Experience
Experience with growth, complexity and consequential change
Organizations are complicated. People surprise us. Plans meet reality. The most useful work often crosses the boundaries between strategy, culture, leadership, learning and individual development. Over several decades, I have worked with young companies finding their Way, established organizations reinventing themselves, leadership teams facing greater complexity and individual executives preparing for what comes next. Here are a few examples. Some names are withheld because the organizations no longer exist in their original form or the work was confidential.Turning distributed experience into organizational capability
The situation
An international resort owner and developer had grown in less than a decade from a single ski resort to more than ten ski, golf and beach destinations across North America and Europe. Strong regional development teams had evolved their own versions of the company’s development process. Senior leaders were trying to coordinate and compare work that had developed independently across different markets, disciplines and projects. Employee feedback had also identified a need for greater training and development.The work
Working as an associate with a boutique consulting firm, I helped codify the organization’s real estate development process. At its centre was a matrix connecting six to eight stages of development—from early envisioning through closing and tenanting—with the six or seven disciplines involved. The broader work included:- A hyperlinked internal knowledge resource of more than 1,500 pages
- Process descriptions, documentation, meeting agendas and practical templates
- A core self-directed curriculum
- Internal coaching and a coaches’ guide
- A three-day Development School
- A four-tier development pathway from Apprentice through Master
What followed
The organization gained a more consistent and sophisticated way to share its expertise across regions without removing the judgment and local knowledge the work required. Parts of the development and marketing group were later established as separate businesses that could serve both internal projects and external clients. Many things contributed to their success. Our role was to help make the organization’s knowledge and Way more explicit, teachable and transferable.What this work made possible
- Greater consistency across regions and disciplines
- A shared language for complex development work
- More efficient access to practical knowledge and resources
- Internal development that did not depend on an outside consultant
- A foundation from which established expertise could be offered more broadly
Growing deliberately without losing what worked
The situation
A young environmental consultancy had grown from two consultant-owners to approximately 25 people and had acquired a laboratory business. The founders did not arrive with a crisis. They saw a significant opportunity and wanted to pursue it without sacrificing the relationships, values, and entrepreneurial qualities that had driven their early success. They were also beginning to feel the strain of growth and wondered how to scale the business sustainably.The work
The initial engagement was strategic planning. Before bringing the senior team together, I used a survey to involve the whole organization in thinking about:- Mission, vision and values
- Strategic opportunities and priorities
- Individual and team behaviours
- What should be retained as the company grew
What followed
The senior team developed a broader, more disciplined way of thinking about the business and continued planning independently. My relationship with the firm continued through team development, leadership programs and other assignments as it grew beyond 250 people. Some employees who contributed to that first survey participated in a leadership program I designed and led almost two decades later.What this work made possible
- A clearer and more widely understood organizational direction
- Meaningful employee contribution without surrendering leadership responsibility
- Stronger connections among strategy, values and behaviour
- A planning discipline the senior team could continue independently
- A trusted relationship that evolved as the organization grew
When the strategies behind success become the constraint
The situation
A highly accomplished CFO in a significant mining-sector business was being considered as a possible successor to the CEO. He was intelligent, polished, entrepreneurial and deeply experienced. A narrative 360 revealed a gap between some of the patterns that had made him successful as a CFO and what others would require from him in a larger role.The work
The CEO and CFO initially engaged me for ten coaching sessions. The CFO subsequently chose to extend the work. Our conversations included:- Balancing the management of risk with a greater pursuit of opportunity
- Empowering and connecting more effectively with staff
- Building stronger relationships with peers
- Letting go of the need to be the smartest person in the room
- Understanding what happened when his authority was challenged
- Connecting visible behaviour with the assumptions and protective strategies beneath it
What changed
He developed a richer understanding of the relationship among his beliefs, strategies, behaviour and the ways others experienced him. Near the end of our work, he described having undergone a paradigm shift. Several behaviours he had used to assert himself and control difficult situations no longer felt necessary. He strengthened relationships, delegated more fully and developed a member of his team who later succeeded him as CFO. He eventually left the organization. By then, he saw the changes he had made not as techniques requiring constant discipline, but as a less effortful and more effective way to lead.What this work made possible
- A shift from behavioural correction to deeper understanding
- More choice when familiar patterns were activated
- Stronger relationships with peers and staff
- Greater willingness to delegate and develop others
- A successor prepared to assume the CFO role
Developing leadership where the work happens
Developmental work is not reserved for senior executives. For a large resource company, I facilitated a frontline leadership program built around three four-day offsite workshops. The sustained format allowed participants to move beyond isolated techniques. They worked with real leadership challenges, applied their learning between sessions and returned with experience to examine together. Frontline leadership was new territory for me. The work reinforced something I have seen repeatedly since: leaders at every organizational level face the challenge of expanding beyond the expertise and habits that first earned them responsibility.Focused engagements can matter too
Not every useful assignment becomes a long organizational initiative. Some begin and end with a more contained need:- A leadership-team offsite or planning conversation
- Facilitation of a consequential meeting
- A custom workshop connected to a current business challenge
- Narrative 360 feedback and development planning
- A defined series of executive-coaching conversations
- Advice on the design of a leadership program or organizational process
Other work, other settings
The selected examples do not show everything, but they reveal the thread running through the work. Other assignments have included:- Organizational strategy and planning
- Culture and organizational identity
- Customer research and brand experience
- Leadership-team development
- Programs for emerging, frontline, business-unit and senior leaders
- Developmental assessment and narrative 360 feedback
- Executive coaching, succession and role transitions
- Learning, knowledge and capability systems
- Mission-aligned nonprofit and community work