Building resilience and capability: Shaping the future of Morgan Sindall Construction

Building resilience and capability: Shaping the future of Morgan Sindall Construction

A case study in partnership

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Building resilience and capability: Shaping the future of Morgan Sindall Construction

A case study in partnership

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Contents

About this case study partnership

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Building resilience and capability

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Phase one: Organisational resilience workshop

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Phase two: Innovation hothouse

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Phase three: Shaping our future 18 Phase four: Senior Business Leaders Programme 38 Reflections 48 Looking to the future 52

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“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” Albert Einstein

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About this case study partnership

Over a period of 24 months, Morgan Sindall Construction and Cranfield School of Management together engaged in a journey that would take 65 colleagues from across the business through various learning and development interventions to build greater organisational resilience and capability. At the outset, it wasn’t clear to anyone at Cranfield or Morgan Sindall what the entire journey would look like, or how far it would take its participants. But both businesses committed to working together in a partnership based on mutual trust and respect, engaging in open and honest dialogue, and drawing on each other’s strengths to enable Morgan Sindall to shape a more resilient future for its business. Morgan Sindall’s exceptionally inclusive and open culture, as well as its leadership’s willingness to trust in the process was critical to the success of the interventions undertaken. This case study is the story of how the partnership was formed and the journey undertaken.

“We’ve built a strong relationship, working with Cranfield in a collaborative, flexible and agile way. The partnership that we have set up has generated new ideas, contributing towards our business strategy for the future.” Patrick Boyle Managing Director, Morgan Sindall Construction

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Morgan Sindall Construction Morgan Sindall Construction is part of Morgan Sindall Group, a leading UK collective of construction and regeneration companies operating in the public, commercial and regeneration sectors. By delivering high-quality construction projects and investing in regenerating UK towns and cities with mixed-use, community-driven developments that provide long-lasting social and economic value, Morgan Sindall Construction aspires to be the most sought-after and sustainable business in its industry. Its decentralised philosophy empowers its people in regions across the UK with the responsibility and authority to make the right decisions at pace, inspiring them to deliver excellence in the built environment and through it enhance the communities in which we all live, learn, work, play, care and protect. Cranfield School of Management Cranfield School of Management is one of the longest established business schools in Europe, and among a select few to hold triple accreditation with AACSB International (the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), AMBA (the Association of MBAs) and EQUIS (the European Quality Improvement System). Globally recognised for its leading-edge collaborative research and consultancy, as well as for excellence in leadership development through its executive development arm Cranfield Executive Development (CED), Cranfield’s experts combine academic thinking and rigour with real-world focus to deliver practical solutions that prepare modern businesses for uncertain futures to come.

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Building resilience and capability: Choosing Cranfield

“The Covid-19 pandemic had got us thinking about resilience and questioning how we might get ahead of the game and predict whatever turbulence or big issues might be around the corner that we would need to address,” explains Patrick Boyle, Managing Director of Morgan Sindall Construction. “At the same time, we had been feeling that we needed a development programme where our next generation of senior leaders could gain some external perspective on the big topics they need to skill themselves on around running businesses.

“We wanted to work with an organisation that could bring that external, academic dimension and combine it with some of our internal resources to create a bespoke programme where there was an opportunity for the participants to apply their learning as they went along to then benefit the business.” Morgan Sindall Construction’s Director of Learning and Development Nicola Gotzheim contacted Cranfield Executive Development to see how its experts might be able to help. “I had worked with Cranfield before and knew it was reputable and had some good faculty,” she said. “Plus, it’s clear the research behind its work is world class.” At Cranfield’s Bedfordshire campus, discussions began internally and with various people within Morgan Sindall Construction to determine what the business needed and how Cranfield might help to deliver it . “Some clients come to us wanting something tried and tested that we can tweak to their circumstances and just run with,” explains David Denyer, Professor of Leadership and Organisational Change. “Then, at the other end of the continuum, we get clients that come to us with a set of issues where it isn’t really clear what the underlying challenges and problems are. “The task then becomes to discover what problem the client needs us to solve, and then design something that is going to meet that need. That’s the space we were in with Morgan Sindall Construction. “Having a managing director and a learning and development lead that were aligned and fully engaged in co-producing a programme enabled us to put together something that we were confident would challenge their team in a positive way.”

