The Taylor Clarke Partnership. Realeasing Potential In Organisations

Client Requirements

Diageo is the world's leading premium drinks business and operates on a worldwide basis. Taylor Clarke were asked to help the newly formed team get up and running at maximum efficiency as soon as possible. The team had been created to implement a particular set of logistics solutions for the organisation as it sought to drive down the costs of operating globally.  The new team, was a virtual team co-located in Scotland, London, USA & mainland Europe, Holland. The team’s remit covered the USA, Europe, the Eastern Block, Latin America and the Far East.

Our Contribution

At the preliminary stage a meeting with the team manager showed that the key need was to get the team up and running as quickly as possible as it played a key part of Diageo’s global strategy. Subsequent discussions with team members, during the diagnostic stage, and further discussions with the team manager, showed a number of specific issues that needed to be addressed. These were:

• To bring together a disparate group of people to form a team
• Build trust and openness to ensure problems were dealt with quickly
• Have a clear, shared understanding of what was needed to be done and in what time frame
• Establish key, critical actions to ‘kick start’ the team development project and keep it on time throughout its life-span
• Build a skill set to help facilitate the implementation process for the set of required logistics solutions

The review and design stage resulted in the above issues being turned into objectives and a process being agreed. As a result, phase 4, the team development workshop phase involved several two to four day sessions (approximately every three to four months) plus two or three facilitated project review sessions.

The first session was purely a team building session where we got the team together (one person that attended was so new he was not yet an employee!).  Our facilitators spent two and a half days doing outdoor team activity and used Belbin’s team role analysis to help people understand how others might operate and to check out the potential strengths and weaknesses of the team.  We also used MBTI to help team’s understanding of each other, preferred communications styles, influencing styles etc.

Subsequent sessions focused on specific skills development i.e. Influencing and Persuading, Facilitation, Handling difficult situations etc.  These sessions incorporated action planning and specific target setting sessions.

The project review sessions focused on what had happened over the elapsed time since the last review and had an element of sharing of knowledge and experience of similar situations leading to consideration of what might work and what might not work for the next stage of the project.

The Impact

The evaluation and follow up stages, showed the benefits listed below:

• Superb team spirit and attitude, despite the significant change involved
• Delivery of expected (significantly stretched) targets
• Savings of circa £2m
• Integration of IT, Logistics, Planning and Operational delivery into one cohesive team
• Several ‘clients’ won over to a completely different way of working (Supplier managed replenishment meant giving up control of stocks)
• Fluid and very dynamic handling of changing circumstances (merger ongoing)
• Several team members took on responsibility for learning about and covering areas out-with their perceived area of expertise

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