Though we tend to write a great deal about the theory of team building, we don’t look so much at practical examples where a team building program proved essential to a company’s success. So today we thought we'd have a look at some real life success stories. The three examples were chosen to illustrate how a business can turn around employees who are under a great deal of pressure and may even lose their jobs at the end of the final tasks they are being asked to perform. In this respect, it was essential that they were kept motivated throughout, and operated in an optimal manner as a cohesive team, for the eventual benefit of the company. 

Pfizer. Dealing With A Major Retirement

As you're probably well aware, Pfizer is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of life saving drugs. Their concern was about what would happen after its current managing director, based in a factory in Dalian, in China retired. The fear was that his retirement would lead to a lowering of job performance across all departments at its largest manufacturing plant. Over the years he’d build up a great relationship with his Chinese counterparts, and his new replacement may need time to find his feet.

An external team building company was bought in. They designed a custom program that would need around 3 days for its participants. Its purpose was to identify and then test both the reformulation and retesting of leadership strategies that would normally emanate from the top downwards. These were critical to the success of the plant in the future. What's interesting is that this wasn't held as a formal event. Those taking part say it was filled with laughter, lots of fun, and was based around finding the right cultural fit of four major team principles. These were credibility, results, measurement, and originality. At the end of the 3-day period, the team leadership had engaged with both practical and proven requirements in order to help continue and evolve the world class dynamics that the previous managing director had in place.

As a direct result of this, when the managing director finally retired, it was noticed that the Dalian plant actually increased production whilst at the same time, handled the leadership transition smoothly and without any issues. The top management at Pfizer were later to comment that the team building exercises laid on for the Dalian management were critical in producing an improvement in overall sustainable results. As well as handling the transition from one at managing director to another with aplomb.

Yellow Pages. Motivate Workers Who Know They’ll Be Jobless

Some years ago, the telecommunications giant Telstra decided to sell it's Yellow Pages business. The backbone for the Yellow Pages business was its IT department. They were tasked with producing their best work ever during the three months that were leading up to the transition of the business over to the new owner. But there was an unfortunate catch. Once the transition was complete, then they would all be out of work. Telstra needed it's programmers and dev's to be at the top of their game during the transition. Yet with them already knowing that they would be unemployed, it was essential to keep them motivated in order for a smooth transition to the new owners.

Telstra commissioned a team building company to come in and pinpoint the exact areas of performance that will be most critical for this transition. They then convened the whole IT Department of Yellow Pages. They took time to design a program that was centred around looking at practical strategies as well as facing the answer to the simple yet most important question on the minds of employees: what's the point of acting as a unified team and producing our best performance, if there is no job waiting for us at the end?

The team building effort was able to push an agenda that centred around life after Yellow Pages were sold. They looked at key areas of control and choice ensuring that the IT community would hear of, and the business media would praise the efforts of the IT team. They would be rightly credited as being behind the successful sale, as well as the eventual handover of the Yellow Pages business. This allowed the team to focus on producing the best results for Telstra whilst at the same time gaining confidence about their future possibilities. A massive team-building effort was able to achieve a world-class performance across all factors. This resulted in the sale being a huge and noteworthy success. Telstra were quick to heap praise on their IT department as being critical in the successful sale.

The programs developed by the Yellow Pages IT Department were easily transferable to the new owners and it led to a successful and issue-free sale of the Telstra Yellow Pages business. We should also add that they achieved a full asking price. As a result of their efforts, the IT team were called out in many media sources for that excellent work, as well as their work ethic, considering they were to lose their jobs once this final task was completed.  As a result, none of them had any problems finding new work. And in many cases they landed jobs with higher seniority roles and also much larger salaries. What was also noticeable, was that if you compared how well they did in their new jobs, with equally qualified staff that did not engage in team building,  then the latter struggled more to find equally satisfying employment and were much less successful in doing so

A Global Car Brand Experienced A Breakdown Of Communication 

This problem came about from the hardheaded approach that management took towards some essential changes within their business. Essentially a new tax code meant that the company would need to freeze all sales over a long weekend period, thereby allowing its  accountancy systems to be updated. Unfortunately this news was met with hostility from their dealerships. In fact, the company was peering into the abyss when it comes to negotiations, as the dealers were adamant they were being cut out without a voice.   Nevertheless, in the background there was the looming legal deadline for tax compliance. So in some ways the car company was stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Once again a team building company was called upon. In an effort to find a faster resolution for this impasse, they took the main players, who were employees at the dealerships, from finance, and also the car’s IT Department, as well as all the senior managers, to a customised program in a remote and neutral location. It didn't take long for the team to recognise that the problem was essentially that the management were not willing to share the pain of this change. Instead it was perceived by the dealers that they would be dumping all the negative aspects on the dealers across the country. Once this was identified as the main issue, and accepted as the root cause by management, then both sides were able to work together to work on a simulation that would produce a unified set of results where everyone would benefit mutually. And this would result in a compromise, as well as sacrifice from both sides. By holding this team building exercise in a remote retreat, it allowed the management and the dealers to finally get to know each other on a more personal basis.  Obviously, when you are friends with someone then you don't want to hurt or upset them in any way. This thinking was to pave the way for a solution that was mutually beneficial.

As a direct result of this team building, both the management and the key dealers returned to their respective workplaces and offices, and were able to sell the new programs and  impasse solving strategies to their respective workers. The new tax switchover happened on time and without any issues. At the same time, the dealers were able to implement stop-gap measures and as a result they were able to continue trading. Throughout this process both sides maintained their different business procedures and perspectives. But thanks to team building, a new unified strategy was introduced and this involved both trust and teamwork.   This also resulted in a huge increase in company morale and goodwill.