Project details:
The Organization
Classic Couverture Ltd. (CCL), founded in 1989, is a chocolate manufacturer supplying 20,000 metric tons of chocolate to blue-chip customers within the United Kindgom, Continental Europe, and the United States. In 2006 ADM acquired CCL.
The Challenge
The question that faced CCL was simply: “What are the areas that need to be tackled that would provide the maximum impact to our financial performance?”
This was a particularly tough question to ask, since the company had just successfully re-built its factory achieving optimum performance, quality, and efficiency, and recruited and installed a highly qualified management team.
This type of success can mask other, less tangible, results. Further examination revealed that silos had developed, with little evidence of effective, cross-departmental teamwork. The new challenge was to improve communication, cooperation, and coordination across the organisation.
The Grid Solution
Following many months of research into a suitable solution, CCL’s managing director selected Grid® to improve individual and collective teamwork performance.
The first step was to measure the intangible and “fuzzy” areas of existing behaviors that characterized workplace interactions between the silos that had formed. Management began by using the basic behavioral styles presented by Grid. The Grid behavioral model is unique because it takes a typically intangible process (relating to others) and defines specific actions that reveal a person’s, a team’s, or an organization’s style of relating.
Grid provided CCL with a structured framework to address the culture of its organization through individual and team effectiveness, and added an understanding of the “people factor.”
The Results
The Grid experience was extremely positive and powerful. The process uncovered significant issues relating to unresolved conflict. Communication, cooperation, and coordination throughout the business have improved dramatically. More importantly, the methodology provided ongoing measurement and has made the culture and relationship issues tangible. The future plan is to implement the Grid solution throughout the company.
As CCL’s managing director said regarding the challenge faced by company, “The highest degrees of education, the most expensive equipment, and even unlimited amounts of capital will never reach their full potential if the ‘people’ behind them cannot work together soundly and effectively.“
Project info:
- ADM
- England
- Art and Culture
- Chocolates