Bussines cases

Team alignment: an essential preliminary step in the execution of a business plan

An international financial institution with a strong presence in Spain contacts Talengo after having defined a new and very ambitious business plan for one of their business units.

The business results in the new plan required a higher focus on the client common to all team members, which entailed breaking the silos existing in each of their departments. They looked to achieve 3 main changes in the medium term: the creation of more agile processes; a higher client centricity from each of the teams; and enhanced innovation in product, technology and business organization aspects.

Objective

To meet the objectives set, the challenge was to achieve in record time the alignment of the teams with this new vision, to change their mindset towards a more intrapreneurial approach and the identification of the natural present and necessary roles within the team.

Project

To achieve, through high performance team coaching, a strategic alignment in the framework of the Cultural Transformation needed to undertake a new business plan for the global market area in Spain. The process was led by the chief market officer in Iberia and his team leaders (executive committee of markets).

Results

After only one day of work, the following results were obtained:

Definition of natural roles in the team, becoming aware of the potential risks in the strategy execution given the lack of certain natural roles.
Development of group empathy: becoming aware of the individual aspirations of each team member and the contribution capacity of each of them towards the common goal
Change of mindset: becoming aware of the strengths and real opportunities for the team.
Minimization of operational risks and blind spots: preventive discovery of hidden barriers and derailers.
Creation of a joint identity and a collective consciousness around the need for individual accountability: setting of objectives, results and actions with highly predictive value, with role allocation, monitoring routines and the celebration of critical milestones.

How we did it

One-to-one interviews were conducted in order to find out previously the perceptions and standpoints of the Global Markets team members.
The NBI (Neethling Brain Instruments) methodology was implemented in order to determine the thinking styles of the team members, being able to diagnose those that conflicted with each other, the absent and necessary styles as well as the dominant ones in the group.
The strengths, opportunities and barriers in the team were identified with the SWOB methodology.
The team Alliance was defined and the rules regarding the way they would relate to each other were established (integrity principle).
The objectives were defined as a team, aligning objectives with tangible actions using the Engagement by Goals methodology.

The approach

After a series of previous calibration interviews with some of the team members, Talengo took a group of 12 professionals on an off-site to the outskirts of Madrid for a whole day. The work on strategic alignment carried out was based on the following critical aspects:

Analysis of the preference of thinking styles and identification of natural roles within the team members. Awareness generation around the importance of cognitive diversity and how the team members already complemented one another.
Becoming aware of the starting point and the gap existing between this and the common goal, as well as of how each team member wants to contribute to realize the team’s vision.
Identification of the strengths, opportunities and barriers in the team with regard to the desired results.
Definition of the team aspiration in a tangible way (developing it with an agile methodology aimed at setting objectives), of those critical results representing progress and of high-impact actions in 90-day lanes based on the Start, Stop, Continue methodology.