How renewing trust between founder and employees led to a business turn-around

“He is lying!” – the team’s response was spontaneous. As part of the first phase of our engagement, we asked the team on why they thought their company was making a loss. Such was the lack of trust that the employees were convinced that the MD was lying. “He is claiming that we are making a loss just so that he does not have to pay us a bonus or increment!” This was a family-run distribution company. The founder MD, a well-intentioned honest man, was disillusioned! Long pending outstanding amounts from customers and the complete indifference of his team in following up and collecting payments on time was a major reason for the financial trouble the company was in. But the team had no clue that this was the case.

After a few foundational steps to create a fertile ground, we implemented the #Semcostyle practice of #TeachThemTheNumbers. The financial reports of the company were represented in an easy-to-understand, simple format. Every team member, including the delivery boy, was educated on basics of finance such as the cost of capital in a series of short and interesting workshops with simple everyday analogies. Another Semcostyle practice put in motion was #RhythmOfGovernance. As part of this, a weekly meeting was held where the finance head shared the week’s business performance, including sales numbers as well as liabilities. Team members were encouraged to ask questions and they were answered transparently.

These practices broke perceptions the team had about the financial health of the company. The team realised the importance of timely collection of outstanding amounts. The diligence of constant follow-up with customers and collecting due payments increased significantly. By structuring the team around customers instead of functions and implementing several other Semcostyle practices such as #RewardForResults, #MeetTrackAndChallenge, trust was rebuilt between the founder and the employees.

Employees understanding of the business increased manifold and it was just a matter of months before the company moved out of the red and started making profits.

#ShapingTheFutureOfWork #DrivingBusinessResults #HumanCentric

To learn more about how we help organisations become self-managed, resilient and thus future-ready, click here.

The founder and CEO of our client, a large Facilities Management company with over 6000 employees, believed in the potential of his people. However, convincing his leadership team to share this belief proved challenging. “I want to transform ‘blue-collared’ housekeeping staff to ‘gold-collared’ empowered workforce”. This was where he sought our help. Building transparency and trust were a few of several initiatives we employed to make this happen. Several noteworthy strategic decisions were made by the on-ground teams in this transformation. One such example is the story below.

When the company decided to bid for a contract at one of India’s busiest airports, the housekeeping staff were left to negotiate the terms in the CEO’s absence. They had to quickly choose between the passenger and cargo terminals—an issue that would have normally required the CEO’s input. The services industry is very competitive, they did not have the luxury of time to wait for him to be contacted.  Realizing this, the team quickly deliberated internally and opted for the passenger terminal. Later when the CEO asked why they did it, they remarked “It was an opportunity to serve travellers who could be business owners. If we did a good job, it could open more doors. We wouldn’t have got this in the cargo terminal!”
This audacious move by housekeeping staff on the ground secured the deal, significantly boosting their revenue for the year.

Our key practices that empowered the on-ground team to make these crucial decisions included:
#Transparency of Financials and Goal #Clarity: The company’s financial health and clearly defined #KPIs presented in a straightforward format ensured every employee comprehended the business goals and the current status.
#RhythmOfGovernance: Focused, brief, and appropriately spaced meetings facilitated leaders in monitoring progress, empowering teams, and intervening only when necessary. This enabled the shift from controlling people to controlling the situation.
#FearlessIdeation: Coaching leaders to listen without judgment and speak last fostered a culture of inclusive decision-making.

Our belief that worked – Unfiltered transparency and trust in people’s ability empowers them to make strategic decisions. The impact was palpable—the team embraced their decision, demonstrating unwavering commitment to growth.

#ShapingTheFutureOfWork #DrivingBusinessResults #HumanCentric

To learn more about how we help organisations become self-managed, resilient and thus future-ready, click here. 

A misaligned leadership team at the Global Capability Center…

The Managing Director of our client expressed his frustration with a poignant observation: “My leadership team is working ‘eye for an eye’ instead of seeing eye to eye!” This sentiment captured the essence of the challenges plaguing the offshore engineering design centre of a prominent multinational corporation.

At first glance, the leadership team appeared formidable—an army of seasoned professionals, each one adept in their respective fields and deeply committed to their work. However, beneath this lay a critical issue: a glaring lack of empathy! What made it more challenging was that the Managing Director was a newly appointed expat. The pervasive horizontal power distance among the leaders continually diverted his focus towards conflict resolution rather than business growth initiatives.

