Case studies from Vinehouse show work with managers and HR professionals

Vinehouse specialises in making the complex simple.

Nancy Slessenger's training and consultancy advice is used by an ever increasing number of leading companies and individuals, and Vinehouse's products are increasingly used as manuals for different situations.

Here are some examples of Nancy's work as case studies:

Project Team with the Wrong Objectives
Global Department with poorly aligned objectives that were hard to measure
International Department
Marketing Department
Manufacturer Having Trouble Measuring Performance
Staff New to Performance Management System
Recruitment in a fast-growing company
Increase output without recruiting,
Feedback to improve performance
Coaching to deal with bullying behaviour
Time Management Seminar
Coaching to improve people skills in technical staff
Motivation

Project team with the wrong objectives
A project team was struggling to implement new procedures that would comply with Sarbanes Oxley. They were not working well together and had fallen behind in their plan.
It became clear that each member of the team had a different idea of what they were there for and what their responsibilities were. Some of them had completely the wrong idea about what they were there for.

We helped the team to create a clear set of measurable objectives that identified exactly what they needed to achieve and by when. This included what each individual needed to achieve in order that the whole team would achieve its goals.

The team finished their implementation well ahead of the other teams in the company and their practices were adopted by others in the group. The project manager got a pay rise.

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Global Department with poorly aligned objectives that were hard to measure.

A global department was having trouble writing its objectives in a way that meant they could be measured.
They produced written material for PR purposes and many of their measures were based on volume.
People in the department hated writing objectives and it took them a long time. Many of the objectives were not aligned with each other and contradicted each other.
The Senior Management Team had nine pages of objectives and members of some teams had twenty or thirty objectives that were mainly ‘task lists’ and almost impossible to measure.

We worked with the Senior Management team, coaching them through working out what they were really there to achieve.
We went through all the paperwork, flip charts and current objectives. We talked with individuals to find out what they were really there for.

We crystallised the department objectives into single page of concise, measurable objectives.
We produced a template of standard objectives for each position that people could use as a basis for writing their own objectives.

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International department

An HR manager who worked with the people at the top of this department realised that their objectives were in a mess.
She knew that, at the end of the year, those objectives would be used to measure performance and that rating would feed into the pay decisions for everyone in the department. She was concerned that, because the objectives were so badly written, measuring performance would be very hard.

She asked us in to see what we could do. We discovered that the objectives in different parts of the department were contradictory and that the people in the department had real problems writing objectives.
The objectives at the top were the worst. They were vague and woolly statements about ‘being the best’ that meant little to anyone in practical terms.

We coached each member of the Senior Team to get their objectives right and help them to develop the skill to write clear objectives. We worked with at least two people in each of the key positions in the department.
We worked with some of the management teams, coaching them on their objectives and giving workshops on the principles.
We produced a template of standard objectives for each position that could be modified by individuals in those jobs to suit them.

We ran short workshops for people in the department to help them to understand what they now needed to do in order to have their objectives clear and measurable.
The feedback from the workshops was that people were delighted not to have to spend days doing their objectives. Individual teams who had not been involved in the main process asked us to help them too.

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Marketing Department

A marketing department had badly-written and poorly defined objectives, right from top to bottom. People hated writing them and most found it very difficult.
Many people had task-lists instead of objectives. People often had no objectives or didn’t write them till June (it was meant to be done by 31st January each year).

We investigated the state of the objectives and worked out several ‘cascades’ of objectives showing how the top line objective worked its way down four or five levels and giving examples.
We did a presentation at their conference including a workshop where each team worked on its own objectives and got some help.
Many of the people in the department finished their objectives ahead of the annual deadline.

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Manufacturer having trouble measuring performance

A client came to us. They needed to implement a new performance management system. This involved people assessing performance who had not had to do this before.
They had some loose definitions of standards in various different categories, but many were inconsistent and some were clearly wrong, for example: ‘Accepting credit for the work of others’ was in the category of ‘Satisfactory’.

We reviewed all the material, suggested new definitions, clarified those that would work and re-wrote the competency definitions.
The client got clear categories to replace the subjective categories they had originally. They also got consistent definitions and examples which enabled them to implement their new performance management system and the new managers to make judgements about performance of their staff more easily.

It also enabled the managers to explain to their people exactly what standards they were expecting.

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Staff new to performance management system

A hotel chain was adopting performance management in layers of staff that had previously not been involved in the system.
They had some values agreed, but had not translated them into anything that the people on the ground could work with. They had a very tight deadline for implementing the new system that was dictated by the group.

We interviewed a number of managers and agreed with them examples of performance that fell into ‘Unmet’, ‘Met’, ‘Exceeded’ and ‘Operating at Next Level’ for the values. We then worked with the department head to ensure that these were consistent with the job descriptions and the standards she was keen to set in the chain.

We gave training to the managers who were having to implement the new system and worked through specific examples with them.
The managers now have a generic set of examples for each area that they can use to improve performance and tackle performance issues as well as for their annual performance reviews.

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Recruitment in a fast-growing company

A rapidly expanding small company needed to recruit five new people quickly.
This company in the electronics field needed to recruit into several positions within a couple of months. They had well-designed job-descriptions, but little else.
In the past they had interviewed candidates and, although they had recruited some good people, they had also made a few really bad mistakes which had cost them a lot. The advertisements were going into the papers in three days’ time.

