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

Reflections

Nicola Gotzheim Director of Learning and Development Morgan Sindall Construction

I feel there’s been real connection between us and Cranfield. It doesn’t feel like ‘them’ and ‘us’; it feels like we’ve worked together, which has been really good. The standard of the faculty we’ve worked with has been phenomenal, as has the passion that’s come from them, because they continue to work with our groups on their projects. The innovation hothouse was a big game changer because, 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. They all still talk about it to this day. It made them feel really uneasy at first. It was a massive commitment by the business to invest all that time and energy not knowing what would come out of it, but fortunately the investment paid off. Then, with the Senior Business Leaders Programme, I think it’s fair to say that the first time everyone got together in the room there was reluctance. You got the sense that people thought it was going to be a typical personal leadership programme like they had all done before, and these are practical people who want to be out doing what they do in their day job. Then, halfway through the first day, you could see them start to realise this one was going to be a little bit different. The module on macro trends and economics, in particular, really stretched their thinking. There was a definite shift change, and you could tell they were impressed.

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