Our intervention began with insightful one-on-one discussions with each member of the leadership team to understand their perspectives and set the stage for a transformative workshop. This was aimed at uncovering the ‘elephant in the room,’ as aptly termed by the MD. A pre-workshop session put the leaders through an anonymous #SemcostyleSelfie survey that showed them the mirror on trust and alignment as key aspects of the leadership team culture. An intense facilitator-led #PurposeAlignment exercise helped them drop their guard and fostered a sense of common purpose and unity.  The leaders learnt to appreciate each other’s contributions to client value.
Implementing practices such as creating a #SocialCharter, #BreakingDownsilos, and engaging in #DilemmaConversations further strengthened team cohesion. Leaders documented agreed-upon behaviours in a customized journal and reinforced them through our facilitated reflection-based sessions.

Instead of focusing on problems, leaders learned to leverage each other’s strengths.
The results were profound. The leadership team was transformed into a unified force, optimizing their time and resources effectively. As a testament to their newfound synergy, they reported a remarkable threefold growth in the subsequent quarter!

#ShapingTheFutureOfWork #DrivingBusinessResults #HumanCentric

To learn more about how we help organisations become self-managed, resilient and thus future-ready, click here.

Trichy lies in the centre of Tamil Nadu, so why do we have our warehouse in Chennai, which is the northernmost tip of the state?”
That was the question posed by a young delivery boy in one of the weekly business review meetings of our client.

Our client, a fast-growing rural e-commerce company with operations in tens of thousands of villages across the country, engaged us when they found their decision-making and growth slowing down as they tried to scale rapidly. While ownership levels and growth were high in the early days of the company, things started to stall as they grew to 300+ employees. Functional siloes crept in. Collaboration reduced. Leaders were dragged into solving tactical issues daily.

As part of the engagement, we introduced various practices such as creating cross-functional teams around customers, defining, and implementing a rhythm of governance, identifying Key Performance Measures, simplifying business reports, practicing unfiltered transparency, teaching them the numbers, reducing power distances between and within functions and many more.

A pilot cross-functional team was created for the region of Tamil Nadu comprising of members from all the functions and levels. This team was trained on the basics of self-management and equipped with business reports they understood. The CEO outlined three key performance measures for the team, one of which was Order to Cash cycle time. Not surprisingly, teams on the field were not aware of these measures and their importance to the business until then.

In one of the weekly business review meetings among the cross-functional team, a delivery boy came up with the idea of shifting the Tamil Nadu warehouse from Chennai to Trichy given its geographical location in the state to reduce the average delivery time and thereby improving the order to cash cycle time. The empowered team saw the merit in the idea and quickly implemented the same. The impact on the O2C cycle time was immediate.

This is just one of the many ideas the team came up with and implemented leading to commendable progress towards the key performance measures. All this without the intervention of leadership!!

#ShapingTheFutureOfWork #DrivingBusinessResults #HumanCentric

To learn more about how we help organisations become self-managed, resilient and thus future-ready, click here.

Our client, a boutique software consulting firm of 150 members, engaged us to scale their business sensibly and coach on organizational and engineering Agile Practices. As part of the #transformation, managers and teams were actively being coached on self-organizing practices and driving greater team alignment, ownership and participation. One of their efforts was to establish a remote-first work-from-home (#WFH) policy. The leadership had concerns about misuse, decreased availability and responsiveness to clients etc. and they initially considered having management and HR define a policy.

We, #SemcoStyle consultants instead, advocated for collective decision-making, drawing from practices like #BringTheClientIn, #InternalCommittees, #StepBackManagement, #SharedDecisionMaking etc. We facilitated the formation of a voluntary committee comprising 20% of the workforce, tasked with crafting WFH guidelines. The committee identified all stakeholders, including not just service providers but even family members! They mapped out the potential impacts of WFH on each and prioritized these impacts and brainstormed solutions, converting them into guidelines prefaced with “WE.”

The level of engagement and maturity displayed by employees pleasantly surprised leaders. The rollout proceeded smoothly, with employees understanding the rationale behind the guidelines and their role in upholding them. Participating volunteers were able to answer questions that came and not get “escalated to management”. Everyone understood WHY the guidelines were needed and the employees’ role in protecting it.
Over three months, reviews indicated no adverse business effects. Teams autonomously managed and adapted the guidelines to their specific contexts, demonstrating self-governance capabilities.

The transparent and inclusive process bolstered trust within the organization. Ultimately, employees collaboratively crafted a policy that could be self-governed and self-managed, departing from traditional HR and management-driven approaches.

#ShapingTheFutureOfWork #DrivingBusinessResults #HumanCentric

To learn more about how we help organisations become self-managed, resilient and thus future-ready, click here.