CASE STUDY

Strategy Planning:
Saville for Leadership

  • The executive team of a large service provider had come together to set forward strategy.

    The CEO wanted to strengthen relationships within the team for more productive and collaborative working relationships.

  • Facilitated a two hour session on working collaboratively.

    All participants completed the Saville Wave Work Roles assessment.

    The session allowed for individual and group reflection on preferred and least preferred working styles, how they could leverage each other’s strengths and address gaps.

  • A clear, pragmatic message, and a team open to collaboration, with a better understanding of how they can best work together.

Our Approach

The executive team of a large service provider had come together to set forward strategy. Strategy sessions like this often focus entirely on content — the plan, the numbers, the priorities — and assume the team around the table will simply work well together. The CEO wanted something different: a deliberate investment in how the team worked with each other, not just what they were working on.

Every participant completed the Saville Wave Work Roles assessment ahead of a two-hour facilitated session. The session gave the team space for individual and group reflection on preferred and least-preferred working styles, on where strengths could be leveraged, and on where gaps in the team needed to be acknowledged and addressed.

The aim wasn’t a personality test for its own sake. It was a structured way to make differences in working style visible and useful, right at the point the team was setting its forward direction together.

Outcomes

The team left the session with a shared, practical language for how they each worked best, and a clearer sense of how to draw on each other’s strengths.

Several participants described it as the first time the team had been genuinely open with each other about how they work, and the CEO followed up directly with the team on the reflections raised during the session.

Client feedback

“It was great having you there. Your message was spot on, so thank you, it echoed what I said the day before on the team working together more and your session tied it all up perfectly.”
 
“The team's reflection on your session was amazing. It's the first time they've been open like that and realised how they can work better together; I've given them the homework and look forward to seeing how they go.”

Background

This engagement was delivered under MAKR Consulting, as part of a broader strategy planning process for the organisation’s executive leadership team.

The session was timed deliberately around the team’s strategy-setting work, so the reflections on working style were immediately useful rather than abstract.

This engagement was lead by:

Rachael Kelly
Principal, HR & People & Culture Strategy

What this
engagement shows

Strategy sessions land harder when the team setting the strategy has also done the work on how they operate together. A structured, evidence-based reflection on working style can unlock the kind of openness that doesn’t happen by accident.

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