| PROJECT: |
Increase Employee Harmony |
| CLIENT: |
Construction Company (155 employees) |
| CONSULTANT: |
Martyn Carruthers |
| BENEFITS: |
Accelerate corporate expansion |
BACKGROUND: This company originated as
a project between high-school friends. With excellent leadership
and co-operation, this company became a
leading construction organization, well positioned to become a primary
provider over a large geographic region.
SITUATION: The director recruited employees
mostly from friends and their families, and reported few communication
difficulties in a productive workforce. The director knows most
employees personally and the management team have worked together for about
ten years. The company vision and values reflect family values.
The director wanted to accelerate corporate goals by
increasing workplace harmony; and to increase the managerial and sales competencies
of his employees.
SYSTEMIC DIAGNOSIS: Company employees included four
partial "families" (four
groups of related people), including members of the director's family. The
resulting corporate structure had some qualities and challenges of a small community.
GOAL DIAGNOSIS: The
company could achieve it's next primary goal in five years at the current
rate of growth; and in three years if the company regained its previous
internal harmony and dynamism.
Systemic planning exposed a need for a larger context for the
company - the director had not defined a "vision" beyond
the company's primary goal. Systemic goalwork identified an appropriate
corporate vision and the key components of each step.
SOLUTION: Systemic Coaching with the director provided
a vision in which the company expanded to become a stable multinational
organization.
This vision required productive workplace harmony - which required quality
working relationships between the director, his managers and key employees.
The director created a plan for
increasing team productivity; and a logical
sequence of discussions with key employees.
Systemic Coaching prepared the director to dissolve and change ineffective
relationship patterns:
- Two "difficult" managers were related to the director's
female executive assistant. Having been high-school friends, the director
and executive assistant sometimes communicated unprofessionally. (This was
alienating these two managers.)
- The director's mother and her partner were treated as
"privileged employees". (The director clarified and neutralized this
situation.)
- A manager sometimes seemed to withhold important
information. (This manager avoided using "negative" comments, and
habitually phrased all comments positively.)
Practical and effective methods for increasing sales were also
found. The director plans to provide regular systemic coaching for
his managers and training for his employees.
NOTES: Following systemic diagnosis, solutions often appear obvious. One
type of transference is to communicate as if both people were
younger. Such communications between a manager and an employee can produce
confusion, especially in an organization built on family values.
In a similar dynamic to recurring trans-generational
patterns in family systems, relationships at work are unconsciously copied
and adopted by new staff - whether desirable or problematic.
Organizational performance is dependent on relationship management.
Systemic Solutions accelerates
both relationship management and performance.
[
Case History 1: Mentorship
in Upper Management ]
[
Case
History 3:Manage Conflict in Organizations ]
[ Case History 4: Entrepreneurial Management in a Bank ]
Systemic Coaching ...
Systemic Coach Training
© Martyn Carruthers February 2003 |
