Corporate problem solving can help you meet your quarterly targets. Solve that niggling supplier problem. Improve your team’s work standards. Give yourself a good night’s sleep. Solve your biggest headache. Impress your boss.
No two problems are exactly alike.
We’d love to give you an off-the-shelf solution, but if it were that simple you’d have resolved it yourself, wouldn’t you?
Here are some case studies of offsites Cindy has done with clients to give you a flavour of the range of solutions. We can easily customise an offsite to meet your team’s needs.
Corporate problem solving: supplier risk management
Mela hated having to cover off nasty “surprises” with her boss. Her suppliers were often the problem.
In a half-day offsite we mapped each supplier and plotted them on a risk assessment matrix. This done, the team developed a standard operating procedure for each of their supplier segments. And set up an occasional evaluation procedure to ensure that the suppliers were in the right risk-management sphere.
Corporate problem solving: set consistent work procedures
Stuart’s team had each learnt their craft in different organisations, and at different times. Stuart assembled the team in a single office, and noticed how inconsistent they were. In 3 x half-day workshops over 6 weeks we worked with them to agree a standard operating procedure.
Corporate problem solving: identify best practice, realise productivity gains!
Alex’s team had established a standard operating procedure, but even within that there were wildly different ways to approach each step of the task. In 4 x 2 hour workshops over 4 weeks we drilled down on the time-consuming tasks to establish best practice. For every 10 minutes we shaved off a task repeated 20 times a day across the team we saved 3 hours across the team. The team became advocates for best practice!
Corporate problem solving: streamline and eliminate bottlenecks in the workflow
Phil recognised that he was a bottleneck for approval and specialist advice in his team. We took 8 x 2 hour workshops to plot the workflow and outline a skills matrix to eliminate some of this key person dependency.
Corporate problem solving: Identify and capitalise on the team’s strengths and weaknesses
Sometimes the solution isn’t about analysing the problems. Sometimes it’s about finding out what we do well and doing it more. A sundial in the shade is useless. We worked with several teams to isolate their strengths and strategise with them how to use these strengths to work on their problems.
Describe it to Cindy and she’ll help you!
Cindy has also helped teams to resolve squabbles about head count, customer service failure, and other tricky operational issues.
We’ve done way too many off sites with way too many organisations (see our client logo collage below!) to give you every case study.
Cindy Tonkin’s broad corporate consulting background, with experience in both the “hard side” of productivity improvement and the “soft side” of influencing, coaching and training gives you an in to approaching any organisational problem. We can never promise that it will go away, but we can promise you that we’ll help you make inroads into the problem. Call Cindy now to talk about how we could approach your problem.
