Executive Growth Circles

Business Need:

• Turn a new circular rope venture into a successful business with the objective of achieving $1M in annual revenue in Year 1
• Ensure that the company is future-proofed through scalable revenue model, access to committed customers and partners.

Specific Actionable Challenge:

What do I need to do to establish and build a company to turn the idea of circular ropes into a sustainable business with long-term positive impact on the environment?

Gained:

• Learned from others in new ventures AND other recyclers/startups
• New business partners/contacts from different industries ready to collaborate and invest
• Valuable insights in how to structure the revenue model

 Results:

• Successful negotiations with shipowners thanks to insights from EGC
• A new opportunity to join a startup incubation program to hyper accelerate the company growth
• Achieved real momentum with the startup and well positioned to reach the revenue goal of $1M
• SAC Owner’s comments: “I am overwhelmed by the level of support I’ve received from the EGA community”

Business Need:

Navigating multiple priorities, including economic headwinds, skill shortages, and the need to chart a post-pandemic path forward by selecting the right role and creating and environment for success and impact.

Specific Actionable Challenge:

What is the most effective approach to select the right role and create an environment for yourself and others to thrive?

Gained:

• Insights on how to achieve alignment between personal and company values
• Structured approach to identify and assess the traits, values, pros, and cons of future roles
• Tangible process to engage team members around motivations and gt more structured about finding the right ‘passion role’

 Results:

• Environment of success that enabled the transition to a role with a higher impact
• Future-ready organization with increased employee retention and improved quarterly results

Business Need:

A new way of prioritizing initiatives (both strategic and incremental) and aligning on what’s a priority for the organization.

Specific Actionable Challenge:

How to really engage team members (needing flexibility, purpose, fulfilment) in a hybrid environment that continuously changes?

Gained:

• Advice on how to create ‘office of the future’ that combines collaboration and play
• Coaching on how to exhibit and demonstrate the culture you want to build and make everyone part of the journey
• Motivation to revise company values and strategic goals, reward systems to better fit the needs of changing workforce

Business Need:

A new way of prioritizing initiatives (both strategic and incremental) and aligning on what’s a priority for the organization.

Specific Actionable Challenge:

What’s the best approach align the organization and team on shared goals and how to motivate others to spend time on goal alignment?

Gained:

• Real practical insights on how to implement the OKR framework in a way ‘that will stick’
• Insights from other leaders on how to have conversations around goals with the team and leadership
• Encouragement to create a plan with 3-6 tangible goals and gain commitment

Results:

• 180 degrees change in the OKR program and strong team alignment around the shared goals
• In SAC owner’s words: “Thanks to the EGC, I have the ‘juice’ I need to deliver on the strategy with our team.”

Business Need:

• The organization was in top 25 employers globally
• Needed to define a new approach to attracting and recruiting talent in the context of addressing current global macro-trends and becoming future-ready
• More efficiency and effectiveness in strategic workforce
• Consistent framework to ensure the right candidates are identified, attracted, and selected, removing bias from the process.

Specific Actionable Challenge:

How to design and continuously improve our recruitment process?  What tools and techniques can I used to source talent, identify & attract the right candidate and remove bias from the process?

Gained:

• New ways to attract talent – including a referral program, leveraging ESG position, global bootcamps and traineeships
• Clarity around achievable plan and OKRs to focus on
• Insights from peers of external perception of the organization as a brand

 Results:

• Member incorporated EGA insights into HR strategy which got directional approval
• With continuous support of EGA community, translated strategy into portfolio projects, ‘lighting many fires’ at once
• Achieved real momentum – recruitment now high on the organisational agenda & seeing early results with quality of applicants

Business Need:

• The organization is a global shipping company
• Needed to get senior leadership team to see value in a new product – circular rope
• To establish a successful pilot and scale by creating a sense of urgency

Specific Actionable Challenge:

How can I, as a leader, create a sense of urgency and influence others (such as ship owners) to change behavior – for a positive impact on the environment and sustainable business?

Gained:

• Confidence to stand up and be the champion for change at the organization
• Advice on how to structure passion into a project – SWOT, value chain, risks, budget, goals, requirements
• Step-by-step approach for setting clear concrete goals and actionable plan for each week
• Insights on how to make the senior leadership see the problem – ‘change or be changed’

Results:

• Successfully launched the Circular rope project
• Got invited to the UN Ocean Conference to present the project and inspire other global leaders
• Got awarded a grant to launch and lead a new venture fully focused on sustainability

Business Need:

• Slow growth in customers and sales post COVID-19 pandemic
• Needed to rebuild the employee motivation and engagement to achieve high perfromance, despite remote working
• Due to recent merger, needed to establish one culture and ways of working across the organization

Specific Actionable Challenge:

How to build and maintain a company culture of family-feeling and high performance to achieve goals in Post COVID -19 world?

