Crazy Goal Programme Case Study

Summary

Graf UK Ltd was formed in 2012 after the acquisition of SCP Water Management Ltd by their parent company Graf GmbH.

Since then, they have quickly become one of the UK leading market suppliers of sustainable water management systems. Their solutions aid in the prevention of flooding in extreme weather conditions (via stormwater management), the avoidance of sewage being discharged into watercourses and the recycling of rainwater through rainwater harvesting. All done using 100% recycled materials!

Matt Rolph, Managing Director at Graf UK Ltd chose Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? to work directly with his leadership team implementing a Crazy Goal Programme. His driver behind this was to create an overarching goal and “compelling vision for the future of the business” that everyone in the team could rally behind and work towards.

Over the past two years Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? and Graf have formed a genuine partnership over the course of multiple engagements, both with the leadership and wider team, resulting in fundamental improvements to how the company operates.

How Did we Get There?

The Challenge

Graf certainly made the best out of a challenging year and not only kept their head but were thriving throughout the Covid-19 storm.

But they weren’t satisfied with just being good, they wanted to become great! It became clear that their company lacked internal cohesion, resulting in various teams working in an isolated manner. This led to the development of multiple silos that lacked interdepartmental communication.

Graf wanted to create a future vision for the direction of the business. Not just a statement that hangs on the wall and gathers dust. They wanted to collaboratively create a Crazy Goal that all team members could believe in, unite behind and play their part in moving faster towards.

 

The Solution

Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? conducted in–depth diagnostics to gain a comprehensive understanding of the company’s performance, highlighting both areas of strengths as well as structures that required improvement or guidance.

With originally 8 members of the Graf leadership team, 1:1 interview’s enabled Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? to further identify the opportunities and challenges for the team and the broader organisation, as well aiding the development of a bespoke solution for the Graf team.

Over the past 12-months, Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? has concluded a series of workshops, momentum coaching sessions and embedding days with the Graf leadership population. The work has helped to improve communication, management performance, engagement, and a range of key business metrics.

Although our work started with the Executive team, it was important to both Graf, and Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? that all members of the company were connected and bought into the Crazy Goal with a sharp clarity on the role they all could play in making a difference. As such, a recent momentum day workshop was designed for the entire team at Graf to celebrate success, identify areas of further improvement and learn further high-performance habits to apply to the day job.

I came into to the day recognising it was going to be a big challenge to create a Crazy Goal. But through the conversations that happened, the way your team led that day and the contributions that came from your side, it enabled us to come up with a Crazy Goal we were very happy with. For the first time in a long time, we were working as one team.

The Results

It has been so rewarding to work with a company who has fully embraced the Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? mantra, integrating various strategies and approaches into the inner workings of the company.

Internal Measures

A 13% increase in internal communication.

A 7% increase in operational efficiency.

A 20% increase in the execution of ambitious goals.

A 22% increase in employees having clarity about the future direction of Graf.

Qualitative Measures

We asked the MD, Matt Rolph:

“What Benefits Do You Attribute To Your Work With Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?”

His response:

“We are now working significantly better as a team; we have much more clarity throughout the whole company in relation to our vision for the future. The contribution they have provided towards the achievement of our goals, led to a stronger general feeling of togetherness.”

Listen to Graf UK Managing Director, Tell You More About Their Work With Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?

Building up to November 2021 being our best month ever from a sales perspective. For me it’s not a coincidence that this vision and Crazy Goal that we put in place, and the process our team went through to not only buy into it, but to actually understand what their position and role is in within this goal, aided in this success. We are now really trying to keep focus and momentum by using this really powerful question of “Will it make the boat go faster?”

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