CASE STUDIES
Our case studies are all stories collected from our clients. For privacy and anonymity purposes, we have changed names, refrained from using company names, and masked industry-specific information.
RESILIENCE STRATEGY
When competition becomes a strength
A medium-sized sales company prides itself on being known for its very ‘alpha-male’ staff. This personality trait being valued and highlighted within the company, conflicts between salespeople are not uncommon and can be very tense.
Moreover, with a competitive bonus system, the company encourages this behaviour, sometimes to the detriment of its clients who are not at all amused to find themselves in the midst of these tensions.
One day, for one of its high-end clients, the company has no choice but to ask two of its best sales people to work together on an important project. However, these two men are known for their long-standing feud and fiery personalities. The win condition given to them is very clear: it is out of the question that the client perceives any tension within their working duo and even less that he feels trapped in the middle of a cockfight.
Aware that the mission is not simple, the company decides to call on us to advise and train the two men so that everything goes well. To do this, we adapted our "Undercover Program" initially intended for police officers who must infiltrate incognito. For the two salesmen, our training takes place both in private coaching sessions and in duos.
Throughout the training period, we let them use what we have been working on, while valuing their natural competitive instincts. At the same time, we ask their other clients to score their willingness to work together.
After three months, the director of the company informs us that not only has the project gone very well and that the client is delighted, but that the two employees had also generated more sales than usual with their other clients during the test runs that took place during the training period.
The company, very satisfied with these changes, mandated us for a new mission: to adapt their bonus system in order to preserve the relationship with the client, while maintaining the competitive environment of the company.
RESILIENCE STRATEGY
When playing goes hand-in-hand with efficiency
Being a security guard, especially at night, is a constant battle against boredom and sleep. It's not uncommon for a security guard to see their attention drift away from the screen, especially if not much is going on...
A chain of hotels contacted us in order to improve a problematic situation they were encountering with the security guards in charge of monitoring their car park. They had had several remarks for slacking off and our client wanted us to reduce them by at least 75%.
After an initial report, we decided to put together a game. The game involved staff members who had to form a "flying squad" and break into the car park under surveillance, to hide small GPS sensors. The object of the game was for the surveillance team to catch them in the act. As a result, and each month, the winners, whether staff members or security guards, were rewarded with a handsome cash bonus.
After three months, the hotel reported an 87% drop in remarks and the installation of new cameras due to reported dead spots during the games. Delighted, they informed us that they are committed to deploying the game throughout their chain of hotels, and that an inter-hotel competition has been organized. A competition where the winners of the local game are allowed to go to the car parks of the other hotels in the chain, in order to always raise the bar and spice up the challenge.
RESILIENCE TRAINING
When long-term planning can dissolve conflict
In mergers and acquisitions, agreements sometimes fail due to avoidable social disputes.
Their request was to learn how to avoid such conflicts in the future, in order to reduce by at least 30% the number of their transactions that ultimately fail due to social stress.
After an initial assessment, it became clear to us that our clients already had excellent negotiation skills and that they put them to use with their own clients, in order to reduce short-term social stress in different situations.
However, what they didn't seem to see, was that they weren’t actively planning the moments in which controlled conflicts could take place and therefore allow their clients to blow off steam in harmless moments.
The consequence was that on their long-term negotiations (more than 10 months of negotiation for example), they often lost control of the situation towards the end.
To overcome this problem, we therefore decided to adapt our “social strategy” program in order to teach them how to identify, predict, take into account and plan the stress factors of all actors up to two years in the future.
Since then, they put these tools in place and in all their transactions that involve long-term negotiation, there is, to date, no unforeseen conflict. For two of their big cases, we continue to advise them on the strategy.
Full windonction measurement is scheduled for 2026.
RESILIENCE STRATEGY
When long-term stress management gets the job done
At all universities, PHD and postdoc students experience extremely high rates of burnout and depression.
For this reason, many of them give up before the end and don’t obtain their doctorate/postdoc.
A small group of 6 students came to us with a clear win condition: they did not want to be part of the dropout group. Two of them had already experienced burnout syndromes and one of them had just returned to work after a 6-month absence/leave due to burnout.
We therefore decided to adapt our ‘highway method’ to them : a one-year program during which they acquired all the skills necessary to cope with high levels of stress over the long term. In this program, we reduced the impact of physical pressure due to long hours and jet lag, social pressure due to isolation and being the only one working on your project, and the mental pressure that arises from the abstract deadlines they faced.
After a year, we have a 0% dropout rate and 2 of them have finished. For two years, those who are still at work have chosen to meet for 1 hour every two weeks, in order to continue to be coached if they feel the need.
Full windonction measurement is scheduled for 2025.
