National Grid
Perspectiv has worked with the energy company National Grid for 20 years using Facilitative Leadership and Creative Problem Solving to help improve their performance by developing collaboration, leadership, and complex problem solving capabilities.
The challenge
National Grid’s Directors summarised the challenge to us as follows:
We are trying to move towards the ‘efficiency frontier’ but…
...whilst there was some level of acceptance for change, on the other, employee surveys showed there was room for improvement. We have got to try and take people along the change journey. Traditionally, we have not worried enough about the softer issues like bringing people with us. This means we have to increase engagement.
When working on change we have to look at the head (‘Does this make sense?’), and the heart (‘How do we feel about this and is it being done fairly?’).
Also, our organisation design requires us to collaborate across the business. In the old days, command and control may have worked but not if we want to be at the frontier of efficiency.
We need to grow and develop future leaders through the provision of Creative Problem Solving tools and contemporary leadership practices that will serve their whole career and help to address these challenges.
How we made a difference
The approach taken was in three broad directions:
1. We provided Facilitative Leadership and Creative Problem Solving (FL-CPS) development programs to enable the company in both the UK and USA to see and address problems more effectively. This included how to address wicked problems which are different to normal management and engineering problems and so need a Facilitative Leadership approach. Over 500 people have been through the programmes and the average end of course evaluation has been 4.8/5.
2. We provided further one-on-one and group coaching to those who were ready, willing, and able to take their capabilities to the next level. The photograph below is of six of the remarkable people at a leadership recognition event with the CEO John Pettigrew. They had been through the FL-CPS programme and had achieved an extraordinary level of capability which was being formally recognised.
From left to right: Ant Matthews, Jacqueline Cooke, Claire Naunton, Vicky Higgin, Kerry Matthews and Craig Rollason with CEO John Pettigrew.
Others who reached this level of achievement but are not pictured are Mark Abbott and John Elsegood.
3. We applied Facilitative Leadership where we develop people whilst developing the business on a number of complex projects.
The results
‘One of the key benefits has been creating a shared language, framework, and set of tools inside National Grid that enables individuals and teams (within and across different parts of the organisation) to work more effectively together in solving problems and capitalising on opportunities for the business.
Perspectiv’s Facilitative Leadership and Creative Problem Solving capabilities also integrate, re-energise, and complement other improvement processes such as Agile, Lean, Six Sigma, and Project Management.’
– Ant Matthews, Business Improvement Manager