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“The magic for us is when the academic knowledge strikes a meaningful and understandable chord with the reality of the challenges and opportunities faced by the industry. A catalyst was when the faculty visited one of our projects. This sparked curiosity from both sides. It was clear that Cranfield would connect the industry with world-class expertise which challenged both our current and

future leaders.” Nicola Gotzheim Director of Learning and Development, Morgan Sindall Construction

Constructing new futures

During initial discussions around what learning and development interventions might be provided to Morgan Sindall Construction, Professor David Denyer and Client Director Alasdair Poole were invited to visit a school being built in Milton Keynes. David remembers: “I was speaking to Pat Boyle to get his perspective on some of the challenges facing the business and he suggested that we should go and see some of their work ourselves, to gain a better understanding of the environment in which they were working.

“It was a valuable experience. We saw how the team on the ground had an interest beyond just delivering the school efficiently and effectively, but also in the positive impact it was going to have on the local community. They were delivering on a brief but also looking to push boundaries in terms of the environment and sustainability. It was interesting to speak to them and hear first-hand some of the tensions and issues they were grappling with in their multi-stakeholder relationships. “We’ve visited client premises and projects before, but it is usually our client relationship team that does so, rather than faculty. What was interesting in the case of Morgan Sindall was that they really pushed for it. It was important to them that we engaged in that process to understand their context, and I think it made a big difference to what we were ultimately able to deliver for them.”

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Phase one

Organisational resilience workshop Leading for organisational resilience

An initial workshop was designed to engage the Morgan Sindall Construction leadership team and managing director Patrick Boyle in thinking about the concept of leadership for organisational resilience, and how that might be applied to their business and the challenges and opportunities it was facing. Professor David Denyer and chartered psychologist Professor Kim Turnbull James led a series of online and face-to-face sessions with the team aimed primarily at defining the issues and challenges they were facing, rather than seeking to find solutions. “Most leadership programmes start with the leader, looking at the attributes of a leader, their role, how they lead others, and how they try to achieve organisational goals,” David explains. “I try to flip that round and ask: ‘What is the problem that we think leadership is the solution to?’ Let’s have a conversation around that first, and then later we can talk about what leadership we are doing now or that we think we need for that type of problem.” Together, the group discussed the competing tensions at play – such as the need to balance ensuring compliance with innovating for the future – and how far they thought the organisation was along its journey to where it wanted to be. They explored how different leadership approaches may be used to role model and bring about desired change, support organisational resilience, and respond to uncertain and unpredictable times, as well as how leadership may be enabled at all levels of an organisation and how to create an environment where people feel safe to innovate. The leadership team then worked collectively to make decisions that would form the foundation of further business enhancement as well as inform their ongoing leadership development strategy.

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The work of leadership “There is no one ‘model’ of what leadership should look like. Instead, leadership is entirely relevant to the problem and the situation in the moment. It also isn’t something that is done just by virtue of someone’s position in an organisation. “At Cranfield, we talk about the work of leadership. Leadership is a practice; it’s a process; it emerges in the organisation and it’s about how a sense of direction, alignment and people’s commitment is developed in the organisation. “Lots of people in an organisation can be giving direction, alignment and commitment, and so the role of the leadership team is not only to do its own leadership but also to enable the environment for other people in the organisation to do leadership.” Professor David Denyer Professor of Leadership and Organisational Change, Cranfield School of Management

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Phase one

Trusting the process “I remember warning them at the start that there would be no agenda for our sessions, but that they would take whatever direction they needed,” David recalls. “Working ‘off-script’ – without the safety net of a pre-approved slide deck – can be really powerful, but you need the client’s complete trust. They need to have confidence in your ability to guide them through that in a way that makes them feel safe. They need to be comfortable with trusting the process and just letting things unfold, not really knowing where they are going to lead. “Part of this relationship was built through some of our early conversations with Morgan Sindall Construction, but it was also inherent in their attitude as a business. They were a very informed, enlightened client. They wanted a genuine leadership development process, rather than just for us to give them some content to work through. They weren’t telling us what they needed from the programme – they were telling us what the business needed and letting that shape what the programme became.” “As we came out of Covid, we identified a need to give ourselves time to think about where we go next with the business and how we make us fit for the decade ahead, and the decade beyond that,” remembers Nicola. “We didn’t really know what was going to come out of the organisational resilience workshop; we were very open-minded. “I remember David saying to everyone in the room right at the start: ‘You’re not the right people to solve these problems, or even to think about these problems’. We needed to go away and think about the diversity we needed to bring into the room in order to understand the problem.”

