McChrystal Group partnered for 15 months with a UK-based global engineering and design company to accelerate the cultural shift necessary to enable leaders to leverage the company’s diverse set of technical capabilities and expertise across its full range of customers.
Why this industry/problem set is relevant in the world today:
Exceptional technical capabilities and unique expertise are not always enough to ensure success in a constantly changing economic and political landscape. With an ever-changing political landscape and the uncertainty of Brexit affecting infrastructure-related funding, the engineering company sought out McChrystal Group’s assistance to improve performance and make them more resilient to handle whatever new external challenges they may face.
Challenges
- Changing client demands and rapidly evolving technology required the company to operate more collaboratively, internally and with other partners, to deliver competitive solutions and maintain its respected market position.
- Following a restructure, leadership teams were slow to adapt to combined businesses and matrixed structures; many relied on old networks to continue business as usual when changed behaviors were required.
Solutions
- McChrystal Group developed communication systems to support and accelerate collaboration and intelligence-sharing across silos. Following a successful pilot with the largest division, the company expanded a new style of leadership and communication across the entire business, ultimately engaging and connecting more than 600 leaders and staff on a more frequent and inclusive basis.
- Through a series of strategy-focused workshops, McChrystal Group was able to improve horizontal alignment of team priorities against the company’s objectives and mission. Key divisions instituted a refined business planning process that linked five-year objectives to current priorities and initiatives.
- McChrystal Group worked with the senior leadership team to clarify decision-making responsibilities with the aim of accelerating decision-making at crucial interfaces. Through a focused 100-day effort, relevant leaders defined clear decision-making rights between stakeholders and implemented a process for complex decision-making.
Impact
- Enabled a matrixed organization to quickly allocate resources to priority initiatives and respond to necessary changes, impacting revenue and profitability
- Connected individuals across teams to enable creative and more effective problem solving, identifying new and innovative opportunities to add value
- Strategic alignment within divisions focused resources on the most pressing issues, highlighted duplicative efforts, and forced clear ownership of priorities and objectives
- Clearly defined decision making authority allowed senior leaders to push responsibility down into the organization for faster and more informed decisions
McChrystal Group Case Study: Connecting a Matrixed Organization
