A major international research and development-based corporation with a focus primarily on agriculture and biotechnology (that requested anonymity), approached SEEK to work with their R&D leadership team.
The division's leadership team had recently been recomposed, and was made up of senior managers, each with the responsibility for driving research, technology and product development for specific business lines. Each of these groups pursued their respective projects on their own, together with the respective business units responsible for marketing and selling the products. The members of the team realized that they lacked a shared vision for collectively leading the company’s R&D activities.
SEEK began its work with a leadership retreat in 2014 during which the team aligned around a shared mission, joint responsibilities, and operating model. Since then, we have conducted annual leadership retreats with the team and have supported various forms of collective action to develop the R&D division. In 2015, we worked with the team on a nine month process to develop the first shared strategy for the corporate R&D function (this later expanded to SEEK supporting a corporation-wide strategic planning process and a subsequent global redesign of its organizational setup to ensure effective delivery of the strategy).
With this clear strategic alignment, our work with the leadership team then focused on taking their interpersonal effectiveness and collaboration to the next level. This involved an individual leadership diagnostic for all its members, followed by a retreat to examine and address resulting patterns in team dynamics. With this strong base, the team is now focusing on systematically developing the leadership capacity at the next level of the organization. This process was launched through a leadership summit also supported by SEEK.