“Leadership is a practice; it’s a process; it emerges in the organisation and it’s about how a sense of direction, alignment and people’s commitment is developed in the organisation”. Professor David Denyer Professor of Leadership and Organisational Change, Cranfield School of Management

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Workshop outcomes

Together, the Morgan Sindall Construction leadership team identified a need to provide the environment and space for the next generation of leaders to drive innovation and transformation to retain and grow market position and future-proof their business. They wanted to take highly experienced and expert individuals from technical and operational backgrounds and develop them into leaders that: • Take an enterprise-wide view – breaking down silos and encouraging collaboration and sharing of best practice across regions. • Possess business acumen – having external-looking focus, a commercial mindset and an understanding of macro trends. • Are strategically capable – self-aware and understanding how to build personal and organisational sustainability and resilience. • Are people-centric and skilled connectors, seeking to embed values and behaviours, coach skills and empower their teams within a culture that is inclusive, collaborative, agile and fosters an innovation mindset.

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Phase two

Innovation hothouse Facilitating innovation thinking

Keen to delve further into the insights unlocked in Phase One, Morgan Sindall’s learning and development team sought to develop more strategic innovation thinking at an operations level, with a view to understanding the key strategic business challenges identified and how the organisation might need to change and develop in order to address them. A customised ‘Innovation Hothouse’ programme was designed and 45 colleagues from across the business selected to participate. The aim of the hothouse was to embed innovation thinking and practice across the business, encouraging people to step away from ‘business as usual’ and make space for more strategic thinking at an operations level. Embedded within the process was a philosophy of ‘leaving titles at the door’ and giving all colleagues the opportunity to voice their ideas and thoughts in a safe ‘sand pit’ environment. • Articulate the key ideas and mindset that underpin the management of innovation of products, services and business models, • Identify innovation opportunities and create compelling value propositions, • Test critical assumptions and assess the desirability, viability and feasibility of new concepts, • Drive innovation by accelerating decision-making cycles, • Feel more (comfort)able leading innovation even when not the subject matter expert. Innovation hothouse learning aims

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Hothousing explained “The terminology ‘hothouse’ has been coined by us for a reason,” explains Dr Imran Zawwar. “We have limited time – only two days – and so there is a lot of amplification of differences. We don’t try to minimise these differences – in fact we try to amplify them. Discussions then become heated, because one person is trying to pursue their idea and their approach and someone else is defending theirs. It comes to a tipping point and, after that, a natural inclination. “Our job as facilitators is to shepherd and guide this process where they try to combine these opposable ideas and this opposable thinking in a manner that results in a unified direction.” Based on Google’s Design Sprint, which has its roots in tech start-ups, Cranfield’s Innovation Hothouse follows a structured, step-by-step process to identify key organisational business problems and test ideas through a series of innovation exercises and activities. As part of the innovation sprint, Morgan Sindall Construction colleagues were given the opportunity to develop a rigorous business case for tackling each of five identified key strategic priorities for the organisation. “With hothousing, everything happens in the moment – in aviation terms it’s like building an aeroplane while you are flying,” Imran adds. “But it’s a wonderful process when it’s happening – exhilarating and rewarding. “At the start it looks very challenging, and you see people trying to avoid contributing because they feel nervous or they are introverted. But gradually one person after another joins in and in a few hours the whole room is vibrant with energy and that psychological safety net has been established where everyone feels able to contribute. That is the space where things really happen – it’s very powerful. “Human beings are social animals, and if you can bind them together to a common purpose and they can become meaningful in that process by seeing how they bring value to it then they enjoy the process, because they are part of creating it.”

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Phase two

An expert’s perspective Dr Imran Zawwar Innovation thinking

Morgan Sindall is a big organisation, and it is operating in a sector that is very project-oriented and doesn’t really allow for a lot of manoeuvre in business operations. Having said that, although they are limited by their industry environment, I’ve never seen an organisation as agile within those limitations as Morgan Sindall. I think they have the right mix of experience and young talent. They’re very adaptive. They want to make a change and they want to lead that change, rather than manage it. The support from top management was also very evident throughout our sessions – there was continuous interaction. When you have this combination of very agile implementers (your employees) and a very connected leadership, things go in the right direction. The business had real engagement and alignment, which makes our job easier. Hothouse doesn’t work if it is simply treated as a process that participants go through and come out of the other side. It is about the cross-integration and cross-examination of ideas, and an organisation creating a congenial environment to enable that to happen. This wasn’t an orchestrated collaboration. The dynamics were right, the chemistry was right, and mindsets were aligned. There was a real hunger in the participants, and the senior leadership really wanted to enable it. They were open to challenges, adaptive thinking, and all the solutions participants were sharing. They really meant business, and they know their priorities well. Very few organisations have that clarity.

