Atkins Plc
Leadership Development
Opportunity
This major Design and Engineering group, with over 17,000 staff worldwide, was going through a significant expansion programme in the Gulf region. Led by a dynamic Regional Director, the number of staff in Bahrain alone grew from 2 to over 250 in just two years.
MSB was asked to help Atkins to continue to deliver quality service during this period of rapid expansion, with new recruits arriving from all over the world.
Approach
The Regional Director wanted to ensure that his senior management team was working collaboratively and in unison with the overall Atkins team. As the business was spread across the Gulf, with operations in Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, this posed a particular challenge.
Phase 1: interviewing senior managers: detailed interviews allowed us to identify organisational challenges within the rapidly expanding business, and raised issues regarding management style, communication and empowerment. We summarised our findings in a presentation to the Regional Director, and produced a comprehensive report.
Phase 2: senior management workshops: these focused on:
- Bringing clarity to Atkins’ vision for its Gulf operations
- Building an effective management team
- Understanding how to share ownership of decisions
- Establishing levels of performance management
- Enabling managers to develop their teams and individual action plans
- Identifying challenges, issues and areas to focus on in future
- Understanding how to monitor performance effectively
- Identifying a simple, relevant set of objectives for Atkins’ senior management
- Developing performance management skills and capacity into the organisation
The Regional Director was delighted with the transformative effect which MSB’s programme had on the senior management team. He reported increased confidence, better decision-making, enhanced communications skills and more effective performance management across the business.