Case study - Pharmaceutical Company (PC)

Business need

The head of information services at this PC identified an opportunity for the 40 European information managers to work collaboratively. Although the managers were separated by geography they faced many similar challenges but had no team identity. It was recognised that if they could realise their common ground, view themselves as a team and function as an effective team then the whole company would benefit. The PC would gain better quality solutions to issues and savings to the business in terms of time and duplication of effort.

The PC decided to use part of a conference in Stockholm to address this issue, using a consultancy with expertise in teambuilding and benchmarking.

MaST solution

MaST designed a workshop that engaged hearts and minds. It was vital to enable the managers to understand the opportunities that collaborative working would bring but also give them the chance to experience working effectively as a team. MaST created a ‘Fragile Cargo Handling Challenge’, which was an activity designed to allow the managers to experience, model and benchmark their team working skills against ten core team working behaviours.

Outcome

During the course of the workshop the managers grew in understanding of the nature of effective teams and the benefits of teamwork, but more than this, they worked together and got to know each other, which gave them an engagement at an emotional level. They left the workshop having become familiar with the ten team working behaviours which gave them a concrete model of diagnosing how they are working together on an ongoing basis. The information managers set up collaborative projects after the workshop, which brought benefits to the business and ensured that their learning had a vehicle in which to be applied.