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Unlike the other learning programmes we do at Cranfield, hothouse is one where the process really starts once it has ended. We come up with the problems that they want to solve. It is then for the business to convert those into solutions, test those solutions, and make them value propositions. Following the Innovation Hothouse, participants were invited to be part of an internal programme of work – Shaping our Future – to delve further into each of the identified strategic priority areas and come up with recommendations for actions the business could take. Hothouse outcomes unanimous agreement on what it is that we have to solve. Having that then enables an organisation to come up with a common solution or variety of solutions very quickly and agree on those. About innovation You can’t really teach innovation – you have to implement it. Innovation is a process, and it needs to happen internally – it’s not something I can apply from outside their organisation. We spend 80% of our time identifying, understanding and coming to

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Phase three

Shaping our future

Over a four-month period following the Innovation Hothouse, participants worked in project groups to explore their assigned strategic priority in further depth, to test potential solutions, and to come up with a business case including specific actions the organisation could take to improve in that area. Each project group was sponsored by two members of Morgan Sindall’s leadership team and supported by a Cranfield expert in the field. Members worked closely with their sponsors and with the business’s internal and external stakeholders to ensure all their activity was aligned to the organisation’s strategic needs. At the end of the four months, everyone returned to Cranfield, where the business cases and recommendations were presented to the leadership team and managing director Patrick Boyle. This provided an opportunity for even the most junior colleagues to increase their visibility to those at the highest level of the organisation.

“Going into Shaping our Future, for the first time we said to our colleagues: ‘We don’t want a solution; we just want you to understand the problem. People literally went into that workshop with one mindset and came out with a completely different one.” Nicola Gotzheim Director of Learning and Development, Morgan Sindall Construction

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“The key to the overwhelming success of the programme lies in the strong partnership and trust between Morgan Sindall and Cranfield. By fostering a collaborative environment and working closely together, we have created a programme that truly meets the needs and aspirations of our participants. The trust we have built has laid the foundation for open communication, shared learning, and mutual support, enabling us to achieve remarkable outcomes together. This partnership has empowered us to unleash the full potential of their talent.”

Dr Yolande Herbath Executive Client Director Cranfield Executive Development

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Case study

Jenny Martin Preconstruction Manager North West Time with business: 4 years, 5 months

I was put forward to take part in Shaping our Future by our North West MD at the time. It was great to get the recognition as someone who could contribute to shaping the strategy for the future of the business. I thought taking part would be an interesting challenge and a good opportunity to meet other people within the business. Because we’re decentralised, you don’t tend to speak to people from the other Morgan Sindall regions very often. But, even though we were from different areas of the country, our team had a lot in common and I think we worked really well together on our area of challenge. The early sessions on innovation and thinking differently were enlightening. Hearing from someone not in construction, coming at it with a completely different mindset, was really interesting. We can tend to be quite practical in terms of always looking for a solution, but learning how to get out of the day-to-day mindset definitely helped us when it came to how we approached the question we were tackling in our project group. It broadened our horizons and got us thinking more about us as a business and what we need to do internally to get buy-in from our customers before we go and do the external piece. Since the programme ended, I’ve continued to work with my project group on the areas we identified for improvement. It’s great to still be involved because, at the end of the day, everything we are doing is relevant to my day job and is about winning work for the business.

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We’ve got some strong characters in the group and everyone has got good ideas and brings different perspectives. We’re all getting to have our say and that’s been really good for me as I’ve been able to get to know people higher up the business. They’re not just a face or a name anymore – I can actually pick up the phone and speak to some of our directors. I’m on their radar now and I’m building more of a profile for myself in the business. I’ve been promoted within the North West since being on Shaping our Future and I definitely think taking part in the programme helped with that. For me, being involved in the programme was a really great opportunity. I enjoyed the opportunity to get away from the day job, sit in a room with other, like-minded people and have the time to start to tackle some of the issues we have as a business. I think what Morgan Sindall has done in getting people like me who work in the business involved in future strategy is a really good idea. We’re competing against so many good contractors and we need that difference of thinking about how we can get ahead of the competition. It will be good to see how the learnings from this process filter out across what we are doing in all the different regions, because we are a decentralised business, but overall I think it’s a really positive thing that Morgan Sindall is doing to differentiate itself in the marketplace.

