Leading Edge Consulting Ltd

Leading Edge Consulting Ltd: Name plate

A large UK building contractor

The challenge

How to develop customer focus in an habitually adversarial contracting environment.

The intervention

An initiative was developed over a 4 year period, to:

  1. Generate customer and employee data about customer focus and performance improvement;
  2. Design and deliver performance improvement workshops and re-engineering efforts to create a more customer-focussed business process;
  3. Design and deliver two-day leadership development workshops which would develop a consensus on a new approach to leadership, and exercise those new skills;
  4. Design and support a set of 30 action learning sets, which put leaders into the driving seat of their own learning, and provided critical exchange of best practice across the regional businesses.

The result

  1. Leaders confident of taking the business in a new direction, and behaving in a way consistent with that direction: customer and employee focussed, working towards win-win solutions, breaking adversarial habits.
  2. A more integrated national business. The leadership work accelerated the integration of several regional business, and enabled the development and sharing of best practices.

A Rail Maintenance Contractor

The challenge

How to involve managers in a meaningful way in the work of the workforce, to enhance the planning horizon, and to improve organisational morale.

The intervention

A six-month intervention was developed with 100 managers to:

  1. Develop leadership skills using 360° feedback and coaching;
  2. Learn and practice a new approach to planning and leadership in three modules.

The result

  1. Planning horizon lengthened from 2-3 days to 8 weeks on bigger projects.
  2. Managers began to understand their role in making things happen in the organisation, and there was improved effectiveness in communications between managers and workforce.

A monopoly telecoms services provider in Jamaica

The challenge

How to prepare 180 key managers for moving from being a monopoly to a new competitive environment in which the company would lose some market share.

The intervention

A six month intervention was developed with 180 managers to enable managers to understand and discuss the implications of the major changes they were facing, and to provide a model of change to allow them to manage the process pro-actively. This was done in three modules over a six-month period. Module One provided the context, the model and the methodology and supported people to start change projects. Modules Two and Three reviewed the work on projects and the role people had taken in managing change in the organisation at large

The result

  1. Managers were supported to create a personal and organisational stance to manage the change at hand.
  2. A number of effective change projects were implemented, and managers learned how to make projects effective.

A Software Games Developer

The situation

A group of young inexperienced managers were developing a fast-growing poorly-disciplined organisation.

The Intervention

A nine-month intervention was designed to:

  1. Enable top managers to determine the direction of the business, organisational obstacles and strategies;
  2. Deliver leadership skills to managers with people management responsibility in a series of leadership workshops.

The result

A more focused organisation now has clear lines of communication and decision making, and a group of managers who know how to be effective, and who know what difference they can and need to make.

A Social Services Department

The challenge

Focussing staff in the department on a needs-led approach.

The intervention

  1. Facilitating a think tank process to develop a needs-led approach in the department.
  2. Assisting with the development of the key messages and facilitating roadshows to communicate with staff.
  3. Project managing the development of a needs-led assessment process and supporting information technology to record assessments and share information between practitioners.

A Local Authority

The challenge

Working with the Corporate Management Team to develop corporate Council priorities and improve the Team’s effectiveness.

The intervention

  1. Interviewing all members of team to assess current situation and key challenges for team.
  2. Working with CMT to identify key corporate issues and examine them in detail and develop action plans to address them.
  3. Facilitating larger group session to involve wider group of managers in priorities.

A Membership Organisation for Public Sector Directors

The challenge

Increasing the influence of the organisation on national government policy over 5-yr period.

The intervention

  1. Facilitating meeting of annual executive team to encourage smooth handover between elected officers and putting together annual business plan.
  2. Annual 2-day policy events for leadership of organisation to examine in detail current relevant aspects of organisation’s policy.
  3. Assisting with design and facilitation of annual conference for members to explore major current issues.