly defining the company vision, culture and strategic priorities, we were then able to distil this into some simple but effective operational and development processes, as well as employee objectives. This created a framework that fostered growth and was reflective of the company culture.
Services provided by The Bibi Partnership:
• Governance framework assessment, re-design and implementation
• Process re-design and implementation
• Organisational re-design, including coaching for new roles
• Design and implementation of a new business model
• Performance management framework design and implementation
• Strategy planning and management
• Business principle design