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

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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