Transforming THALES

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About the Client

THALES is a global technology business researching, developing and supplying technology and services that impact the lives of millions. They deliver their work through teams with a diverse mix of engineers and managers to tackle complex programmes worth £millions. 

Category: Team development, Leadership development

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Objective.

Transforming Thales UK’s operational leadership and delivery through a Mindset of Growth 

Summary.

Thales UK wanted to improve how programme delivery teams worked together as collaboration and teamwork wasn’t a strength between managers and engineers. After a pilot to demonstrate the link with mindset and emotional intelligence, we are working with teams to put in place the Practices for Growth for them to perform.

Challenge.

Evidence against three key Thales competencies confirmed a preference for teams to focus on tasks (‘Think big’ and ‘Make it happen’) over people (‘Together’), i.e. low emotional intelligence and limited people skills. The challenge was enabling psychological safety in delivery teams, which would save them £millions over the programme while also enhancing customer reputation. 

Our research shows a strong link between a Mindset of Growth and measures of psychological safety. Specifically, psychological safety increases in a team when more people show up consistently from Growth, i.e. a Self Belief of I’m Okay and a Belief in Others of You’re Okay. 

Naming the elephant in the room earlier is key to psychological safety and a mindset of Growth to enable timely, constructive and challenging conversations. 

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Approach.

First of all, we had to demonstrate impact by quantifying Growth and Survival using the before and after data from our individual and team psychometrics. It was also clear from their delivery review that most of the challenges were attributed to behaviours consistent with Survival in the initial programme phases. 

We then piloted an existing initiative with their graduates and high performers to raise awareness of their Growth and Survival habits. Using our online toolkit, it quickly translated into immediate results in the workplace. For example, the use of Growth and Survival as a language to improve collaboration. 

In turn, this enabled operational leaders to see the relevance of mindset and feelings to performance. At their annual conference, we challenged preconceptions about ‘soft skills’ by explaining the science behind our approach. By also quantifying their Growth and Survival habits, we highlighted how emotion impacted performance, e.g. feelings of exhaustion were habitually ignored, impacting decision-making. 

Following a similar conference for bid and project managers, we had influenced 224 key leaders responsible for 70/80% of the their workforce. We are now rolling this out across all delivery teams to underpin operational performance with a team climate of Growth and psychological safety. 

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Outcomes.

Senior leaders report improvements in teams raising problems and having challenging conversations. Quantifying the impact is difficult but, given the size of the programmes, it is possible to estimate the cost of NOT having them in terms of £millions and reputation. 

 

“… I wanted to improve the quality of conversations … We are seeing differences in behaviour – 12-18 months ago in Gate Reviews you would see silo-behaviour and protectionism. Now the conversations are more in Growth, richer and joined up. In the past I’ve seen teams wasting months because they’re being bloody minded. Now these conversations are happening …” – VP Engineering 

“The benefit … is that it gives a language that brings Operational Leadership to life – and that’s key to creating psychological safety … in a sustainable way.” – VP B&PM

 

Thales’ own research found higher psychological safety in teams undertaking the initiative, confirmed by our data, e.g. increasing by 40% in one team after five months. 

Our research shows that people in Growth outperform those in Stuck (one Survival category). From the pilot, those in Growth increased by 47% and decreased in Stuck by 40%. For our team initiative, one has 150% more people in Growth and 43% fewer in Stuck. 

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