Client success stories
Stephen George + Partners is one of the UK’s leading architectural practices and having gone through a phase of growth and diversification, realised the requirement to invest in the development of their senior leadership team as they took on more and more responsibility.
In 2015 we started by designing a series of business development workshops to get senior and client facing people thinking about how to develop their business skills, whilst keeping their authenticity and integrity. This developed into a series of leadership development sessions with Partners and Directors where they worked through bonding as a group, making quicker and more confident decisions and developing a client focused culture that was sustainable and practical.
Today SGP hold quarterly strategy events with us which fulfils three requirements: to keep their leadership development skills fresh and topped up, to work through any complex or thorny issues that need resolving and to review progress and plan.
We have a lot of really good people, and really good architects but our business and leadership skills were underdeveloped and we knew we had to address that if we were to retain and support our values, culture and quality of service.
I had attended some of Monkey Puzzle’s programmes before and thought their ability to tailor to the needs of the audience would be great for us, plus when it comes to psychology and innovative businesses, they really know what they’re talking about.
The Monkey Puzzle team are more like friends and partners than suppliers and we feel confident bringing them in for any people development related issues. They are experts at creating win win situations where everyone is treated with dignity. In the group sessions they run, what we love is that they are totally flexible, and can elegantly go with whatever tangent we throw at them rather than stick doggedly to a plan. They always get us a great result and everyone comes away challenged, motivated and inspired because they have the clarity and confidence to know what they need to do and how to do it.
ICS Learn, the UK’s most recommended online learning provider *, asked us to deliver a Collaborative Leadership Programme for their senior leadership team (SLT).
Whilst the SLT had been working well, it needed to be able to work together more coherently and at a different level of intensity and professionalism to meet the additional requirements of their new PE investors. The CEO Colin Kennedy wanted a learning experience that was practical so that a busy SLT could implement actions straight away after each session. We used our flagship programme as a base for the design but tailored it to Colin’s requirements, by providing more condensed sessions and a looser strategy workshop format rather than a traditional training one.
Over 6 months of half-day monthly group sessions, interspersed with one-to-one coaching for each SLT member, John and Lara drew on the programme material as it was applicable to the real day-to-day challenges the team was facing in the business, whilst maintaining a learning focus.
As a result of the programme the SLT felt more confident about dealing with complex team challenges, developed an improved understanding of each other and their teams’ behaviours and were able to work through issues and opportunities together more effectively and productively. The SLT’s growth and development was also recognised and commented on by the new investors in the increased coherence, confidence and quality of their interactions.
*ICS Learn has the highest Net Promoter Score (NPS) against its competitors amongst learners. Source: Parthenon-EY HR Employer and Learner Survey 2017.
I knew I needed someone who I could trust and having worked with Monkey Puzzle previously at Thomson Reuters and other organisations, they were my immediate choice. The Monkey Puzzle team has an amazing ability to use leading edge theories and models in a totally practical way. We actually got things done as an SLT whilst focusing on our leadership development at the same time.
I have used Monkey Puzzle for over 12 years at 4 different companies. Their business mentoring skills and techniques allow them to adapt to all different types of audiences so that each individual learns more about him/herself and ensures that those within the group understand their peers far better, allowing teams to be more productive, more successful and have more fun. On both a personal and business level, I have always enjoyed my time with the team and learn something new every time we get together.
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