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Case study

Luke Owen Commercial Manager Cardiff/Bristol Time with business: 6 years, 5 months

We were programmed in our business and our functions – when given a problem – to immediately come to a solution to fit the shortest, least impact, or best outcome, and it was stopping us from being innovative. I don’t think that was the fault of the business; I think it is the nature of the industry we are in. In construction, we tend to work on projects. These projects have a start and end date and a rigid programme that has usually been developed by someone else, so your job is to try to stick to the plan. Anything that comes up is a fire that you naturally try to stamp out immediately. The biggest thing I learned from the Shaping our Future programme was the need to step outside of this way of thinking and explore the problem and how it might be fixed before jumping to a solution that may or may not solve the issue. By taking the time to pick the problem apart you can come up with more innovative, better, out-of-the-box ways of solving it. It has 100% changed my approach to my job. When I’m presented with an issue, I don’t just jump in with a solution. I bring other people in on it to get their viewpoints. We chat about it, explore the problem, and come up with a few options for how to solve it. From a project point of view, we might take an extra day or two up front with this approach, but that has a benefit in the long run.

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One of the best parts of the programme for me was getting to meet other people from across Morgan Sindall and making relationships with those people that enable me to tap into the expertise we have in all the different regions. I think Cranfield gave us a great platform to bring together people from across the business from different disciplines on a level playing field. They created a safe environment where everyone felt able to speak but not pressured. It was fast paced but fun, with lots of different techniques used to keep us engaged. I’ve done degree and Master’s degree-level learning in the past and, in my opinion, this was next level. I’m pleased to say that one of my project group’s suggestions in our presentation at the end of the programme has been implemented and there is work ongoing in that area at the moment. It feels good to know that we are listened to and our opinion is valued. Taking part in the programme and hearing the presentations from the other project groups has definitely broadened my knowledge. It has switched on my receptors to things that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought about before in the day-to-day. It’s broadened my horizons and given me the confidence and passion to talk about these issues with other people in the business and our stakeholders and to give my opinion on them. Overall, I think the process Morgan Sindall has invested in with Cranfield has been really innovative – and it’s been very satisfying to be a part of that. From taking part in Shaping our Future, I can really see that the business is striving to do things differently, better, and to be a market-leader. Being part of the journey makes you feel valued, and feeling like you are genuinely working for a market-leading company is exciting. I know that I’m working for a business that listens to its employees and 100% believes that talented people are key to its success. Investing in learning and development at the level Cranfield offers in order to tap into and increase its employees’ potential has taken everything to another level, and it’s a really great feeling to be working for the business right now.

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Case study

Ella Shuttleworth Graduate Sustainability Manager Yorkshire, North East & Cumbria Time with business: 2 years

I started working for Morgan Sindall during the placement year of my degree in civil and environmental engineering. I initially joined the business as an engineer, but my region was looking for someone to be its carbon champion, leading carbon initiatives across the region, and I was asked if I would take on the role. The opportunity to take part in Shaping our Future came towards the end of my placement. I was surprised to be asked and, initially, I felt quite out of my depth, as I wasn’t sure I was qualified to be part of such a big programme. But I really enjoyed it. I was only 20 when we started, and it sounds cheesy but I’m grateful I was allowed to take part. I learned a lot and met some fantastic people that I now work with on a day-to-day basis. Having that network of like-minded individuals within the business that are working towards net zero and other sustainability targets is fantastic. I didn’t really know what to expect at first. I like learning, but I wasn’t sure if the Cranfield learning was going to be a bit ‘fluffy’. It really wasn’t, and I still use a lot of what we learned now, just in terms of stepping outside of myself and looking at different ways of thinking and approaching problems. I was very new to the world of work when we did Shaping our Future, and taking part in the programme helped improve my understanding of the workplace and ways of working. I think what the business has done in getting its employees involved in strategic planning for the future is outstanding. For business leaders to hold their hands up and say: ‘We don’t know what’s coming in the next 10 years – do you want to help us find out?’ was really refreshing. I was amazed coming into construction how much more strategic, innovative and forward-thinking it is as an industry than some of the stereotypes would

