From two companies to one team
A holding company had grown through acquisition, bringing together business units that had never fully become one organization. Two earlier attempts to redesign the structure hadn’t translated into results: financial performance lagged, project outcomes were inconsistent, and forecasting was unreliable. A new leadership team had been put in place, but it was a team on paper only — assembled, not yet aligned.
How do you turn a group of leaders who didn’t choose each other, and who carry different organizational histories, into one team with one vision and one growth strategy — and build a culture strong enough to hold a decentralized, multi-business-unit structure together?
"How do you turn a group of leaders who didn’t choose each other into one team with one vision?"
We combined a systemic energy diagnostic across the team, the business, and the organization with a recurring rhythm of top-team working sessions roughly every six weeks over a thirteen-month journey, paired with individual executive coaching and organization-wide culture work. Strategy and roadmap decisions were made together, in the room, rather than delegated to a separate workstream — and the program itself was co-designed session by session with a sponsor team from the client, so it stayed relevant to what the business actually needed.
The team built a base layer of trust, learned to name and work through conflict instead of avoiding it, and aligned on one strategy and execution roadmap across business units. Culture work cascaded to every level of the organization. Leadership reported improved financial results and more reliable forecasting, and the team itself shifted from an assembled group to what its members described as a genuinely proud team.
LQ team
Managing Partner
Founding partner - Director Research & Thought Leadership