Transforming commercial focus - Organisational development and training case study

Living Sport was facing the requirement to become much more commercial in its operations - it was having to diversify its funding base and was realigning its resources and capabilities to enable this transformation in preparation for the next financial year.  

Simon was appointed Non-Executive Director/Trustee and Chairman of Finance Committee of Living Sport - a regional sports development charity in September 2013.  As part of this role Simon provided pro bono coaching to the Business Development and Finance Managers to help them meet their day-to-day objectives.  The MD participated in one of Realising Ambition’s workplace simulation events focused on how to create High Performing Teams and Organisations.  This event was delivered by Stephen Pauley, co-Founder of Realising Ambition and Brian Lewis, an Associate.  The MD then asked Realising Ambition to pitch against a training requirement for the charity.  

Realising Ambition put together a 12 month “Academy-style” programme comprising four quarterly workshops covering the 6 person leadership team and individual 1-2-1 coaching sessions in between.  Topics covered included:

• Behavioural profiles and communication styles (Tetra Maps)
• Integration with Motivational Maps work that was conducted separately
• Individual Strengths inventory around which to build effective project structures
• Relationship building, sales and business development skills
• Influencing skills, assertiveness and conflict resolution
• Coaching skills - the GROW model
• Delegation and management structures
• Capacity planning, prioritisation, delegation and workflow alignment
• High Performance Team principles, structure and improvement plan
• Integration with external Charity audit and quality assurance processes
• Strategic planning and performance management
• Presentation skills 
• Series of organisational initiatives and projects set up and monitored during the programme, e.g.:
• Radically improved vision, purpose and strategy
• Business process improvements and benefits tracking
• Balanced Scorecard with objectives, metrics and targets to be used to track organisational progress against its strategy in management and Board meetings

Outputs for Living Sport included:

• The team being fully immersed in new management methods having lots of opportunity to practice the techniques in the training environment and personalise it through coaching and application to their jobs alongside the training
• The organisation being equipped with the basis of its strategic plan and the necessary operationalisation plan and tools to ensure the strategy is executed

Tremendous example of how Realising Ambition’s unique combination of leadership/management development and coaching process and content together with its commercial business results focus can really deliver organisational change through a training intervention.  This is all achieved using Realising Ambition’s action learning approach that allows plenty of opportunity for practice, reflection, feedback and improvement.