(http://www.bright-side.com/why/case1a.html)

 

The organisation: it is a public company founded in 1930 with over 28,000 employees worldwide.

Context: the company fights its capacity to serve its clients, to produce quality products and to maintain efficiency, effectiveness and especially the quality of the organisation.

 

The following problems have been identified:

• barriers connected to fear, resistance to change and repeating old inefficient work habits;
• this behavior limits individuasl, groups, and organisational performance having an impact on the company’s business.

Measures: they contacted a firm specialising in solving these kinds of problems (Bright Side) who organise workshops focusing on stimulating creative thinking of the executive leadership of the company.

 

This stage started with the interviewing process - 2 hours with the leadership and one hour with other participants at the workshop. The following barriers have been identified that were preventing them from reaching the targets set by the company:

• low level of energy, involvement and passion towards the vision/target of the company;
• lack of dynamic thinking and a high degree of resistance that were limiting creativity in solving problems;
• fear to make decisions because of negative experiences in the past;
• barriers connected to the group that were creating territorial problems between three groups that had a low level of respect, cohesion and understanding;
• lack of openness, honest communication between the departments of the company;
• conflicts due to the rapid change rhythm and the quarrels between the groups;
• high level of stress and anxiety; attitude of the kind: “We cannot do this”, low level of confidence;
• distance and lack of communication between the main three groups of the organisation (Inside Sales, Outside Sales and Product Marketing)

 

After analysing the data together with the leadership, Bright Side has developed an individual development process and one for the leadership that best fits the needs of the company. The following targets and objectives have been set:

• increasing personal initiative and responsibility for the targets of the team/company;
• development of self-confidence and confidence in others;
• development of communication strategies to increase honesty, authenticity and cooperation;
• creating the desire to change by developing, communicating and alignment of the targets and individual, group and organisational tasks.

 

The workshop lasted 4 days. There were 2 moderators and 12 participants (Sales Executive Vice-president, Marketing Executive Vice-president and their leading teams).

 

The first day: revision and analysis of the interviews results, presentation of the changing model proposed by Bright Side and experimental measures of genuine communication; the second day: participants ’understanding of the vision and objective of the change; the third day: involving participants in experimental situations of openness and resistance to learning and accomplishing the plans; the fourth day: involving participants in experimental situations of building and supporting the measurable behaviour changes and supporting the desired company goals.

 

The 4 days focused on:

• personal/individual learning and the capacity to apply these things to produce greater personal and team impact;
• transfer of the personal learning to group learning and then reaching the organisational goals and tasks.

 

This lasted for 6 weeks (it refers to individual and leadership development process), the target aim to reach the company’s objectives.

 

Learning is done in pairs with the purpose of offering support and understanding and, in the end, the participants have identified obvious behaviour changes.

 

The results obtained have been analysed by specialists; after one year behaviour changes and measurable business results were recorded. The leadership has been interviewed every six months and one year by specialists.

 

Results: *at leadership level (6 months after): understanding, confidence and cooperation; energy and reinforcement; openness towards learning and change; at business level (6 months after):  growth in sales and closing new deals; increase of quality production and efficiency (of the clients attending time); after 1 year: tremendous growths in sales.

 

In conclusion, an organisational environment that promotes personal initiative and responsibility for the team’s/company’s goals, development of self confidence and in others, communication and alignment of the individual, group and organisational tasks, reward for good performances proved to be very stimulating from the point of view of creativity. That is why these organisational systems that support the decision-based process and the experimental systems are extremely useful in interrogatively solving problems.

 

In conclusion, encouraging autonomous thinking, a certain degree of permissiveness, stimulating open communication, using methods to stimulate creativity (brainstorming, sinectics, GSS – Group Support System, 6-3-5 Method, Analogical Reasoning etc) create the conditions for feelings of psychological security, favourable for creative manifestations.    

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