The holy grail of business success for firms is staff unity: CEB

Leaders will get the best results if their staff are united, says talent management company CEB.

CEB Australia and New Zealand chief Christy Forest says CEB helps businesses come up with better management models. Picture: Hollie Adams

The holy grail of business success for leaders is for their staff to collaborate well on projects, says CEB, a best-practice insights and talent management company undergoing significant expansion.

CEB, which has its international headquarters in the US and a strong presence in Australia and New Zealand, has just acquired the CEO Forum Group in a $13 million deal.

The deal means CEB will have access to more than 2000 high- level executives working for a range of Australian companies, to gauge their opinions on best-practice management and to provide a wider customer base for their consultancy operations.

CEB had been looking to expand its brand and operations within the Asia-Pacific region and in Australia, and with more than 400 organisations on its books the CEO Forum Group seemed a natural fit.

CEB Australia and New Zealand managing director Christy Forest says the shared commitment will deliver insights to senior leaders on corporate performance.

Forest says CEB will work with leaders of the forum’s companies, to help them solve problems and come up with better business management models.

“The way we work with them is to support their ability to understand the right answer to their most difficult questions and implement steps to help them respond,” Forest says. “We use vigorous research and we find the right answer to their business.”

It all sounds a bit ephemeral until you find out what the big business questions are and what help companies need to improve their operations.

They could relate to staffing, communication, performance management, flexibility or how to improve collaboration and improve productivity.

CEB human resources advisory leader Aaron McEwan says there are many common problems across the executive suite, and recently he helped a major financial corporation wanting to implement institutional rankings.

Where rankings among staff and their performance largely have been dropped by large corporations, McEwan says the institution’s human resources manager had been caught between a request to tightly monitor employee performance and workers not wanting to be ranked.

“I had to go back to them with research which showed it didn’t matter if organisations had statistical rankings,” McEwan says. “In relation to performance management and statistical rankings, NAB and Deloitte have abolished their performance review systems. It was becoming an increasingly unpopular system from management’s perspective.”

McEwan says he found research undertaken by CEB that showed rankings were not the most effective way to manage employee output and the company shelved its plans.

CEB undertakes extensive research through its company and leadership networks to understand best practice in management, Forest says, and shares that information among clients.

When a business does something well, no matter whether it is in the US, Europe or Asia, CEB then shares their best-practice ­secrets. Forest says CEB’s best-practice clients include American Express, Unilever and Microsoft.

CEB also shares its data from Australian companies.

One of those is Herbert Smith Freehills, an international law firm with a significant presence in Australia, which has excelled when it comes to collaboration among staff.

“They were doing things that we have identified as being core to what the new leadership requirements are,” Forest says.

She identifies that core as being collaborative practices across the entire business, where staff work together in a range of areas to improve productivity.

“This is the holy grail,” she says. “What leaders are seeking is to be collaborative.”

Herbert Smith Freehills human resources director for Australia Andrea Bell says the firm has about 4500 staff across the world and one of their key strengths is collaborating on different projects.

Bell says that may mean staff collaborating on information technology upgrades and what may suit different offices in other locations, and sharing expertise on projects such as negotiating infrastructure contracts.

“We might have people in one part of the world that might have fantastic experience with all road deals and people on the other side of the world who have experience with government or infrastructure projects,” Bell says.

“We find these people and pool information on local markets and insights with people who have experience in transactions, we pull these people together and pool different perspectives to generate an outcome.”

Bell says staff are also involved in recognising good leadership and performance internationally by awarding points annually to leaders who have helped them to create the best outcomes.

“We’ve been holistically focused, we’ve said what are the systems and processes that can drive network performance, not just individual performance.”

While Herbert Smith Freehills is confident of its collaborative work ethic and leadership, Forest says more than 60 per cent of chief executives do not believe they have a team that can take their business forward.

But with increased collaboration, that can all change. To improve collaboration, she says CEB goes into a business and works out why it is not occurring, what the key challenges are, how and if leaders are developing and how they relate to staff.

Using research from their extensive network on workplace issues, Forest says CEB will use quantitative and qualitative evidence and background information to find a solution to their lack of teamwork and other missing skills.

Where Australian companies fail, McEwan says, is in producing championship teams of people who work well together for a common goal, rather than teams of champions who fail to work together, which some companies try to assemble.

McEwan says CEB did not go into the partnership with the CEO Forum Group looking to produce yet another book on leadership skills but to mine the databanks and mindsets of the existing executive suite for insights on success, which it can then share.