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have you believe. And my impression of Morgan Sindall as a business is that it is very inclusive. The business doesn’t really care how old you are, how long you’ve been in the company, your gender, your race, or anything else, all that matters is if you can do the job. We were very conscious in our group that we had been given a rare opportunity to have our say at this level, and that it could be an opportunity that we didn’t get again. We were a bit nervous at the beginning that we didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes or upset anyone, but our group sponsor made it clear that the business wanted to be challenged and made to feel uncomfortable. All the same, it was daunting to have your boss and your boss’s boss sat there listening to you talk about what the business did and didn’t do well. I can’t say that we know now, after Shaping our Future, what is coming in the next 10 years – but I think we’ve got a better idea. Climate change is something we are actively talking about now, and everything that came out of Shaping our Future fed straight into our regional responsible business plans for 2027 as an acknowledgement that it is the future – it is how we are going to be the most prepared business. I’m also part of phase two of Shaping our Future, where we are starting to develop some of the longer term ideas that came out of the programme a little bit further. The quick fixes are already or almost in place, which is fantastic. Overall, I think taking part in Shaping our Future was a really worthwhile experience. It has made me better at my job and given me a greater appreciation of the wider scope of the business. It is very easy for us to become closed off and only think about what is happening within our region or role, but this gave me an appreciation of our place as a region within the wider network of regions and, indeed, businesses in the Group, as well as for how what we do benefits the business and will continue to benefit the business in 10 years’ time. I will soon be moving into a new role as Sustainability Manager for our East region, which is really exciting. I see a long future for me within Morgan Sindall, and Shaping our Future has been an important part of that.

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Case study

Danny Brennan Senior Project Manager South Time with business: 5 years, 1 month

I heard about Shaping our Future when I was on an internal management development programme, and volunteered to be on it – but I subsequently found out I was being put forward to be on it anyway. The programme was about what we can do as individuals and as a company to help progress Morgan Sindall into a better position going forwards in the future and continue developing on where we want to be as a company. I was excited about how taking part could help my own individual development but also to be part of a process that might potentially come up with a golden nugget idea that changes or helps the wider industry going forwards. The academic learning side I would describe as being positively intense. We are used to taking on and using a wide range of information at quite a quick pace in this industry, but we are wired as engineers and as managers in construction to find solutions to problems. When we are running projects, even if everything has gone well, we are looking for how we can do things better, quicker, or more efficiently. With Cranfield, we were focusing on understanding the problem in more depth, which was a very different way of thinking than that which we have all developed over our decades in industry. Ultimately, we came up with various solutions, but the idea of exploring the problem was a very alien way of thinking for me and it felt quite uncomfortable at first. Back in the day job, it is hard not to revert back to how we have always done things, because I’ve had 12 years of running to the solution. But I have found myself on several occasions since the programme, when faced with

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a challenge on a project I’m working on, encouraging myself and the team to take a step back and think about it before running into solution mode. Six months ago, I would never even have thought about the problem itself – only the solution. What was great about the programme was that we had people from every level of the business – from graduates, to management, senior management and directors – and everyone’s job title was left at the door. It wasn’t a meeting led by a director – it was a process of engagement. We were all one team, and everyone felt comfortable to speak up and to challenge anything they didn’t agree with, but in a constructive way. My group was made up of people from all different parts of the UK and we have kept in touch since because we’re taking the recommendations forwards internally and we catch up regularly on that. Expanding my personal network has been great, because it means I now feel more able to pick up the phone to people from different parts of the business and ask them about different companies, individuals or systems they might already have experience of working with. Personally, I see a long future at Morgan Sindall. I’ve been here five years and am committed to the business for the long-term. You can’t put a price tag on how it feels as an employee to work for a company that invests in you and the future of its business. Not just in terms of the financial investment or in allowing you time out of the business to attend programmes like this, but actively supporting you in doing so, making it clear to you that – from their point of view – this is really important. I feel really proud to be working for a business that truly invests in its people and puts in the time, money and effort to develop these programmes that allow people like me to flourish in front of others. The exposure you get to senior people within the business as part of these programmes, compared to any other company I’ve worked for in the past, is amazing. Normally, you would only get that level of access if something went seriously wrong, but to get that exposure in a positive light is fantastic.

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Case study

Norma Odain-Hines Social Value Manager London and Home Counties Time with business: 2 years, 1 month

My boss nominated me to take part Shaping our Future. I hadn’t long joined the company and – to be honest – I was a bit sceptical when I found out I was going to be on the diversity and inclusion project group. As a black woman in my 50s, I was getting fed up of talking about ED&I; I just wanted to get on and do my job. At first, I took a bit of a back seat, just watching and allowing others in my group to speak on the subject, because I feel sometimes when you are a woman of colour, people sit there waiting for you to tell them what you think they should do. I found it really interesting – and something must have been right, because I’m still on the working group looking at implementation of some of the recommendations we came up with for the business. The training at the front was intense but, for me, was the best thing about it. Without that, I don’t think the programme would have had the same impact. It helped get people looking outside of their own personal experience and thinking differently about what inclusion means. In our project group, we came up with a lot of recommendations for improving Morgan Sindall’s ED&I. Personally, I don’t agree with setting targets and quotas. Lots of businesses do it, but what happens when those targets aren’t met? I’m a firm believer in hiring the people that can do the job. If you look at your processes and get the educational outreach right, then you’ll have an even playing field. If your business is an attractive place to work and everyone in it and your supply chain is on board, then these things will happen automatically. I think Morgan Sindall understands that.

