Challenging assignments

At times any company might face a situation where major approach change is needed in order to adapt to the client’s reality. We had been working with a certain client for a while already, and they saw that we could help them even further by helping them to carve out a strategic framework for their future. Only challenge was that they were not willing to make the time investment of required four months to go through the BLUE learning process. They wanted BLUE strategy framework but they wanted it as “a shot in the arm”. They gave us three days to shift their people from all walks of organizational life to go in the same direction.

We said we couldn’t make miracles in that short time frame but we would give it a try. After initial preparations and great inputs collected by the project team, we were ready to start our common effort. Or so we thought…

Though we were ready to squeeze the time frame in absolute minimum we were not ready to let go off our participative and fun delivery style. We made them play games, run around and act foolishly. We wouldn’t let them give obvious answers and we didn’t spoon-feed them with solutions. It paid off – but at what cost? The agenda dragged on to midnight every evening.

We were forced to experiment with ad hoc solution teams that would release the rest of the group to relax while the team would finalize the step that we were working on; whether it was purpose statement, dream, values, core strategies we worked till late night to get a draft out. Next morning we would play a prank on the rest of them and present some utter bullshit as the results of our last night’s work. E.g. the purpose statement proposal included phrases like “integrating enterprising synergies”, “generating seamless models”, and “adding value to enable mission-critical methodologies”. They would question it and say that they cannot understand what it means. It was complete crap of course. Then we would reveal the real output and start working on that. Making people smile early in the morning gave us energy to continue. It was stressful; we all gave our utmost. In the end we had nearly-ready this and half-done that. We had good stuff, but nothing was ready. Still, one objective was fulfilled: it became one big team! They’d come up with a funny name to describe their whole team, regardless of their geographical location or functional role. They would picture the future as a common path that started from yesterday’s darkness and went towards light. They would collect all their fears, doubts and disbeliefs and literally burn them at the end of the program. After running a few extra miles during these three days Ruki and I were completely exhausted, but happy and impressed at the same time. We held a few follow-up meetings at their office to finalize everything and the end result was good. It was a stretch… It was painful… It was fun… It was inspiring… But we’re never going to do it again!