Reimagining the future

Pharma Industry

Six Team Conditions worked with the SLT of a biomedical/ biotech company and multinational manufacturer of medical devices over an 18 month period. The leadership team comprised eight male members with responsibility for c.35,000 employees. Part way through the engagement, a team member transitioned out of the SLT and was replaced by a female leader.

Challenges

Phase I

At the commencement of the engagement the leader and team were focussed on identifying collective priorities and developing their capacity to work together. The team had a history of working together over many years and recognised that they needed to re-energize and address some ineffective ways of working and behaviors on the team. In particular, the team members did not engage in conversations that got to the route of issues, and consequently were frustrated by the levels of inaction and progress on some key matters. The team also wanted to understand how they were perceived by the next layer of management.

Phase II

In a second phase of work with the team, they were in a review of the vision stage as a means to develop and set the strategy for the following five years.

Action and results

Phase I 

• Debrief of the Team Diagnostic Survey and 1:1 interviews with team members and stakeholders to support the implementation of the 6 Team Conditions into the design of the team;
• Mapping of key stakeholders and development of clear and agreed team purpose;
• Visualization of team priorities and milestones for two quarters, which pinpointed the shared priorities and what they would hold each other accountable for;
• Revised meeting practices and norms enabling improved conversations;
• Communication to next layer of management regarding the feedback received, clarity provided to the stakeholders on what feedback the SLT will implement and rationale for feedback not adapted –this was a pivotal step for the SLT as they previously were perceived as siloed and not always in agreement;
• Development of leader as coach skills for dissemination of team effectiveness fundamentals with next layer of management.

Phase II

• Introduction to the importance of storytelling as a mechanism to recognise the leadership values of the team members;
• A futurising workshop to imagine the world of tomorrow [15 years in the future], to consider possible, plausible, probable and creatable futures were facilitated so that the SLT could develop collective enterprise mindsets to look around corners;
• The futurising workshop took the form of ‘story of now’ and the SLT articulated the principles of the strategy needed to meet the needs of the future;
• A visualization of the roadmap required enabled the SLT to identify team interdependencies and where gaps in skills, process and systems needed to be addressed.
• Sharing of the new strategy with the wider organization.