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A lot of the time, ED&I comes down to social mobility, and I don’t think anybody has got that right, otherwise we wouldn’t still be talking about it. But what we need is to ensure that it stays on the agenda for businesses like Morgan Sindall. Because the whole make-up of our society is changing and, alongside that, so is what people value in the companies they work for. By keeping ED&I on the agenda, we ensure that the change we want to see is possible. Before I joined Morgan Sindall, I was told by a few people I knew that worked here that, as a company, it was different – in a good way. I think that is definitely true. I feel that people listen here. There isn’t that hierarchy whereby you tell people something but they don’t really hear you. Having different people from across the business, at all levels, involved in Shaping our Future was really good, and it was great to see people from the Board and senior management there showing their commitment to it. They weren’t just speaking to us in a video – they were actually attending and really bought into what we were trying to achieve. I think the vibe is right at Morgan Sindall to make the changes needed to allow people from all backgrounds – including those with protected characteristics – to thrive at the company. The business just needs to remember that, alongside the changes and improvements that are taking place in the work that the business is doing, it is also evolving and growing itself, as are the people that work for it. I think Morgan Sindall is in a really good place. It has a very good ethos, without having too many structured processes that you have to go through to get anything done. If you have an idea, you can roll it out and try it. There’s less talking and more doing – and that’s exactly what we need to improve ED&I.

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Case study

Nevil Friggens Senior Design Manager Central and West – South West Time with business: 3 years, 2 months

I was taking part in our internal Developing Management Excellence course when they invited volunteers to be part of Shaping our Future. I found the programme very interesting on a personal level, and a bit of an eye opener professionally. While I’ve been on management training programmes before, they have always been very specific to our industry. I found all the learning around the science of human behaviour, responses and group thinking absolutely fascinating. I also think having that guidance up front on setting goals was useful in terms of bringing efficiency and output to the process. I think Shaping our Future was a brilliant programme: drawing together a diverse cross-section of people from across the business and putting them in a room together to answer a common question or expand on an issue worked really well. Having the opportunity to spend time with people who, even though they may be in the same industry and the same business, think about things in a different way and approach issues from a different perspective was enlightening. Watching the room react to itself and seeing people bounce off each other and how sharing different perspectives can lead a conversation was really interesting. One of the main takeaways for me was around how productive it can be to get diverse people together in a room to talk about a subject or issue. Having that led by experts from Cranfield School of Management, who were able to steer some of the conversation and bring some of the known practices to bear to invite that engagement and participation, was really effective from my perspective. Having the opportunity to share my view was flattering, and I definitely think the business has listened to what we said in our presentation and the learnings have been taken forward.

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For me personally, I think the learning between DME and Shaping our Future has changed the way I communicate and manage. I’ve always taken a holistic approach to everything I do, and I like to think I’ve got quite a strategic mind. The early learning – particularly around strategy, understanding your place in the market, and your customer offer – made a lot of sense to me, not because I was previously aware of it, but just because it felt inherently ‘right’. And so, part of the process of being involved in the Shaping our Future programme has crystalised for me that, that is what I enjoy doing and it’s what I think I’m quite good at – being open-minded, asking open questions, trying to find out information. It’s something I’ve always done in my role because I’ve got quite a customer-facing role, trying to understand what the stakeholder and customer needs are and translating those into something that we as a business then deliver. At a strategic level, the task is similar – it’s understanding your place, understanding the drivers affecting what you’re doing, and putting a key strategic plan in place to deliver those goals. That’s what I enjoy doing and I think it’s what I do well. Taking part in Shaping our Future brought that into sharper focus for me and that’s something I’m reflecting on going forwards.

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Case study

Emma Curtis Area Director, Northern Home Counties Time with business: 6 years, 8 months

I volunteered to be on the Shaping our Future programme. I found the programme really good. I haven’t done any formal studies since I went to university, so the academic side was interesting, and then I thought we worked well as a team to turn that learning into problem-solving that would benefit our business. The main thing we learned was not to rush to an answer quickly. In our industry, we’re great at facing problems, responding quickly, and moving on to the next challenge. Sitting with an issue made us feel uncomfortable at first, but we trusted the process and it worked well. We did the research and sat with and discussed what came out of that, testing different solutions, for probably 80% of the time before moving on to what our recommendations would be. What we ended up with wasn’t too dissimilar to what we thought we would at the outset, but we gave a lot more time to speaking to clients as opposed to just assuming we knew what they thought so, when we did come up with our conclusions, there was a lot more conviction behind our arguments.

