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Case Study: Coping With Success - The Hidden Leadership Challenge While all businesses seek success, for many this goes hand-in-hand with rapid growth, and the combination of the two often creates an entirely new set of challenges which many organisations struggle to manage. So, when is effective leadership most important - in achieving success, or dealing with it when it happens? For Bluefin Solutions, a 2009 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 and Sunday Times Tech Track 100 business, working with Eluminas to develop the leadership skills of their senior staff came at a vital time and proved invaluable to maintaining success. Recognised as an 'outstanding' place to work in the Sunday Times Best Companies Accreditation scheme, Bluefin Solutions is a technology consultancy with corporate customers across a broad range of industries from aerospace and automotive to public sector, telecoms and utilities. From the inception of the company in July 2002, the business grew quickly from four people to over 40, and as Chief Executive James Appleby explained, ensuring the senior management team developed their own skills to manage growth became a central part of their strategy. "The leadership team grew in line with the rest of the business, but we did notice that there were some barriers between the founders and those senior people who had come in along the way. Identifying this was important, but working out how to deal with it was critical to successfully running a growing business where professionalism sits at the core of our offering." Up to that point Bluefin had taken an ad hoc approach to the professional development of senior staff. Although they had already achieved remarkable customer-driven growth, they also wanted to ensure they had a comprehensive range of leadership skills in place among the senior management team to maintain their success. With this in mind, they looked for outside advice and guidance, inviting several specialist leadership businesses to present their recommendations. "We wanted to find a company who understood our culture, the journey we were on, and someone who could help us to continue to develop. Having started with four options, we quite quickly focused on a partner who offered us a very precise fit," explained Appleby. "We chose Eluminas not just because of their track record and skillset, but because they were able to listen to us, understand us, and customise an approach that matched our needs - very much how we operate with our customers. Specifically, we weren't looking for mentors, we wanted people who could help us to become better leaders." Specialising in executive, leadership and team coaching, Eluminas was tasked with embracing and enhancing a leadership culture which is described by Appleby as 'open, collaborative, constructive and professional'. "The development process began with 360 feedback, and while this was a familiar process for me, it was a first for the rest of the team. It was an essential exercise, which provided a benchmarked start-point, ensuring we all had a very clear understanding of how the team was working," said Appleby. Eluminas began by debriefing the results individually. Following this, and based on discussions with Appleby and his team about the strengths and opportunities for the executive leadership as a whole, Eluminas facilitated an off-site day with the executive team to address some of the common development areas. What followed was what the Bluefin team now views as a set of 'individual journeys' over a period of months where they each worked out what they wanted from their own executive coaching and embarked upon regular face to face coaching at the various Bluefin locations around the UK. Eluminas Managing Director, Sue Powell, says "A critical part of this work was for each client and their coach to establish a set of clear, realistic, yet inspirational objectives that had some form of identifiable measure against them - a way of knowing that something was changing. This provided an essential, clear framework for the intense one to one coaching that followed." With Appleby's encouragement, and some help from the coaches, the team members were invited to share their key main objectives with one another and explicitly designed how they could support one another, and challenge one another, as the business continued to grow. "This helped tremendously with collaboration within the senior team, particularly managing the complexities of the different perspectives in the organisation. In practical terms it means people with different roles, and hence different immediate objectives, are still working to the same end goal," said Appleby. 'Whilst a clear strategy is the cornerstone key to making this successful, ensuring that the different perspectives are properly represented and understood is essential for us to implement our strategy.' The Bluefin leadership team are in no doubt about the effectiveness of their development work with Eluminas. "The overall impact has been massive. We were a high performing team beforehand, but the work we have done has taken the relationships within the leadership team to another level, broke down barriers, further enhanced openness, and given us tools and techniques for dealing with tough situations," said Appleby. "One of the biggest signs of the success of the exercise came with the downturn, when we were much better placed to deal with it than we would have been otherwise," In pure business terms, Bluefin has doubled in size during the course of their relationship with Eluminas. "The expanded leadership capabilities have allowed this to happen and our adherence closely to principles, values and strategy has been key. When times have been tough, the team didn't retreat into bad behaviours and continued to make good decisions," said Appleby. Within their own market, Bluefin's performance during tougher economic times also compares very well - whilst the majority of their competitors have been struggling, and in many cases making substantial cuts, Bluefin revenues grew 23% in the depths of the recession." At the end of the year, Bluefin extended their co-operation with Eluminas to work with the next tier of senior management, a process described by one participant as 'the best development day I've ever spent'. "We've matured as an organisation and what has been achieved is highly sustainable" said Appleby. "The next step will need to take our transformation on to the next level - as one of the lessons we've really taken on board is that as leaders of a business, our development must always remain in step with the growth and strategy of the company." http://www.bluefinsolutions.com About Eluminas |