We worked with them to build up person specifications for all the roles. Once we had done that, we re-worded their advertisements to help them attract the right kind of person. We gave them clear criteria for short-listing the candidates.
We helped them to design tests for each role that would give them a chance to see the candidates as close as possible to ‘in action’ on the job.

We interviewed all the short-listed candidates by phone and gave the company a spreadsheet with an analysis of all the candidates that were most suitable from interview.
They then compared the results of this with their interviews and the results of the tests.
Two of the candidates seemed good in the face to face interviews, but did badly on the tests and in our telephone interview. The MD told us: ‘It’s frightening to think that we would have recruited those two people before.’

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Increase output without recruiting

A production company was planning to recruit more people in order to increase output. They had orders coming in they just couldn’t meet and were desperate.
We suggested they wait till we had tried a few things before recruiting any more people. We introduced new ways of working, ways of tackling the faults and training for many of the personnel.
In one month we doubled the output of the department with no increase in headcount. We also reduced the failure rate and improved quality.

A transformer manufacturer was having major quality problems with one specific and very complex transformer. The failure rate was well over 25%. The output was low.
We analysed the method of each assembly worker and also worked with the design engineers. We identified some key principles in the manufacturing process that would increase quality. We trained each assembly worker in the new process.
The quality improved and the failure rate dropped to below 5%. The output of every assembly worker increase, even the most productive person increased her output by over 10%.

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Feedback to improve performance

The new manager of a sales team had inherited some serious performance issues and bad behaviour. There were people turning up late, being rude to others in the team and for some, performance was very poor. She needed to turn it around quickly before the sales figures suffered. She didn’t know how to tackle the problems. She knew she had to but didn’t know where to start.

We worked with her to clearly identify exactly what she needed each person to do and to achieve. We then helped her to work out how she could give feedback that would motivate the individuals to improve their performance and to improve their behaviour.
Instead of ‘telling’ we showed her how this could be done with questions, making the individuals do the work themselves and ensuring they were engaged in the conversation.
We showed her how to keep the approach up, so that she would see continuing improvements.
With in a few days behaviour had improved. Within a month, the sales figures were improving too.

A project manager’s performance had drastically dropped off. He had been a reasonable performer till now. He was poorly organised, de-motivated and producing little. People in the project team had been complaining about him.

We talked to the manager to get clear examples of the before and after behaviour. Then we worked with the project manager. He was listless and negative. He didn’t know what he wanted.
We started working to help him set some small goals and work out what he wanted. Then we helped him to work out steps to get what he wanted.

Very shortly the performance of the project manager was back on track and he had a development plan in place to move towards his long term career goals.

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Coaching to deal with bullying behaviour

A manager was being bullied badly by her own manager. She was so upset by the behaviour that she could hardly talk about it. Her performance had dropped and she had been off with stress.
We had several coaching sessions with her and she learned techniques to manage her manager’s behaviour.
After her first coaching session of two hours she was able to talk to her manager and give him a report that she had been terrified to mention. Instead of the usual 50 to 100 corrections he just asked for three minor changes. She was able to sleep at night again.

A manager was bullying others at his site. Many were frightened to give examples of his behaviour, including those senior to him. People had left as a result of his behaviour. A client had almost taken his business away.

We worked with the manager. We helped him to realise how his behaviour was viewed by others and the impact of his behaviour. We gave him other ways to behave and taught him how to negotiate effectively with colleagues and clients. We helped him to recognise how his behaviour affected his relationship with his family.
After several coaching sessions he was so pleased with the results that he asked us to do some workshops for his whole team so that they too could learn more effective communication strategies in dealing with colleagues, clients and their families.

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Time Management Seminar

A manager felt she just wasn’t up to the job she had been promoted in to. She said she just had too much on her plate and she hated ‘telling’ people what to do. She wanted to help patients, not spend her time pushing paper.

She came on our Time Management course. During the course we gave her strategies for prioritising, delegating and saying ‘No.’ She also learned some other ways to manage people and how to help them to improve their skills.
At the end of the course she said she was no longer planning to ask for her old job back. She now realised that she could help patients even more in her job if she used her skills effectively than she had before.

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Coaching to improve people skills in technical staff

A technically skilled researcher was being held back from promotion because of his poor ‘people’ skills. He was often abrupt with colleagues and his behaviour in front of suppliers was embarrassing. He needlessly went over the head of his manager and couldn’t see why the manager was so angry. Although he was certainly thick-skinned, he never meant any harm.

We coached him over a period of a few months, helping him to become more aware of his behaviour and how others saw it. We helped him to find a way to modify his behaviour and recognise when he might be about to cause problems. By getting to know him, we found a way where nothing had worked before.

Three months later he got his promotion and said it was all thanks to us and the work we did together.

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Motivation

A manager was having trouble motivating a negative member of staff. The manager had a project he knew would be great for this team member. But she just wasn’t interested. She was technically an expert in the field and he knew she was the best person for the job, but she refused to take the project on.

The manager called us and we worked through with him what he had already tried that hadn’t worked. From this we worked out what motivated the team member. We gave him a different strategy to try.
That afternoon he called us to say the team member had already started on the project. He could hardly believe the technique was so powerful.

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Case Studies From Vinehouse