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Organizational Transformation for Building Support Services (BSS)

Time frame:              10 months (January – October 2010);

Participants:             43 executives from 6 management levels;

Hierarchical levels: General Manager, Board of Directors, Property Manager, Facility Manager, Site Manager, Support;  

Program: Aperio® Executive Team Leadership Development Program (AETLDP)

About Building Support Services

Building Support Services (BSS) was established in 2003 as a private company, based on the extensive founders' expertise in the Facility & Project Management field. The company employs more than 500 people, dedicated to service excellence and tenants' satisfaction.

BSS operates in Bucharest and all over Romania. The company is a market leader in Romania on Property & Facility Management services, operating a surface of more than 2.2 million square meters in 200 locations - A class office buildings, logistic parks, commercial, hotels and residential compounds and admin networks.

Aperio developed and implemented for Building Support Services the Aperio® Executive Team Leadership Development Program (AETLDP), having the role of: consultant, trainer, facilitator, coach, individual coach, team coach.

 AETLDP Objectives for BSS

• Organizational transformation
• Responsibility at individual, team and organizational level

Tactics 

• Aligning the individual objectives of the management team with the strategic objectives of the company for 2011
• Developing a culture of individual responsibility, auto motivation and innovative thinking
• Behavioral change through the change of communication models
• Developing the management skills based on the values of BSS
• Creating a common language that would generate the next level of performance
• Developing the leadership skill of each participant

Challenges and initial status

• The existence of a culture based on effort, not results
• The lack of responsibility at individual, team and organizational level
• The absence of internal work procedures
• The lack of clear structured objectives 
• Communication gaps between hierarchical levels of the company

Stage I

Reveal 

The Aperio method  starts from the premise that a corporate culture is generated by a network of conversations that individuals and groups have on short, medium and long term.

To generate a breakthrough, the change at ontological level was vital for BSS, to define the individuals, their way of being and who they are related to themselves and the others, to their activity, clients, internal and external partners.

At this stage, Aperio facilitated the creation of a delegated structure (through team coaching) and a new system of working. The team coaching sessions were completed with coaching sessions with the General Manager and small teams, upon the projects later developed in the program.

The participants were split on conversational levels and a clearer image was created in their mind about the problems they and the rest of the company dealt with. Until that moment, each member of the team was focused exclusively on his own problems and the lack of external solutions.

Once every level understood what was dealing with, the general perception was that individual problems are much smaller than the ones at the company level.

Stage II

Create

The transformation generated a new way of working and to know each other, between employees. The relationships at personal level and regarding their roles were restored among the team members; they revealed the barriers to relations based on affinity and trust. They created a future of possibilities as a team and company.

The members of BSS team generated a new mission of the company, a new future and they became self-responsible towards the objectives they set out.

The innovation brought by Aperio® Executive Team Leadership Development Program consists of a project in which being responsible is directly related to the promise made by each participant. It is, basically, a project management of word, not of duties.

Forty three executives set out the strategic directions of focus and defined the objectives that led to six different projects for six management levels. Aperio moderated the architecture of the project management plan, while the content belonged exclusively to the BSS team.

The stage included coaching sessions at team level, evaluation of the projects by the scale of promises versus achievements. The barriers and limitations were identified (individual, of the team and organizational), but most of all, the goal was to transform them into opportunities that generated organizational transformation.

Following the transformation, there were four strategic values: professionalism, integrity, innovation and efficiency.

The new paradigm led to a new way of working in which the team doesn’t have to be pushed in the appointed direction, as it moves the things itself. This generated a competitive market advantage for BSS.  

Stage III

Achieve

The vision and Aperio approach helped BSS team to make a difference between the traditional approach and the organizational transformation. The executives became responsible and open to change.

The way of working was radically changed, from the effort to find reasons of stagnation to initiative and overcoming the blockings. The responsibility of each team member „moved the ball on the field” at superior hierarchical levels and generated growth for other projects.

The result was the decrease in supply delivery times and improvement of the response time.

Members of the team performed the role of Participant, Moderator, Decision Inciting Agent, Cadence Factor, Coach and Decision Maker, essential to develop an aligned and high performance team. Each participant was given the opportunity to honor the given word as a fundamental practice to ensure the functionality of the team and the individual performance. It was also a vital practice to achieve unprecedented results on a permanent basis.

The absenteeism of some team members from the project was overcame by setting the flow of responsibility from the team to individuals and creating requests and promises to the team and the people directly involved. Participants implemented the model of working in their teams with colleagues who did not take part into Aperio program.  

The status and the stages of the projects became transparent for all the participants, decisions are now based on facts and actual reality. Participants developed the ability to perform complex data analyzes, to reveal the sources of the problems. They have a proactive behavior towards solving inherent issues of this kind of project.

In the beginning of the program, all levels were affected; the executives were facing reluctance and dealt with spiny issues. All projects implied effort and resistance at all levels, to advance.

In the new paradigm, members of the team believe in what they assessed and instead of managers moving the team, now the team itself generates moves at management level.

Weak points

The initial enthusiasm made things move in a fast pace. There were, later on, stagnations caused by the managers with inconstant participation.

Results

The BSS team is responsible for its actions and wishes the future they set out.

The Building Support Services company has a new mission, created by the employees, in which they totally find themselves.  

The turnover of BSS doubled, even during the crisis. The company also doubled the number of the employees in one year, from 250 to 500.

The ROI (return on investment) of Aperio® Executive Team Leadership Development Program was 10:1.

BSS now implements a new performance system (KPI- Key Performance Indicators) that makes a difference between employees with exceptional results and the ones who only do their job. The job descriptions include individual objectives.

The General Managers leads the top management team from a new context, based on alignment and commitment of each member.

„At the end of the project, I can say it is a result I dreamt about and wished for, that seemed unachievable. And it happened. The dream turned into reality. 

What we do is changing everyone’s thinking from effort to results, up to being habitual. This is the biggest step”. Lucian Anghel, General Manager BSS.