A strategic partnership focused on employee learning and organizational development
Company: Supercharge
Industry: IT service
Company size: 150+ employees
Location: London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Budapest
Project keywords: learning and development strategy, leadership development, skillbuilding programs, radical collaboration, internal communication
The client
Supercharge is a next-generation digital innovation agency. They create digital strategies, delightful experiences and robust software for ambitious companies ready to shape the future. They are one of Europe’s fastest-growing tech companies, having opened offices in 3 new countries and almost tripling the number of their employees in the last 5 years.
Case study
1
When I first came into contact with Supercharge in 2019, they had already opened their first international office in London, and there was no end to their growth in sight. Back then, the company realized that if they wanted to keep their competitive advantage and successfully expand into new markets in the future, they needed to support their people in gaining the skills necessary to show their competence on an international level.
3
Our partnership
I’ve been working closely with Supercharge for more than 3 years. During this time, our collaboration has continuously evolved according to the needs that emerged as a result of their growth. We started with a few skill-building sessions, which turned into a co-creation of the company-wide learning and development strategy and then to a strategic partnership where we work on projects related to organizational development too.
After I have worked with several departments and teams within the company, I started to realize that as an outsider I can also draw valuable insights about their collaboration. Knowing that Supercharge would appreciate open communication, I started channeling my observations to HR.
This led us to working together on other things as well, like advising and actively supporting internal communication during an acquisition, preparing new team members to facilitate collaboration workshops, helping key people redefine their roles or providing feedback as they worked on redefining the line management system in the company.
What makes our collaboration effective is that we work in strong collaboration. I join their team whenever my expertise is appreciated in addition to their understanding of the current issues, and I proactively propose ideas to respond to current organizational challenges too.
Challanges
2
Supercharge works with their clients in close collaboration for a common goal, which requires excellent interpersonal skills. Plus with every single project taking months or even years to complete, involving the work of many departments at various stages, seamless internal collaboration and communication is also key. They realized that developing these skills was crucial for moving the company forward.
How to build outstanding client communication skills?
They wanted to foster an open feedback culture, but found that while certain people were very experienced with social skills due to their roles, others with a more technical background hadn’t attended similar training programs before. In diverse teams like this, giving direct feedback or proactively voicing concerns could be challenging.
How to maintain a great innovation culture at each stage of growth?
How to continuously upskill people in a growing and internationally expanding organization?
Communication and presentation skills training for management
Designing and delivering communication workshops aimed specifically at preparing management so they can confidently represent their competence in an international environment.
Establishing opportunities for role-based development and knowledge sharing
Facilitating team days, skillbuilding workshops and advanced training programs for Product Strategists, UI designers, Project Managers, Tech Leads, Sales.
Co-creating a solid learning and development strategy with HR
Expanding internal training opportunities from role-based to an individual level. Designing and delivering quarterly ‘Supercharger’ workshops based on the company’s core values that are open for all employees. Co-creating the yearly learning and development strategy and supporting HR in making the biggest impact with their budget.
Internal communication support
When needed, helping senior leadership prepare for quarterly all-hands meetings, crafting narratives for strategy presentations.
Strategic advisory to HR
Acting as an external consultant with deep internal knowledge of the company. Assisting HR with strategy development, tools and ideas for responding to organizational challenges.
Radical Collaboration workshops
Delivering the full 3-day Radical Collaboration workshops to teams that work intensively with clients and with internal stakeholders (sales, HR, project management). Facilitating shorter collaboration workshops based on Radical Collaboration to various teams.
Other projects as they come up
As a strategic partner of Supercharge, they know that my experience and knowledge as a trainer, coach, facilitator, learning and development specialist and collaboration strategist are available to them whenever the need arises for something new.
For example, this is how I ended up preparing multiple team members for speaking at conferences or helping key people redefine their role to get engaged in their work again.
Impact of our collaboration
As a result of our collaboration, Supercharge now has a solid learning and development strategy in place that is based on their values, mission and strategic goals for the future.
Both management and employees went through intensive skillbuilding training that made them better equipped to do business on an international level.
Thanks to us working together, a new internal workshop series was born which enables every employee to learn and practice the skills they need to become a true Supercharger. These training sessions are also important because they help the company maintain its work culture as they facilitate meaningful interactions between people who are not working closely on an everyday basis
My role is unique in the sense that I’m close enough to have a deep understanding of the culture, but far enough to maintain an external viewpoint.
HR understands the organization’s everyday challenges the most, and I’m there to match them to the right L&D or organizational development tools when it would benefit their goals.
We both have different resources, perspectives and strengths of our own, and combining them supports Supercharge as they manage the human element of their business even during a period of intense growth and constant organizational change.
5
When we started working with Kata a couple of years ago, I already encountered a lot of other trainers and training methodologies. I've always found that these pre-designed solutions are not fitting our needs properly. We needed our own custom approach, for our own way of thinking. That's the need Kata managed to fulfill: everything is based on our team's needs, thus we know that it will always create value for our employees. Because of this custom approach, our collaboration is really tight-knit; whenever we encounter a problem that we feel we can not solve on our own or we need an unbiased view of it we reach out to Kata and she always manages to help us out. She's our swiss army knife when it comes to organizational development!
Client talk
Lilla Lassú
Chief People Officer, Supercharge