Evolving Business Operations at Scale: COWI Workshop
My Role
I led the session design and co-facilitated the workshop with sales executives from Autodesk and senior executives from COWI.
Co-facilitated with Autodesk sales executives and senior COWI executives
Impact
$9M EBA renewal attributed in part to the engagement — establishing Autodesk as a strategic partner, not just a technical vendor.
Vision
Create a process that allows for greater planning agility for a company that works on decades-long bridge, tunnel, and road projects.
Background
Given the longevity of infrastructure projects, COWI's best talent was often unavailable for new projects due to the waterfall nature of their existing processes. This meant they could not easily maintain the delivery quality and brand reputation senior leadership wanted. Scaling talent was the primary strategic challenge.
Challenge
Our sales organization's goal was to become COWI's strategic business partner, not just their technical advisor. Two previous engagements with big-five consulting firms had already failed. We needed to understand why — and design something that wouldn't.
Obstacles
Identifying the key underlying factors that had caused the previous efforts to fail was the central challenge. Getting the right level of seniority in the room — and the right diversity across the organization — was critical to creating a solution palatable to COWI's organizational culture.
My Approach
I designed a three-day workshop specific to the needs of an infrastructure design business in the Nordics. The executives' time was highly valued, so the workshop had to earn every hour. I learned the nuances of the problem from the sales and customer success teams to find the right altitude for engagement. I then ran a pilot with a key set of executives to test the initial plan and answer open questions before the full session.
Measures of Success
Defining a deployable pilot process that addressed COWI's organizational and scheduling challenges in creating project agility. The pilot was designed to be implemented and evolved before scaling.
Results
Renewal of a $9M EBA was, in part, directly attributed to the workshop. The customer said directly that this engagement was more impactful than the previous big-five consulting engagements — establishing Autodesk as a strategic partner.
Key Learning
Understanding why two prior big-five consulting engagements failed was the most important design work before the workshop. Engaging at the right organizational altitude, and validating the approach with a pilot, prevented a third failure. The design of the conversation matters as much as the conversation itself.
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