In conversation with
“We wanted to align the team around the company’s strategic priorities, and be able to measure our progress with a more scientific approach.”
Alex Butcher, MD @ Bede
We asked Alex~ ‘What was it that lead you to seek our services? What was your challenge’?
“It felt like our leadership team at Bede was acting as a collective of individuals, each with a ‘Job Description’, executing their respective activities. We wanted to align the team around the company’s strategic priorities, and be able to measure our progress with a more scientific approach. We looked around at various management by objectives disciplines and identified that we wanted to give OKRs a try. Once we had zeroed in our OKRs we found TBG pretty quickly after that.”
We asked Alex~ ‘What work did we do together’?
“TBG facilitated a number of workshops to help us tease out and prioritise our strategic objectives. With those in place, TBG devised a programme of training to work on OKR skills. As part of that work, we also trained the OKR pilot team in coaching and feedback skills, to give us the best chance of learning as we went. TBG was also engaged to help smooth roll out to our second wave of OKR teams, with responsibilities being taken in house from that point forward. Subsequent to this initial engagement, TBG have also worked with our people & business operations lead to roll out a values assessment, working across the entire staff base to define Bede’s values. We’re still working with TBG now to help define leadership traits for Bede people.”
We asked Alex~ ‘What outcomes were achieved? What was the impact on growth’?
“We’ve had a sizeable shift in alignment at Bede since embarking on this work. To start with, the executive team now frame their actions in terms of strategic priorities, but these are understood at more and more levels throughout Bede. We have now expanded the pilot to reach around 30% of the staff base, and that is really helping to drive strategic alignment. People now feel connected to the growth drivers for the business.
It’s difficult to measure the impact on bottom line; but Bede certainly feels better prepared to support our current expansion plans. Values in particular are starting to have an impact on how to evaluate new candidates to join Bede.”
We asked Alex~ ‘What would you say to someone like yourself, facing the same challenge you had’?
“Working on the business is just as important as working in the business. You have to make time to grow the capabilities of your team or you risk stagnation”.