Case study
Helping an executive team to drive strategic growth in tech infrastructure
Project details
Industry:
Telecommunications
Primary service:
The client
A FTSE250 tech infrastructure business operates two distinct business lines – smart technology for broadcasting and smart meters and consumption tracking across the utility space. Their goal was to pivot the business away from sole reliance on legacy channels to diversify into streaming and other areas – whilst investing heavily in the utility business.
They aimed to catalyse a commercial transformation through these new revenue streams and engaged with us to support them through team and organisational development.
Objectives
- Break down silos and enhance collaboration, communication, and teamwork towards their diversification and expansion goals.
- Integrate and support the new CEO and executive team.
- Onboard a new CTO to modernise the tech stack without disrupting current products.
What we did
Focused on three key areas
- Deepening relationships between the CEO, the executive team, and the rest of the organisation.
- Facilitating long-term, strategic conversations over short-term functional discussions.
- Building a credible reputation for the new direction within the business.
Intervention steps
- Individual Assessments: We began by assessing team members individually to identify strengths, risks, and recommendations.
- Team Workshops: Over six months, we combined structured exercises and experiential workshops with real-time observation, feedback, and intervention.
Key activities
- Making commitments: In the first team session, we used individual assessment themes to create behavioural commitments for improved team effectiveness:
- Labelling conversations for clarity, nominating a chair to manage discussions.
- Recognising ineffective collaboration and addressing it with reflective questions about conflict and communication dynamics.
- Opening up conversations to address unspoken issues and promote healthy debate.
- Building peer-to-peer muscle: We encouraged collaboration through structured peer-to-peer listening exercises focused on current problems. This allowed the team to:
- Leverage available resources and skills for better problem-solving.
- Identify both spoken and unspoken aspects of issues.
- Suggest bold actions.
- Recognise unconscious contributions to problems.
What our client had to say
“Having formed a new exco from a diverse set of backgrounds trying to deliver an ambitious agenda, I needed the team to gel and move to high performance as quickly as possible. We went with ig as they had lots of experience in creating exco alignment and were straight talking – exactly what we needed. We were able to build trust quickly, start creating our team brand and build resilient connecting tissue to help with the business challenges ahead. Investing in setting up well at the beginning as a team with the help of ig has probably saved a lot of angst that have might otherwise reared its head.”
CEO
Technology Infrastructure Company
In summary
The CEO became more confident and distributed leadership more effectively, involving new team members and reducing his own burden. The COO function, P&L lines, and commercial roles broke down silos, with more collaboration being done centrally versus within individual P&Ls. Transformation became a collective capability rather than a separate function, promoting an organisation-wide approach to change. Succession planning gaps were identified and addressed, facilitating leadership distribution and reducing bottlenecks at the CEO level.
This comprehensive approach resulted in a more cohesive, strategically aligned, and effective executive team, ready to drive transformation and growth.
