Challenge
Valence, a leading strategy, design, and engineering company had just been acquired. Against this backdrop of change, it was important to build a common understanding of the company vision across the management team. With this shared vision, management could work together to identify and prioritize opportunities that would have the highest impact on the company’s growth.
The company sought support from SALT Collaboratory to design and facilitate an engaging, productive, in-person Leadership Retreat that would help teams internalize the vision statement and serve as a foundation for the coming year’s objectives.
Approach
SALT Collaboratory worked with the client stakeholder to design a 4-hour in-person session for 30 leaders. The Leadership team would only be together for a short time, so the session needed to be engaging and productive to achieve the target outcomes.
After a review of the vision statement, SALT Collaboratory lead participants through a series of Design Thinking methods to:
Uncover what was top of mind for leaders regarding key elements of the vision statement
Guide leaders to reflect on positive, negative, and areas of potential in their prior work towards the vision
Provide a forum for leaders to review and discuss key themes and insights from their collective experience in order to align on key actions
Enable leaders to have an equal say in what should be prioritized and improved upon in the coming year
Results
The Retreat successfully met Leadership's objectives for participants to internalize the vision statement and co-create next steps for the year ahead. SALT Collaboratory’s facilitation created the space for insightful work and the development of meaningful connections between participants. Leadership had the opportunity to deeply understand the challenges facing cross-functional teams. By the end of the Retreat, there was clear alignment around how to prioritize the work going forward. Most importantly, participants left feeling energized and motivated to continue the work.
"SALT led powerful cross-functional conversations, and our leaders were able to contextualize the needs for their functional area by hearing about the experiences and needs of other groups in the company. Working with SALT helped us to prioritize and focus."
Deborah Keltner, Vice President of Marketing at Valence
