Organizing an Internal Management Workshop for a European Lift Company
To achieve faster growth on the Chinese market, a European lift company was on the path of expanding its manufacturing and sales force in the country. During the transition period, the employees were facing challenges in adapting to the rapid development of the organization expansion.
ARC Consulting was hired to support the client to organize and facilitate an internal workshop, targeted to improve internal communication and cross-function collaboration. A detailed corrective action plan was made by the consultants by summarizing findings from the workshop preparation stage and the suggestions collected through brainstorming and group discussions by the client’s employees during the workshop.
On one hand, the sales and after-sales department had enlarged its teams and was in the process of adjusting its organization into a more centralized structure. On the other hand, the newly established factory was still lacking clear operation procedures, resulting in delayed responses to the demands customers.
The client brought in ARC Consulting as an independent third-party to allow its employees to express individual opinions privately and anonymously before the workshop, and address and discuss these problems in a transparent, objective and organized way in a workshop with their colleagues.
ARC Consulting carried out the project in three steps.
1. Face-to-face interviews
Prior to the workshop, general and function-specific questions were developed, and around 20 employees were selected for face-to-face interviews with the consultants. The interviews allowed the employees to raise their concerns and their suggestions on how to improve the internal communication and collaboration. They also helped the consultants to understand the current status of the company and enabled the design of the best suitable discussion topics for the workshop.
2. Facilitating the workshop
Around 50 employees participated in the internal workshop with ARC Consulting taking on the role as facilitators. Firstly, the general findings from the interviews were shared with the participants. Secondly, a panel discussion was done by a group of employee representatives with the consultant’s guidance for demonstrating how to conduct group discussion efficiently. Thirdly, the participants were divided into six groups, and conducted group discussions about assigned topics. Each group sent a representative to present their proposed answers and solutions on the selected topic, while the other participants had the chance to comment on the rationality and feasibility of the proposed actions.
3. Post-workshop summary
Based on the group discussions on the workshop, ARC Consulting developed a detailed action plan, responsible persons and target completion days. These actions were agreed by the named responsible persons during the workshop and considered feasible.
The workshop provided an opportunity for all employees to sit down together in a room to discuss the internal issues regarding processes, communication and collaboration, which helped to keep up the team spirit within the organization.
The action plan generated from the workshop was taken into implementation and the results were followed-up both internally by the management and externally by the consultants in Phase 2 of the project.
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