The Coxswain Alliance team throughout the project have enabled the diverse teams in Finance and Corporate Services to clearly identify their outcomes, their challenges and areas for continuous improvement.

I went into this program with an open mind, but sceptical, in the end I am a better leader, coach and person, with clear streamlined processes and procedures in place at the workplace and an organised schedule at home.

I want to thank the Coxswain Alliance people for working closely with me to understand what we were trying to achieve. They were patient, never made us feel stupid and, most importantly, understood our business.

I feel far more engaged with my frontline workforce, and the entire team now have a sense of ownership and personal responsibility to achieve our production targets.

There were many times I challenged the changes that were recommended but this was never a problem. We had open and honest conversations and, more importantly, all the changes I have made to my business have been for the better.

On a personal note, it has been one of the most influential and impactful encounters I’ve had in my professional journey to date.

Coxswain’s honesty and unlimited energy was incredibly helpful and infectious. I can see the impact on my team as they start to say, “we did it ourselves, all we needed was a little coaching.”

We couldn’t have introduced the MOS without the drive, clarity of process and experience that came with the Coxswain Alliance representatives who embedded themselves as virtual staff members within my team (and our organisation) over a significant period of time. They we amazing to work with and we learned so much from them. They worked hard and developed relationships across the organisation at all levels. Any scepticism over whether this would work in our context was soon quashed. The business transformation is such that we sometimes wonder how we ever did our business effectively before MOS.

My introduction to MOS took my leadership to a new level as I developed an operating rhythm that drove process efficiencies across my business. I was able to identify lost time and implement service improvements as a result of the information I now understood how to use.

A Coxswain program delivers many great things, but most valuably it dedicates 90+% of the elapsed time to managing the change. No change manager and fancy comms. people either. Coxswain Alliance works on the behaviours of leaders, and coaches them closely so they can maintain the change. An LSS practitioner isn’t generally a strong manager of change.

The consultants worked with me and my management team. It was a genuine partnership and we formed a strong bond. Never did we feel that something was “being done” to us or we were being told what to do, but rather we were working on the business together for an improved result.

The work with Coxswain has helped consolidate internal systems and practices into a much more synchronised and scheduled operating rhythm that has now driven the Asset Division to become much more structured and disciplined in the way in which we manage daily, weekly and monthly operations.

The Coxswain project helped us increase real time visibility of our progress and to focus on improving our success rate. Tools such as the Visual Management Boards have made us more nimble and responsive to meet short term challenges. Better tracking and reporting tools mean we can now measure the impact of new interventions or service models.

Possibly the best thing about MOS is that it makes people leaders into really effective people leaders, and that is something I think will keep paying dividends for many years to come.

Strategically, my team have a clearer focus on the longer term goals and the desired outcomes; operationally we have become more efficient with our time management and allocation of work; culturally we have become more aligned through transparency and accountability; and personally I feel that I have become a more effective leader in the midst of much change and uncertainty.

The detailed analysis by leaders and improved capability around judgement and critical thinking has resulted in operational performance improvements of over 20% year-on-year. It is an intensive 14-week, program that challenges the capability of leaders. However, the benefits for leaders and their career development are invaluable.

Working with Coxswain Alliance gave me access to highly skilled and motivated specialists who taught me new ways of working and the science behind their decisions. They provided support and training so that I was able to actively drive change and improvement within the organisation.

It has been over a year since our business finished the MOS program and the ongoing benefits realised from the program have been maintained and in some cases improved. The 14-week program is an outstanding leadership program to improve operational efficiency, leadership capability and business acumen.

The benefits, be it short term or long term are worth the journey for any business and its employees at all levels.

Working with Coxswain Alliance has not only been extremely beneficial to the business but also inspiring and useful for one’s own professional learning and development.