Client Accomplishments

Planning with Strengths

Challenge: A new Vice President of Organizational Effectiveness at a rapidly growing firm wants to ensure her expanding staff cultivates a stronger understanding of who they are as a team, what is most important to deliver, and how they will consistently deliver it. As a member of the firm's leadership team, she is keenly aware of the communications, process integration and talent development needs following an acquisition that nearly doubled their assets.

Strategy: COMPIO designed and conducted interviews that collected stories of important past success and their causes. Answering the interview questions helped participants identify catalysts of success on the individual, team and organizational level. The interviews also elicited descriptions of what participants want most for their firm in the future. During a team retreat, themes running through the interview results were identified, culminating in statements of "who we are," "how we work" and "what is most important." Participants engaged in a guided imagery of the future they can create together; and crafted a vision statement that built from the interview themes. Through a series of team discussions, leverage points were defined by recognizing where what the company needs most required what the team does best.

Outcomes: Participants developed a shared understanding of how team members' individual strengths combine to create a team identity, and created a succinct description of the team's best work style. Their visioning exercise helped them clarify both what they wanted to retain as the firm continued to grow, and how they wanted to change as they moved into the future. During the team meeting, a very new development was shared: critical deliverables called for by the President of the firm. Drawing from our work, they crafted a prioritized planning process. Once finalized, they can implement it in a way that draws on their greatest recognized areas of strength.