The organization had grown quickly, and that growth had reshaped its leadership team along with it. Significant turnover meant the 16-person executive team was split almost evenly between longtime leaders and newcomers, half of whom had been in their roles less than two years. The team didn't know each other well, wasn't communicating effectively, and had never been asked to operate as one unit. What looked like a communication problem was really a team that had never been built.
Case Study
Turning a newly assembled leadership team into one team.
A government agency brought us in to help its newly reshaped executive leadership team find shared direction after a wave of growth and leadership turnover left old and new leaders working in silos.
Engagement at-a-glance
Industry:
Financial Services and Insurance
Organization size:
1,000 - 2,000 employees
Services:
Strategy Governance
Organizational Design
Facilitation & Experience Design
Organizational Design
Facilitation & Experience Design
The Challenge
Half the team had been there for years. Half hadn't been there for two.
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A team split between old and new
Roughly half the executive team had joined within the past two years, creating two distinct groups with different histories, different instincts, and no shared understanding of how the other operated. Longtime leaders and recent hires hadn't had the chance to build trust with each other, and it showed in how decisions got made.
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Risk tolerance pulling in opposite directions
Some leaders were cautious and risk averse. Others were eager to try new approaches. Neither instinct was wrong on its own, but without a shared frame for when to apply each one, the difference in style became a source of friction rather than balance.
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No shared direction, no shared team
The executive team wasn't aligned on an enterprise-wide direction and wasn't thinking strategically as a group. Departments operated in silos, each moving on its own priorities rather than a shared one. The organization didn't need a new strategy so much as it needed a leadership team that could actually operate as one.
Our Approach
Listening before creating alignment.
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1
Conducted individual interviews with all 16 executive team members
Held 90-minute interviews with every member of the leadership team, including the City Manager, deputy city managers, police chief, fire chief, city attorney, and public works director, to understand how each leader saw the organization's direction and the dynamics at play within the team.
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2
Facilitated focus groups with frontline employees
Ran focus groups with frontline staff to hear how the organization's direction and leadership dynamics were landing outside the executive suite, and to check whether frontline perspective matched what leadership was describing.
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3
Synthesized findings and validated them with leadership
Summarized what emerged from the interviews and focus groups and presented it back to the executive team to confirm the diagnosis was accurate before designing any part of the engagement.
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4
Designed a phased workshop series to build the team
Built a four-part workshop series for the leadership team, moving from honoring the organization's past, to defining the culture needed to achieve its vision, to establishing how the team would operate together, to building in mutual accountability.
Value Delivered
A leadership team with a shared vision and way of operating
Named a shared vision and set of values for the organization
The engagement produced a documented vision statement and five core values (Collaborative, Inclusive, Innovative, Compassionate, Empowered) intended to guide how the leadership team operates and how it expects employees across the organization to work.
Built three enterprise-wide goals with measurable milestones
Leadership aligned around three enterprise goals covering employee engagement with the vision, alignment of the organization's work and resources to that vision, and equipping staff with the tools to act on it, each with quarterly milestones attached.
Designed a four-part workshop series to build the team
The leadership team moved through four sessions together, honoring the organization's past, defining the culture needed to achieve its vision, establishing what it takes to operate as a strong first team, and building in the mutual accountability to sustain it.
Established a process for surfacing and validating team dynamics before designing solutions
Rather than proposing a fix upfront, the diagnosis phase surfaced the specific tensions between longtime and newer leaders and validated them directly with the team, so the workshop design that followed addressed the actual dynamics at play rather than an assumed one.
Results that reflect the work behind them.
16
Executive leadership team members interviewed individually as part of the diagnosis
~50%
Share of the leadership team in their roles less than two years at the start of the engagement
13
Process proposals generated to increase budget transparency, education, and innovation
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Work With Us
The firms that move fastest don’t wait for clarity. They create it.
We help leadership teams cut their ambiguity, align around what matters, and build the momentum to transform their business.