The Brief
A small tech company had recently appointed a new CEO and reduced its force by 60%.
Heading into a new year with the same number of goals and less than half the people. The executive team knew that a few things would be critical in the next year:
- they carefully selected and desperately needed to retain the remaining employees,
- they needed to focus, which required them to engage in uncomfortable discussions about which products they would drop, and
- they needed everyone in the organization to have the skills to disagree, share concerns, and take risks.
Approach and Results
HAVEN was introduced by a board member as a group that could support the organization in a variety of ways. A HAVEN consultant partnered with the leadership team to facilitate the series of difficult focus discussions and to be a resource for employees to share concerns.
The HAVEN learning and development team conducted workshops and led small case groups to embed the capabilities in the employees to challenge each other and disagree openly. And a HAVEN project team implemented a pulse survey to measure engagement quarterly, ensuring that any individual or team in distress received support.
