A practical approach that combines
Learning while you lead and land change
We can provide consultants and coaches to help you to deliver change programmes. Alternatively, for a more lasting impact, we can equip your people to lead their own organisational changes and to coach others. Here are our ‘best seller’ activities and what our customers say about us.
Learning and change
Why these activities?
Because they consistently deliver for our clients
Our activities are all well researched, proven and practical. You learn from the experts AND from your colleagues. You practice together, challenge each other and have fun. You are 100% certain to use the new skills, tools and knowledge because you are learning on-the-job, combining doing and learning.
The activities equip your leaders and teams to:
- tackle changes together and more strategically
- build/heal relationships and trust across teams and levels
- handle the complexity, politics and ambiguity of change
- ensure communication is visual, clear and 2-way at each step
- know where and how to nudge to keep things moving
- help people to own the changes, beyond the ‘implementation’
- use meaningful metrics that show the change impact on the business itself and on customers.
Learning and Change
Our core learning and change activities
Are you working on a change programme? We can provide a Change Team Coach to upskill your people on the job, to accelerate delivery and boost capability and confidence.
Bring teams together for a high-impact change programme kick off, an inspirational leader away-day or a lively, hands-on team event to add to your leadership development path.
A proven Lean organisational change technique. Leaders and specialists map out work and data flows and decision making, optimise ways of working and relationships … together!
A core change leader skill: we coach you to make business cases, communicate, lead meetings, influence up and down or secure funding, in the language of your stakeholders.
To accelerate the professional development of your leaders, 1:1 coaching delivers a step change in strategic thinking, business acumen and leadership skills.
Whether you are working in Agile, Waterfall, or on the DevOps ‘journey’, we can provide a PM or coach your people and share tools and experience, on the job.
‘Inspirational sessions! My team found them incredibly useful for their own professional development, and all the actions agreed got done!’
(Darren Goldsby, CDO, Hearst UK)
Change Team Coaching
Rich, impactful, fun, enabled real change
As the change team, you are the group who will design, build and lead the change, through design and build, to the point where the new ways of working are embedded in the organisation. That can seem a long way off when you first come together!
Change Team Coaching covers the skills you need to land the changes, alongside your professional discipline (Technology, HR, Finance, Marketing …) As you steer your live projects, the coaching sessions cover topics as needed, e.g.: systems thinking, business acumen, vision, planning, comms, inspiring trust and action, metrics for success, and working as a high-performing multi-disciplinary team.
Your coach shares their tools and experience and facilitates the coaching sessions. You remain in the driving seat on the project itself.
Business Simulations
An astonishing and memorable experience
The Phoenix Project simulation follows the story of the inspirational book of the same name. Technical specialists and leaders come together to re-build a failing organisation, modernise its equally fragile technology provision, and help each other to:
- understand each others’ worlds and language
- no longer see ‘Tech’ and ‘the Business’ as separate
- rethink ways of working, prioritising and decision making
- speed up feedback loops, internally and with (end) customers
- discover how continuous, incremental improvements beat large scale change for accelerating quality delivery
- experience real, whole organisational agility, rather than tools and jargon
- understand relevant elements of DevOps, assess culture and process maturity and identify next steps
‘The most useful takeaway? The team realising that change takes time, and it is many small steps from many people that make the difference.’
(Doug May, CIO UK & Asia, Safran)
What a day! The team loved it!
The original Apollo 13 mission was an extraordinary success that so nearly ended in disaster. What got the astronauts back alive – and what is required of delegates in the simulation?
- incredible teamwork between teams on the ground, their strategic partners and the crew (customer)
- understanding what is important/urgent and for whom
- fail, review and learn fast
- pivot the whole operation to new strategy and goals
- build consistent, visible, efficient work and data flows
- strong, inclusive leadership, all voices heard
- clarity on their capacity and capability at all times
This simulation will enable teams in any function that provides complex services internally or to end customers to own and hone their delivery and working relationships.
Simulations are not ‘role plays’. They immerse the group in situations close enough to real work and context to resonate, and sufficiently separate to feel safe to challenge and explore work practices.
‘The VSM process was extremely accurate in estimating the costs and time and finding the waste. We now have a team of mappers across Europe who will keep this going, so we can continually improve all our operations.’
(Head of Transformation, European Telecoms Company)
Value Stream Mapping
You could have seen the lightbulb moments from space!
Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a Lean technique that inspires people to actually make changes, even the tricky ones that cross multiple territories.
Senior leaders and functional specialists take part, so all have the same strategic level understanding of how work is actually done, how data is generated and used for decision making, how senior leaders commission and prioritise work, and specialists deliver the services. They can then jointly prioritise improvements and measure the business impact.
The facilitator guides participants through selected value streams, so they can take over and map and manage the work flows of the whole organisation. Participants practise:
- using the tools and building experience
- having the right conversations
- building understanding and trust
- assuring the follow up and use of meaningful metrics
‘If CIOs and CTOs and their senior teams can connect well with the Executive, this is a game changer for the organisation. Understanding what lands well with the Board and what they need from you is key.’
(Stuart Skimming, Former CIO of Royal British Legion, Trustee of Charity IT Leaders)
Presentation Skills For Leaders
Where has my team gone?!
Do you and your team dread that time of year when you need to bid for funding for your area, present your strategy, plans and reports, only to meet with disinterest, frustration and misunderstanding?
We worked with the senior technical leadership team at Chubb, then led by the inspirational Rachel Higham. With group coaching, plus 1:1s, the group drafted, rehearsed and delivered their presentations to invited members of the Board, in their language.
We can help your team to:
- speak the language of the Board and build trust
- enable informed discussion across functions
- influence thinking and decision-making on solutions
- enable better prioritisation of tech and digital investment and operational resourcing
‘Philippa and her team provided 1:1 coaching for our executive leadership team, plus the 360 feedback process. She quickly understood our culture and the coaching delivered tangible results and outcomes. Philippa was inspirational and a true expert in her field.’
(Sara Edwards, Global Head of HR, Belmond)
One-to-One Coaching
Definitely a game changer
‘Philippa was project manager on a £multi-million (digital learning and transformation) project, of which I was the academic lead. She has a firm understanding of PM techniques, builds strong relationships with multiple stakeholders, was comfortable with highly complex structures and conflicting priorities, achieved pressured deadlines AND is lovely to work with.’
Dr Claire Collins (Emerita Professor, Henley Business School, former Professor of Leadership and DBA Programme Director)
Project management services
A PM or a coach to upskill your people
Digital and tech transformation projects are often complex, sensitive and have a wide reaching impact across ‘territories’ within and beyond the organisation. Whether you are using Agile or Waterfall approaches, or looking to change your PM culture, we can help.
We provide a bridge between internal L&D/HR, senior leadership and Tech & Digital communities as we have deep understanding of each of these groups and speak their languages.
We can help to review or set up PMOs and bring in right-sized methods and tools for your organisation. We can help you to work more closely together to land complex change projects and deliver business results, by providing an interim PM, or up-skilling your people, or both.
‘We used the techniques you introduced us to, and mapped out a working process which we followed. Key findings were the need for good triage and involving all parties at the outset rather than surprises coming later down the track. In our next session we will be working through the process with the 7 in-flight projects. We are keeping up the momentum! Your help was invaluable to get us on the right track.’
Melissa Werry, Head of Technology Services, RSPB
