Success stories

The new VP Enterprise Project Management wanted her EPMO to step up, take charge and accelerate adoption of world-class project management techniques.  She wanted them to stop complaining about a lack of support and take charge to earn credibility and adherence.  “I want our EPMO to have the courage of a thundering herd of wild stallions that is setting the pace and making their presence felt,” she announced to her leadership team.  “That is the only way we will get traction to implement a single platform/single system, rather than letting rouge business units limp along with legacy systems and out-dated customer interfaces.”  A series of Workshops OnCourage, spread over an 18-month interval, coupled with Coaching OnCourage and action learning initiatives, equipped this VP and her two AVPs to strengthen courage in the entire EPMO, launch the new system successfully, and win acclaim from a CEO and Board of Directors who were holding their feet to the fire.  If their EPMO could step up and make the difference, so can your department.

The COO of a global safety engineering firm saw profits evaporating because his Field Engineers were focused on doing the engineering rather than managing the client relationship, in partnership with their Account Managers.  “We get high marks for the quality of the service we provide,” he said, “but we show up to do two days of engineering work and have to wait a day or two while the customer gets things ready.  We have to do a better job of getting out in front of this and charging for our wait-time, if the client does not keep their commitments.”  A 2-day Workshop OnCourage equipped the Field Engineers to be orchestrators and cross-functional leaders, not just technicians.  As the engineers applied these new skills, they increased their productivity by a whopping 50% and restored the enterprise to profitability while still maintaining their high Net Promoter scores.  If they could boost their profits by learning to be better orchestrators, so can your frontline teams.

This Lead Engineer was technically brilliant.  She set high standards.  She could zero in and find flaws before anyone else saw the problems.  But her people-skills created a palpable level of fear.  And her zero-tolerance for mistakes or inefficiencies actually discouraged initiative and initiative.  A few key members of her project team were so insulted that they stopped returning her calls or answering her emails.  Her CTO decided enough was enough.  He asked her to receive Coaching OnCourage.  With feedback, guidance and mediation, the Lead Engineer turned things around with her team and used her power and prowess to unleash brilliance, ignite a sense of urgency and inspire esprit de corps.  Instead of continuing on the trajectory to a career that was red-lining, she is now a high-potential and is being tapped for plum assignments and fast-tracked for promotion.  If she could do this, in partnership with us and with her CTO, so can one of your technical geniuses.

A project team in a global biotech firm included representatives from different professional disciplines, different nationalities and three different strategic partners. Cash burn had to be managed and formidable technical hurdles had to be overcome to achieve market access quickly enough to fill an unmet medical need.  To do this effectively, the team had to make crisp hand-offs and had to learn to rely on one another's judgment instead of second-guessing decisions that were made elsewhere. They had to make the most of limited resources by trusting each other enough to negotiate for what they needed rather than building in a cushion “just in case.”  They had to use time effectively by limiting meetings to the 6-12 people who could present key issues and make decisions, rather than the 20-30 people who would have to live with the decision.  They had to ask tough questions of one another without getting defensive.  And they had to avoid a turf-war or struggle for dominance between the company’s country of origin and its satellite base of operations near investors and development partners in North America, where the CEO and CMO resided.  Let us tell you howcourage gave them the trust to make all of this happen in their multi-location, multi-national company, and how it can do the same for your multi-location enterprise.

On paper, it looked like the perfect marriage.  But the cultures of the two companies could not be more different.  The dominant player was a scrappy entrepreneurial upstart getting its first toehold in the US market.  The acquisition was a spinoff from a large multi-layered American corporation. Diversity Dialogues™ brought the two management teams together, both on the departmental and enterprise levels, gave them an opportunity to see each other “in action,” and established a Shared Purpose.  It was clear that the dominant player would set the cadence, relying on the expertise of managers in the acquired company who could lift their courage and build the courage of their teams.  The result?  For individuals, informed decisions about “whether to stay or go” based on clarity about “what it would take to be part of the new team.” For the enterprise, performance tracks ahead industry benchmarks rather than lagging behind; a robust portfolio-management process sets clear investment priorities; and engagement scores are high, amongst veterans and newcomers who are excited about the new company’s high-courage culture.  If they could build the courage to make this merger work, so can you.

The founder of this life sciences company was outraged.  We wanted to tell her that she was blowing things out of proportion, but she had good reasons to worry.  Performance was lagging behind investor expectations.  And the board excluded her from a major decision about what to do next, telegraphing a critical message about their confidence.  It was an inflection point for her and for the company.  Could she view the Board’s decision to recruit an outside CEO as an opportunity rather than a demotion or rejection?  Could she build a partnership with the new executive?  Delegate and empower the middle managers she had recruited, mentored and groomed – but whom she also micro-managed, second-guessed and insulated from accountability?  Coaching OnCourage equipped the founder and CEO to agree on new roles, and equipped middle managers to step up and spread their wings.  Workshops OnCourage built her skills as a sponsor and the team’s as orchestrators.  And tapped her technical know-how, her high profile in the marketplace and her instincts about the most promising new business development opportunities.  If this founder’s contribution to the company could be lifted to a higher level, so can yours.