Metis was engaged in partnership with one of the companies where the CEO had a good record of technical competence with a brilliant and sharp mind. With one-on-one meetings (executive coaching) with the senior key members of the organisation, an assessment of the systems, processes, and competencies was made by Metis within a couple of months.

These one-on-one coaching sessions were intensive. Many questions were asked to understand their understanding of effectiveness in aligning themselves to the Goals and the vision of the organisations. Their responses revealed a lot about their value system matches and mismatches, process matches and mismatches as also the competence matches and mismatches with the role and responsibilities they held. In fact one of the major drawbacks found was the process of goal setting itself which was not collaborative and participative. The results were compiled to arrive at the ‘gaps' in the processes at work in the organisation. These are now getting addressed in a prioritised manner with the senior management to bring about the desired alignment to the organisational strategies and objectives.

 Another major finding was the CEO's style of functioning which did not encourage talent development and empowerment through systems and processes. In the coaching sessions with the CEO, we could jointly identify the reasons for the style which were deeply embedded in the misalignment of processes. The recognition and realisation was a major achievement. The CEO's effort to change was noteworthy. With a clear focus on results, the organisation did achieve some remarkable results, but found it difficult to sustain due to an ad-hoc system of recognition, non-aligned performance management systems, inadequate synergy in team work, cross-functional conflicts, and poor customer orientation. As a result, the organisation suffered from a lack of ‘leadership capacity' across functions. Most of the members in the team executed work under ‘directions' and thus suffered from an inadequate understanding of the business, and a ‘mercenary' engagement in the organisation.

 At this juncture, there was a change in leadership at the ‘principal' company in US, as also in India. A new leader was chosen from within the organisation. Metis' partnership continued with a more down to earth leader who saw the need to ‘bring about a change in the organisation' to improve the overall effectiveness. By creating a ‘transparent' culture through communicating the goals to achieve, the organisation engaged all the members in the process of raising the competence levels (knowledge sharing sessions, and quality reviews were designed and introduced). The coaching sessions with the senior management focused on implementing structural interventions suggested by Metis resulting in grouping the organisation in to three competence levels, and introduction of a performance management system reflecting the ‘expected competencies' at each level. The performance assessment criteria were defined and openly shared with all the members. Even though the increment levels for most individuals dropped from the previous years, except for the talented personnel, the consistency in approach and measure overcome the minor murmurs and noise. (There was no attrition too).

 While the individual coaching sessions with the senior management is being continued regularly, a management committee (involving Metis) is spearheading the effort to raise the competence level further. We have participatively evolved and put in place several of the systems and processes necessary to deliver ‘quality products and services' as of date.  We are presently engaged in strengthening the business orientation (customer orientation) of the entire organisation to facilitate meeting the demand growth.

It is our view the ‘executive coaching' is the way forward for many organisations, since it is based on the ‘learner centric' and ‘organisation centric' approach for the ‘coachee' experiencing the ‘new effective change' at work. The primordial need for coaching to be a success depends on the ‘discipline' and commitment' that is brought to the table.