LeaderSpace worked with the shareholders, Board and key senior staff to create a greater sense of unity, clarity and purpose for the whole company. The changes the Board made as a result increased focus and accountability at the top and had a noticeable effect on the company’s bottom line.
The shift our client was looking for
When Sabio and LeaderSpace first met, Sabio was a technology company entering a new phase of its development: no longer a young start-up focused on growing capacity and market presence, but an established brand with around 150 staff, looking to create sustainable long-term value in the face of a global economic downturn. The Board wanted their specialised middle-managers to work more collaboratively across departments, making innovation and customer service more efficient and cost effective – and recognised that a shift in their staff would require a similar shift in themselves.
How we approached it
We spent time with Managing Director Seb Henkes and his three fellow founding shareholders – all of whom also held roles on the Executive Board – individually and collectively, to see the team in action and understand their points of difference.
We then spoke one-on-one to the other two Executive Board members and key middle-managers from across the business, each of whom completed questionnaires about their team and about themselves. That data informed bespoke interventions at all three levels: shareholder, Board and middle-manager.
The first was an event for the Board and selected middle managers. The middle managers explored their dynamic as a collective: their strengths, shared frustrations, and uncertainty about their purpose and about who should even be counted as part of the ‘team’. The Board set the scene, received feedback from their juniors, and then gave the group the space and privacy to find its own way of working – out of which came recommendations to the Board on what Sabio should preserve and what it should change.
We also worked on the interface between the four founding shareholders and the Executive Board, helping them address the conflicts arising from each occupying multiple roles with competing reporting lines. As friends and founding shareholders the four were equals; as Board members, three of them reported to the MD. That was blurring authority and accountability, and affecting how the other two Board members were perceived across the business. Clarifying those roles let the shareholders set a clear three-year remit for the MD and hand him the authority to deliver it. They literally rewrote their shareholder agreements, then cascaded accountability by redesigning incentive structures for key staff.
The impact we had
Sabio’s work with LeaderSpace created a shift at the top of the organisation that helped boost the company’s performance the following year with a 19% increase in revenues whilst also delivering 120% of their PBIT target.
‘One of our biggest take-aways was the discipline instilled by the team coaching,’ said Managing Director Seb Henkes, looking back. ‘And one of our biggest mistakes twelve months later was to let some of that discipline slip. Without it, we made some flawed decisions as a leadership team that hit our bottom line and put us back a step in our strategic plans. Thankfully, we’re learning from that mistake. We’ve also learned how valuable it is as a leadership team to have someone external be there with us on an ongoing basis, both as a sounding board and to help us maintain that all-important team discipline.’
“‘I have to admit to being a little sceptical beforehand but the execution and adaptation were especially effective. The end result speaks for itself in my mind. We could not have achieved more in the time we had. Congratulations on a job well done.”
