CUSTOMER STORY: Less HIERARCHY more ownership & connection

Datadriven IT solutions for HR

This business unit is creating value through data-driven HR solutions for the Dutch market. The team is expanding and is starting to sell their solution into new markets, requiring product development, marketing and sales, and customer success teams to collaborate more smoothly together. 
"With the customer in mind and connected with the whole team, Lysna facilitated an open development space. In this space it was easy for all team members to share, listen, give, and receive constructive feedback and take responsibility for their value to the customer and other teams! Grateful!"

- BU Director , data driven IT company

So what happened?

This BU team was well-aligned on the overall proposition and team objectives. However, this team had divided the work into the different expertise areas (departments) and worked on their own sub-objectives.

The manager kept the overview and updated everyone involved, acting as a linking pin. All escalations landed on his desk. This gave him many tactical firefighting work and little time to spend on strategizing and crucial customers. It also slowed down decision-making in and between the teams.

This all affected the customer perception in a negative way.
This team suffered from lack of real understanding and collaboration between their internal departments. They worked in separate expertise islands and were too loosely connected to the others on the handovers of their customer knowledge.
In the 36-hour workshop, they found new ways to improve their communication and the process to pass that information on to the next team that is needed to assure that the customer can experience the promised value. They learned to reflect on their projects over the last year and what they want to do differently in the year to come, creating their own guiding principles and aligning those with others in the team.

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1

Challenges

The key to this was the level of openness and vulnerability that we were able to establish in the first couple of hours.

The smaller teams needed to learn to take ownership of their strategies, decisions, and communication with the other teams.

During the workshop it became clear that some individuals needed to strengthen their self-trust in the value they bring.

2

Process

We worked on the customer journey and creating an understanding for who was contributing what value in the customer journey. And more importantly, who is responsible for what.

They shared and listened and understood the challenges and needs of the others and how they could contribute to support them.

They discovered their lessons from the past and created guidelines for decisions for the future. This led to more ownership within the teams.

3

Impact

The voicing to the wider team what the smaller teams are responsible and accountable for, created accountability and understanding.

By collaborating in the smaller teams and with the whole team, they connected at a deeper level, leading to more understanding and easier ways to communicate with one another.

Less topics were escalated to the manager, so he needed less time for firefighting and more time for strategic matters.