Boehringer-Ingelheim, Adriatic region, Regional Center Vienna
Management Team Efficiency Workshops
This project was with the top team of a new region of Boehringer-Ingelheim, Pharmaceutical company. Members of the team are from different countries – Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia – and met in Serbia for the workshops. This is what the Human Resources Manager for the region said about the work:
“This work was with the top team of the new Adriatic Region for Boehringer-Ingelheim. The team was formed in January 2011 by merging the ex-countries of Yugoslavia, which had been separate businesses for many years. The top team has to achieve benefits from standardisation across the region (including saving costs), while at the same time strengthening the capacity in local customer facing functions.
To take forward the team’s development and objectives, as a Human Resource function in the Adriatic region, at the beginning of the 2011, I approached Marina Mojovic (director of Consulting-Art from Serbia) asking for consultancy. It was agreed that it would be important to also have a specialist from outside the region, so the consultancy pair, Marina Mojovic and Gabriella Braun (Director of Working Well, UK), worked in cooperation in this complex project. They are both specialist consultancy companies using psychology in their work with organizations. They brought to this project a high standard of partnership/team work, which enabled additional quality for approaching the complex organizational developmental situation of the transitional period in the Adriatic Region of B-I.
Three two-day workshops were agreed as a way of taking forward the team’s development and objectives. The workshops were held in May 2011, October 2011 and December 2012. The continuity over time that the consultants proposed was very helpful to our development and work as a team.
The workshops were tailored to our precise needs and development. They included activities, exploration, discussion, action planning and also inputs on theory about leadership, teams and organizations. Each of the three workshops achieved a great deal; I would have never imagined that so much could be done in two days.
The changes the team are undertaking are very significant - we became a far stronger, cohesive team, able to work effectively together, and to change significantly so that we really think and lead regionally.
In our last workshop in December, the whole team was very grateful and we all agreed that that very last wrap up workshop gave us the valuable opportunity to appreciate our development and to establish a solid base for going forward on our own.
If I had to do this again, I would have done it in exactly the same way.”
Ivana Costa, M.D.
Human Resource Manager Adriatic
Communications and Change Management Expert BIPeople.
Work with a Senior Leadership Team
This project was with the Senior Leadership of a School. Here’s what the Headteacher said:
“I brought Gabriella in to work with the SLT because I’d identified a problem with the way it was functioning. I was the new Headteacher in a very established team that worked in a very different way from the way I was trying to do things. I felt that the individual members were very capable and talented but SLT wasn’t working. I tried, but realised that I couldn’t lead the change myself because I was part of the problem.
Gabriella did four short workshops with us as a team. They included activities, discussion, exploration and also inputs from her on some theory that was really helpful, including work around loss and change. I then asked her to mediate with pairs of staff in conflict, which was very helpful and also to train some staff in coaching.
The work with the SLT was challenging and involved us all taking a leap of faith. To get the most out of it we had to commit to it. At times it was difficult for us all, but at the beginning we carefully established how we wanted to work and while there were tensions between us sometimes, there was mutual respect and the atmosphere was always supportive. Gabriella got us to look at ourselves with fresh eyes.
The big difference between Gabriella’s approach and other things I’ve done is that Gabriella took it to a psychological level and so it went much deeper. We looked at who we really are and our real motivations in the organisation. She got us to explore how we arrived at this situation and used a number of techniques that enabled that to come out, such as the questions she asked and observations she made.
The difference the work made was it enabled:
- us to understand how we were
- SLT members to modify their behaviour
- me to have that sense of history and understand that it wasn’t as personal as I’d thought it was, but was about my role as Headteacher
- us to have difficult conversations, with each other and also throughout the organisation thanks to Gabriella coaching us in how to do this – and to understand that it’s okay to have those conversations and can even be a relief
- us to be more honest as an organisation.”
William, Headteacher, London.