Case Study 1

An employee received a developmental assignment that took him out of his realm of expertise.  The deadline was quickly approaching and most of the work still faced him.

The employee’s job description included supervising the work of several employees and ensuring payments to suppliers were proper and timely.  He was at a loss.  He couldn’t see his way clear to do a quality job and still meet the time deadline.  As a result, he buried himself in his daily tasks and used his busyness as an excuse for not working on the project.

We decided to approach the project as if it was the employee’s business.  Rather than focus on the actual task, we looked at a bigger picture.  We used our business planning process as a framework.

First, we explored what values were most important to the employee.  Once he articulated what was important to him, he did the same for the departments affected by the project. 

When the employee saw the connection between his values and tied them to the values of those departments, his level of enthusiasm rose.

The next step was for the employee to figure out how to best use his time.  He had been reluctant to carve out time, on a daily basis, to work on the project.  However, once he saw the impact completing the project would have on “the business”, he made the commitment.  He set up his goals, strategies and objectives, and he broke down the more intimidating tasks into manageable pieces.

As a result, he completed his piece of the project on time.   And, he had a process he could fall back on if the situation occurred again.

 Case Study 2

Case Study 3

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