Liberating people, groups and organisations
Some examples of our work
I had the pleasure of attending one of Karen’s workshops, entitled Personal Brand and Impact in April and May of 2021 (a two-part course). Throughout my career, I’ve done a number of various training courses on management styles / personas, etc and I can say Karen’s workshop was not only the most thought provoking, but also the most practical. It was obvious Karen has good depth of theoretical knowledge but what really made it special is her ability to actively listen and tailor her questions, suggestions, considerations to the individuals in the course. My consistent gripe with courses is often facilitators relay content, but make little effort to tailor to individual businesses or people, however Karen did this really well. I left the course with some really handy and practical tips to address some of my challenge areas as well as a much better understanding of myself as a leader. I’d highly recommend to anyone in a leadership position in an organization.
— Shaun Hatrick. Group Partner Director, Nectar 360
Supporting the launch of a new Commercial function as Argos and Sainsbury’s operations merged
Following the purchase of Argos by Sainsbury’s the decision was taking to merge the two trading teams and to create 1 new team with 1 set of ways of working and new roles and responsibilities. We were asked to support this integration by creating a full day workshop for all 1000 colleagues. For this project we needed to work incredibly closely with the Leadership team as we were building content whilst organisational decisions were being made, with an ambition to hit an unmoveable deadline. We ran these workshops over the course of a number of weeks working with subject matter experts; every workshop having 7 breakout rooms in action with 7 subject matter experts as well as main room activity. Significant coordination and attention to detail was required in order to land this perfectly to set the trading team up for success as they faced into peak season. We received very strong feedback from these sessions and were told they created a real sese of ‘doability’ and excitement for the future from delegates.
“Sainsburys Argos were undergoing a significant re-structuring of it’s Commercial function resulting in circa 1000 colleagues requiring engaging and training in new roles and ways of working. Karen expertly translated the brief and helped create a training emersion programme for all colleagues enabling everyone to gain a functional understanding of all the roles and processes in Commercial, as well as how they interfaced and interacted with all of the head office support functions within the organisation. It was a well thought out training programme, had excellent operational execution and gained lots of positive feedback from both the colleagues and the leadership team”
Jon Wiltshire, Trading Director, Sainsbury’s Argos
Creating and delivering workshops for Sainsbury’s Leadership programmes for both Store managers and Head office colleagues
Sainsbury’s were launching a new Leadership development programme for both Store Managers and Head office new leaders and we were asked to be the key external partner to run workshops and webinars. Over the course of the last 3 years we have run numerous workshops as part of this programme: Personal Brand, Commercial and Business Thinking, Commercial Finance and Inspiring Communications. Each workshop and webinar was created by doing internal research and working with the leadership and talent teams to understand what the developmental needs were and then all content was created as bespoke work. We have consistently received strong feedback about the lasting impact of this work for delegates.
“Having recently worked with Karen on internal leadership cohorts, it was great to see the passion she put into delivery and care into content. Seeing the impact she had on our teams during interventions, it was great to work together to broaden our team’s business and strategic thinking.”
Matt Hourihan, Head of Stores, Sainsbury’s
Creating and delivering a Commercial development programme for Homebase
We were asked by the Commercial leadership team at Homebase to develop a programme which would develop their high potential commercial talent. We worked with internal subject matter experts and built a comprehensive modular programme of both technical and behavioural skills which ran for 18 months per cohort. These programmes were very successful driving up rates of promotion and were endorsed and supported by line managers and the leadership teams. We have run multiple programmes in Homebase working with a number of cohorts.
“Karen Harris created a development programme for the Homebase commercial teams at the request of the Commercial Director.
Karen created a programme which allowed for facilitation from herself, also from the internal team that she developed and from subject matter experts who were selected by the key stakeholders.
Karen mixed workshops with coaching and mentoring, engaging and involving line managers, gaining endorsement and support across the commercial teams for the programme. The colleagues benefitted significantly from the programme and it was recommended and endorsed by all levels including the Senior Leadership team and became the key programme in their development offering.”
Katherine Newson Commercial Academy manager, Homebase 2014-2016
Creating and delivering a Commercial development programme for Argos
We built a modular 18 month commercial development programme to develop commercial thinking across a talent population in Argos. We worked with internal subject matter experts and built a comprehensive programme of both technical and behavioural skills. We ran these programmes for over 5 years for Argos to meet development needs. These programmes were very successful driving up rates of promotion and were endorsed and supported by line managers and the Leadership team.
Karen Harris scoped, created, wrote and delivered an 18month development programme for the high performing future talent within the Argos Commercial team. The programme was incredibly successful leading to a 90% promotion rate for those delegates, it was endorsed by line managers , had strong levels of engagement with colleagues and was highly rated by the leadership team. She worked with us at Argos on that programme for over 5 years as we rolled out numerous cohorts, always delivering excellent results. Karen also created a junior managers development programme and a new leader development programme, which again achieved great results. Karen was highly respected for the work that she did with us and was a valued external partner.
Abbegail Sawney, Commercial Academy Manager January 2013 – December 2019
Supporting team ways of working at Zenco
We were asked to work with the Senior Leadership team at Zenco to support Team Relatedness and Ways of Working. We used a combination of one-on-one coaching, group facilitation and Insights Discovery profiles to support the team to develop a new level of understanding about themselves, create a leadership vision and to redefine their strategy for the future
“Karen is able to provide incredible perspective due to her vast commercial experience. She is highly effective in helping us see that we are not the only ones struggling with certain barriers. Karen understands the underlying behaviours that may cause those of us in a leadership role to act in a way that may not achieve the best outcomes from our team, and is able to offer proven models for mitigating these behaviours. Karen is an incredibly kind soul who has a laser focus on helping her clients use their strengths to be the best leaders they are able. I really cannot recommend Karen highly enough.”
Billiejo Kay, Head of HR Zenco Ltd
Team communication at the Civil Aviation Authority
We were asked to support the communication and ways of working of the cyber security team who work at fast pace in a continually challenging sector. As the focus of this work was Team relatedness we worked to create an environment of psychological safety for all and to create an active listening environment. We also used this session to embrace the opportunity to create positive outcomes and opportunities for the team. During the work we made a significant shift into new territory which the team could use to move forward. Feedback from the session was incredibly positive and the team have since gone on to build on this with the impact of this session still being felt.
Influencing change at Sainsbury’s
We were asked to support leaders in Commercial functions to develop their influencing change capabilities. Within this we had 2 objectives 1) to support leaders to influence change through a period of organisational design and 2) also to develop future facing leadership skills in influencing change. We built our webinars creating an environment for brave conversations and honest reflections about capabilities obstacles and challenges. We shared knowledge and created new thinking and inspiring delegates to become influencers of change and culture. Feedback from the sessions has been strong with many delegates sharing the value they got from our work together.
