Examples of Our Work to Build Teams

Culture Change and Lean Manufacturing
We were retained by a manufacturing and marketing company that was beginning the process of converting to a “Lean” operating system to provide an assessment and recommend steps that would prepare the culture to make the major shift that Lean requires. Our assessment revealed a number of strategic and change management actions, the most important of which was to connect everyone working in production and eliminate silos that served no value-added function. The silos created turf wars between the most important employees in production: the “lead hands” and shift supervisors who actually made the product.

Our efforts were lauded as incredibly successful and Bristlecone was credited with being part of almost $1 million in savings and reduced waste after the first year and before even beginning Lean. We know better; when you help people see how they can support each other instead of protect their turf at work, things will always get better!

Morrisville (NC) Chamber of Commerce
The Morrisville (NC) Chamber of Commerce is always looking for new and innovative ways of meeting the needs of its members. When it became clear that the ideas and goals of the staff were stretching their ability to achieve them efficiently and effectively, Bristlecone was asked to help out. We facilitated a retreat in which staff members clarified and restructured responsibilities, identified redundancies to be eliminated and synergies to be developed, and developed clear action plans for achieving the Chamber’s most important objectives. We were later asked back to work with Chamber members and help them go from “Ideas to Action,” developing and planning for new key initiatives for the Chamber.

"Caching" it In
Take 100 key executives from a major, publically traded insurance company during their annual company meeting, put them in the hill country of west Texas, and send them out in teams to both learn about each other and how to navigate through a series of challenges and you'll get the idea of what this one day teambuilding event was like. Geo-Caching - or cross country navigation using map and compass to a series of "caches" - is a wonderful way to combine a walk in the country with teambuilding. This was a "last minute" event - something we don't usually do. But the client's enthusiasm for doing an adventure and the challenge of having to construct a geo-caching course in the hill country was too much to resist. The results? New friendships, new skills for working together and lots of fun!


For more information or other examples of our work building teams, contact us.