The requirement stemmed from how this very large, global Information Technology manufacturer structured their customer facing teams. At this Global supplier, the Account Manager controls the whole cross functional virtual team throughout the client engagement, this gives the Account Manager total accountability for the client. However, many of these people have never managed people before, and certainly had no experience of managing a virtual team that could be geographically dispersed. To spice up the program design, management was pointed out that every Account Manager would have a different set of resources and hence virtual team depending on their sector, location and customer. This became a major part of the solution - how do you give good structured processes and help when there are differences for each person on the given program? The answer was that the program workbook became the personal action plan (PAP) for each delegate, structured to allow them to build their own resource network and plan based on their personal situation. The key learning modules were followed by team exercises to understand how different people would manage the teams, and then individuals would develop their PAP. Example solutions were given using "indicative content", really a mechanism to show how the PAP would be developed in a particular scenario. I piloted the program and then ran a number of Train The Tutor Trainer (TTT) sessions in both the United Kingdom and US. The program material has been translated into five languages and is being run by in-country trainers.

In the communications industry there are two types of people - Bell Heads and Net Heads i.e. those who understand voice and those who understand data. This old, established voice products manufacturer needed to move into the data world, and the unified communications market with the onset of technologies like VoIP (Voice over IP). Through mergers and acquisitions they acquired lots of data companies and their associated products and services, but the expected revenues did not appear. Quick analysis of the situation showed that the people were uncomfortable introducing the new data products to their customers. Many had board level relationships with their customers, but felt they did not have the data background to allow them to discuss data with them. A needs analysis was completed and presented the findings to the European board to gain their buy-in to move forward with the project. This became known as the right-angled turn, impacting the culture of this company and the way that they did business. I designed a program consisting of 3 workshops each running for 3 days, which culminated in becoming certified to sell data, which was linked to the force's compensation plan. To ensure the program didn't become dry and technical, the technology was introduced on a pre-program CD, with a web-based test prior to joining the actual program. The face to personal face learning was focused on specific markets, the customers' business drivers and applications to deliver business results. All of this was underpinned with role plays, where each team worked with customers to deliver a business solution. The role play ran throughout the 3 sessions, developing and deepening the people's understanding of what a customer wants from them. As there were 600 people to train in Europe, ran the pilots and then ran TTT sessions to train 6 delivery teams of two people. The take-up of the program meant that the whole force was trained in 18 months, and the program spun-off to other groups in Europe like Pre- , Operations and Marketing, in addition to being run across the Asia Pacific region.

This global voice carrier had been very successful at selling voice minutes around the whole globe. Their minutes were much cheaper than those of the national carriers since owning their very own global fibre network. Their selling pitch was easy - how much do you pay for your international calls now, we can do the same for half the price and the same quality. Over time the voice minutes market was driven down so that it became a commodity, with smaller and ever smaller margins. The company decided to leverage their considerable customer base and move into high value managed voice and data services. But the existing force had little technical knowledge, and no knowledge of how businesses operated in a managed services environment. I worked as part of a consortium of 5 independent trainers, each bringing different skills to the table. In terms of the pre-workshop CD, my focus was to develop the business modules to bring the force up to speed on current business thinking and how technology was being used by business. This was carried through into the actual workshop, where I designed and ran the role plays taking the delegates through initial opportunity spotting meetings to presenting the business solution back to the customer. This program was very successful, with managed services revenues increasing by 400% in the year following the workshops. Further advanced workshops followed focused at Director and senior management level, addressing issues like recruitment, forecasting and managing the pipeline. All these programs were rolled out to 500 people in Europe and 100+ in Asia Pacific.

Here was delegated as the Leader/Mentor for the Academy, program bringing new non-industry and management people into a rapidly expanding technology company. Working into the European board of a global communications company, developed and delivered the Academy concept. This recruited bright graduates who were already successful people, but not from the communications industry, and trained them to perform in this strong industry. However, this was not technical tutoring but applying technology to customer business drivers using both on and off the job tuition with team assignments. The program ran over six months with a one-week long workshop every month, and team assignments to be worked on during the intervening periods. The finale of the program was team presentation to members of the European board focusing on the strategy for a live customer or prospect. The program was tremendously successful and the graduates from the academy quickly made significant contributions to revenues and were greatly in demand within the company.