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I’m much more comfortable now sitting with a situation for a while and understanding that you don’t always have to jump to a solution then and there. I liked the flat structure we had on the programme. I was the most senior person in the group and two of the other members report to me in their day-to-day roles but, for this purpose, there was no hierarchy. I’ve tried to keep that going forward too, as I’ve never been a particularly hierarchical person – if you’ve got something to say that is of benefit, it doesn’t matter what job role you’re in, I’d like to hear it. We were looking at how we, as main contractor, get closer to our public sector partners – either to do more repeat work or to serve them better. Of the six that were in our project group, five of us have gone forward to be part of the new working group looking at implementing our recommendations within the business – and I think that says a lot about the conviction behind those recommendations. I’m pleased Morgan Sindall is doing this, because there’s an argument to say that we’re not broken, so why would you try to fix anything? Whether people agree with our current approach or not doesn’t really matter, because the numbers will tell you it is successful. But I like that the business isn’t standing still and taking that for granted. We are trying to work out what’s next and living its values – seeking to challenge the status quo. I believe in what we’re doing, and I think if we can really get under the skin of how we get CEOs of different local and national authorities to understand our broader offering beyond construction and how we can support their strategic agenda then we will really be making a positive difference to local communities. Aside from the fact that we will get more work out of it as a business, that seems like a positive thing to be involved in.

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Case study

Matthew Bidewell Senior Contracts Manager East Anglia Time with business: 17 years, 1 month

I was really pleased to get the opportunity to join the Shaping our Future programme. I knew it was important for us as a business, but I also thought it would be good for my own growth and development. There were a lot of techniques and tools that I’ve never come across before on a course, which was great. The main learning point for me was in the way in which we go about dealing with challenges. During my career, my ethos, skills and management style have been honed and challenged, but everything has always been about solutions – about getting to the result or the end goal. The learning at the start of Shaping our Future turned everything on its head. It was about learning new techniques for looking at the problem, understanding that there are lots of different ways of doing things rather than the way in which we have always done something – regardless of how well we do it. I had to completely reverse-engineer what I have been hard-wired to do, which was difficult to get my head round to start with, but it made a lot of sense in terms of what we were trying to achieve. Neither the industry nor the business is going to change overnight, but I definitely think looking at things in this way has opened my eyes and added a new facet into the way I work. It has changed how I manage teams on projects. I can’t hone in on one thing in particular, but it’s just sprinkling of everything I learned about doing things differently and encouraging innovative thinking that I’ve brought to the job. I’m challenging my teams more, encouraging them to think differently, and we’re trialling new things. We’re a massively risk-averse industry, so we’re not talking polar change, but more small differences to complement and enhance what we are already doing well.

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We have a new large project kicking off shortly, on which we are looking at doing things slightly differently. We have explored different routes and asked ourselves several times why we want to do something a certain way and whether there is a different, better way of doing it. There are certain things we have put in place that will help with team dynamics and encourage the confidence to challenge things along the way. The team has also got back-up plans in advance so they’re not having to think on their feet so much. Hopefully that will all prove fruitful. As a business, it is part and parcel of our fibre to try to bring innovation in, but do we really understand what innovation means and what it is all about? The Shaping our Future programme provided a really good refresh and helped us understand that there is a place for people to be second followers in innovation, which is probably more Morgan Sindall. We don’t want to be the ones trialling a brand new material that looks ok on paper but becomes a problem in five years’ time. We want to be the business in five years and a day, when the technology has been proven and the techniques are honed. Working for a business that invests in its people is massively important to me personally, and I wouldn’t work for an organisation that didn’t. I’ve been with Morgan Sindall for 17 years and being part of Shaping our Future is just another element of evidence for me that the business is looking at the horizon, understanding that there are challenges out there, and not being complacent. I see taking part in the programme as me being put in a fortunate position but – ultimately – we as employees are the assets to the business; without the people in that room, there wouldn’t be a Morgan Sindall. Not everyone on the programme had volunteered to be there – some had been put forward by others – but no one was unhappy to be in that room and in that position of learning. It was a tough programme to be part of, but only because people cared about what they were trying to do and took it seriously. The future for Morgan Sindall is about making sure we keep investing in that journey for betterment and developing new skills and the understanding of different ways of doing things, rather than being arrogant and thinking we know the best way to do it.

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