Client Scenario: An executive team at a medium sized ($500M) business was working with Cradlerock on a strategic planning process. As part of that work, the team determined that increasingly remote work had left them effective with short term task management but less effective with longer term priorities. The team was operating less as a cohesive leadership team and more like a series of adjacent miniature initiatives with some occasional overlap.
Cradlerock Solution: We introduced a new cadence for executive work that integrated standard, running business updates with a new schedule of deeper, generative leadership sessions. And then added a twice yearly three day offsite meeting that was specifically designed to enhance the actual performance of the executive team.
Sessions integrated business updates, third party guest faculty speakers, individual planning sessions and team based exercises designed to increase the team’s joint leadership capabilities. The location and design for each program were created specifically around an ongoing high performance teamwork model and each event
Long term tracking of the initiative made several things clear. The executive team became a much more cohesive operating unit with the ability to handle complex interactions and even conflict at a drastically increased speed. Individual team members reported much higher job satisfaction and ability to get work done. And the team itself asked for and received increasingly positive feedback over time from stakeholder groups – including both the larger employee base and the Board of Directors.
Most importantly, there was a measurable impact on both internal operations and market growth. When we controlled for other external factors there was a clear improvement in the way the team was leading the business along every critical performance metric. Perhaps most significantly, the team itself experienced zero turnover and with an integrated performance and succession plan it became clear that the future leadership of the organization was right on the current team. The program continues today on the same twice yearly cadence and participants anecdotally consider it a strong benefit to staying with the organization.