Gained:

• Insights on how to align people’s personal and company values
• Framework to empower people; define culture; agree on USPs and have top leaders own the challenge (3C Framework)
• Coaching on how to best hold 1-1s sessions with seniors to understand their desires; gain their support in building success

Results:

• Member incorporated EGC insights and went on to hold 1:1 with leadership team and a company-wide retreat
• Updated the company USP and restructured teams to better serve the customer
• 30% increase in sales and 100% increase in employee satisfaction
• Went on to successfully complete two more mergers

SAC Owner’s feedback: “I leave each EGC energized and inspired. Gaining global perspectives and accountability for application of learning in the real world is highly unique to EGA.”

Business Need: Gain mid-management commitment to achieve transformation and revenue goals defined by corporate leadership.

Obstacles to Success:

• Disconnected employees – lacking interest and involvement
• Separation between strategic planning and day-to-day operations

Challenge: Engaging mid-level managers and employees to gain commitment to new business model.

Gained:

• Confidence to move
• Insights of tools that have assisted other leaders in gaining commitment to change
• Perspective – to ask more questions, engage team members and empower for long term transformation

Result: 

• Greater understanding of the need to change within the team. Increased empowerment of mid-level managers to achieve long term objectives for growth.

Business Need:

• Reshaping to meet the needs of the future
• Reorganizing to ensure serving new stakeholders
• Developing ways to ensure the organization has the right people, skills and structure for innovative working

Obstacles to Success:  

• Keeping people motivated to step up, understand where they are and what they need
• Continuing to engage with positive company culture while cultivating digital practices within the organization
• Overcoming the impact of Covid-19 on employees and their abilities to perform

 Challenge: 

How can leadership encourage and engage its employees so they feel valued as the business transitions into the digital space?

Gained:

• Scheduling one-on-one meetings to understand individual employee needs
• Gaining perspective on balancing the demand for in-person office experiences versus working remotely

Result:

• Resolving the digital challenges and making organizational changes to achieve future growth.

Business Need:  Innovate and build on strong growth in revenue to enhance market position and retailer success through strategic investments and marketing approaches.

Approach: Leverage annual strategic planning process to identify strategic investments and plan new marketing approaches  for the next year.

Obstacles to Success:  

• Past planning processes led to task list and budget allocation not new ideas
• Need for creativity and out of the box thinking

Strategic Actionable Challenge:  Apply strategic thinking concepts to gain greater results from the annual strategic planning process.

Gained from EGC: 

• Proven techniques to approach strategic planning from a new ‘out of the box ways’
• Insight on power of asking good questions and examples to use
• Enthusiasm and support for doing things differently

Result: 

• Highly successful strategic planning events leading to new ways to approach the market do things differently over the next year.
• Culture change across organization – asking open ‘big picture’ questions during meetings

• Organization-wide commitment to innovation through strategic thinking. answer

Business Need:  Hire and develop a sustainable leadership team, allowing founder to drive the business forward through fundraising and strategic leadership.

Approach:

• Identified under-performers in current team
• Defined three key roles for future

Reached out to network for potential candidates

Obstacles to Success: 

• Time needed to manage out under-performers
• Limited funding for salaries to attract quality hires
• Unsure of methods to evaluate candidates

Challenge:  Select and onboard mid/senior level team members to take on daily responsibilities allowing founder to drive company’s growth

Gained: 

• Insight on new ways to address compensation issues
• Techniques to effectively deal with under-performers
• Inspiration to step back, consider objectives and plan hires around long term goals.

Result: 

• On-boarded operations, supply chain and content editor – highly qualified and skilled team members
• Managed out under-performers in a win/win manner
• Stronger culture through releasing toxic people (under-performers)

Business Need:  Define and prioritize needs and effective ways to implement financial and operational recovery plans for struggling YMCAs.

Approach: Engage local leaders to define unique recovery plan for each area– gaining corporate support.

Obstacles:

• Resistance to change from traditional inside our funding model
• Selection of YMCA leaders in light of broad-scale needs

Specific Actionable Challenge:  How to select regions and prioritize resources while addressing longer term need to change funding model.

Gained: 

• New perspectives and insights to accelerate mindset change
• Proven techniques for selection and prioritization of local need

Results: 

• New perspectives and insights to accelerate changing corporate mindset
• Global leader commitment to definition of new funding model