Case Studies

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Washington Mutual

As a result of our partnership with Washington Mutual Finance (now part of Citi Group) TeamBuilders WorldWide was called in to partner with the Human Resource Specialist to design and deliver a series of team and leadership development programs.

Profile

Founded in 1927 with a history of the parent company dating back to 1889, Washington Mutual has grown to well over 500 offices across the United States. Recent growth has included the opening of several hundred more branches on the East coast of Florida alone. With its consolidated assets it is the largest savings institution and eighth largest company in the United States. With an ever changing economy, a continuous stream of acquisitions and six principal subsidiaries, change has been the constant for Washington Mutual and its affiliates.

Initiative

The President is a believer, a leader and a driver in the development and performance of his Executive Management Committee as a team. Due to his strong belief in this concept, he has experienced several different versions of action based or experiential learning in other parts of the world, the states and locally in the Tampa area. After a few disappointing attempts with other organizations, TeamBuilders WorldWide was called upon to design, develop and implement an ongoing team performance process. The objectives for the various teams team were very clear: function as a team, provide unconditional support for one another as a leadership team and enable your people.

TeamBuilders WorldWide has partnered with several areas of business within Washington Mutual from Tampa, to Seattle and Long Beach: The teams include:

Specialty Finance
The Mortgage Group
Information Systems

We decided on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as the instrument of choice to complement a day of action based learning. The group was able to not just understand, but also literally experience the differences in behavior preferences when experiencing the activities. Much of the debrief at the end of each session not only transferred back to the world within WaMu, but the realization that these folks have differences in their preferred pathways to success. Nobody was wrong, but many were greatly misunderstood. The second session with the Executive Management Committee was an outdoor business learning simulation, which was kicked off with an advanced Myers-Briggs presentation, which delves into the Lenses of MBTI to better understand leadership and fellowship style, dealing with change and culture. In the past three years the partnership has advanced dramatically to measuring and tracking the teams stages of development thru out the use of the Five-Star Team Performance Indicator. TeamBuilders WorldWide and the WaMu Executive Management Committee meet every sixty to ninety days to continue the process and strive to advanced developing the groups into an accountable Self Managed Work Teams.

Objectives

Build on a sense of community and cohesive membership.
Take on a “do different to do more” attitude.
Accept and embrace the changes needed to move the organization forward.
Surface and build on issues of collaboration and cohesiveness.
Create awareness, understanding and drive at the applications of interconnectivity as a “one organization” approach to problem solving.
Have the group take on individual ownership and accountability for actions, behaviors and decisions (or lack of).
Strategize actions that will develop us as individuals and as a whole for this group.
Have fun, lots of it!

Results

At present, WaMu’s success is unmatched. This group of individuals is one of the finest examples we have of a team that experienced awareness-understanding and now has second nature behaviors for high performance application. Other teams within WaMu have followed the Executive Management Committee’s example and are developing teams in partnership with TeamBuilders WorldWide including:

Marketing
Information Technologies
Legal
Operational Vice Presidents
Central Finance Committee