CASE STUDY. A new client came to me as both a consulting and recruitment solution as they were moving into the final stages of their strategic plan and that was about integrating vertically. As part of their brief they stated what they were doing, how they were doing it and the people they needed. Listening carefully, allowing them to hear what they were thinking, had put to paper, we were able to ask questions that led to seeing some inadequacies in their process, in fact in their thinking.
Using improved communication skills, which include talking to people at all levels of the current business, we were able to discern that there were people with the appropriate experience within the current business who could at the first stage assist in the development of the job descriptions. Once this was done, as part of that process, matters that hadn’t come to the attention of the directors were uncovered and the strategic direction went from vertical integration to horizontal.
If we had have acted on the original brief, that is assisting in what they said they wanted to do, they would have spent considerable funds and as a consequence been at a market disadvantage; a situation that would have been difficult to recover from.
We identified that there was a considerable degree of group think amongst the executive level and no place for intelligent disobedience. A secondary outcome to this was the observable ability of senior management to actually take dissenting views.