CONTACTIlly Caffè
Business excellence: A program emphasizing communication, collaboration and integration delivered to the entire plant population of Illycaffè including production, administration, marketing and sales inside and outside Italy.
Challenge Learning was selected to develop an experiential learning course tailored to address those concepts and support a major business excellence effort. We delivered 17 sessions from the leadership team to mixed shifts teams.
The client
Illycaffè is a company of 260 employees that produce a high quality torrefied coffee. Very innovative in their market segment they set standards of quality recognized in Italy and abroad. They have also been on the leading edge of many innovations in their industry. Major efforts have been implemented in house to increase and ensure quality at the production and distribution level. ISO 9001 processes are fully implemented in production and it was felt necessary to address the behavioral aspect of quality at the level of the organization - team work, accountability, anticipation of change and innovation.
Although Illy is a small structure it faced some of the frequent difficulties of communication between departments, effective integration of priorities and operating standards across functions and active participation and commitment of their employees. At the management level, a push was made to transit from a family type of management to a more professional management approach to the operation.
The intervention Challenge Learning did was at 3 levels;
- A tailored course for the leadership team to address their issues as a team and the need for alignment around management and leadership style
- 15 sessions for 240 participants,
- debrief with the leadership team on key insights which were gathered in the course of the sessions and action steps for the future.
Goals of the effort:
- Kick-off a major business excellence effort and application of continuous improvement practices
- Stimulate people participation and increase accountability for their actions
- Identify the means to improve communication across departments and ways to favour integration across functions
- Gain insight on effective team work and collaboration
- Personal action steps to make a difference
Task
We designed an experiential learning program with the plant manager specifically tailored to Illycaffè café business objectives and culture.
Prior to launching the series of courses we also designed an intervention for the leadership team with the purpose of creating buy-in from top management for the overall effort, increase their awareness around their importance as 'role models' and gain alignment around management style.
The design of the course involved the use of outdoor activities: ropes course and problem solving exercises run inside or outdoors.
The training site was built in the park of a restaurant located 20 minutes from the Illy plant. Courses for 15 participants were non-residential.
Sessions were run back to back to adjust to the production cycle. In 2 months all the employees were exposed to the same message and imparted the same business objectives.
The sessions increased the level of understanding around the competitive advantage of applying continuous improvement processes. It generated energy, renewed enthusiasm and commitment tremendously. Part of the program design included some path forward thinking on how to improve processes back at work on 'communication, participation and integration'. Those constituted direct feedback to top management in their every day operation.
Top management met again with the delivery team for a follow up session on how to capitalize on what had been accomplished. This process consulting work led to identifying best practices and effective management style.