Viadex Bond Team And Vision In South Africa

For over 20 years, Viadex’s leadership team has been supporting geo-dispersed businesses, succeeding and growing as they understand the complexities a multinational business faces as it expands, innovates, and evolves. 

For the past five years, Dino Cooper CEO Viadex , has invested in his leadership team with a quarterly break away from the office, to brainstorm, communicate, drive vision and deliberate on how to deliver that vision as a team. 

This is done in beautiful surroundings, bringing the UK and South African teams together face to face. The latest of these events was held in a stunning ranch in South Africa, facilitated by yours truly, Andrew Marsh. 

For five days and four nights, following a seven-hour drive from Cape Town, I worked with the 19 strong team to stitch together the patchwork of the company, ensuring everyone left the session on the same page. As this was the first offsite meeting as the company’s current five-year plan came to an end, previously hosted by another facilitator, it was a great opportunity for me to make a difference. 

Dino said to me:

“If you have a business that you want to reenergise and take to the next level, the first step is getting everyone together with a third-party facilitator, using that to optimise them and their performance. A qualified practitioner is critical to the success of this and one that will put them out of their comfort zones, as to be too comfortable is actually dysfunctional. 

“We have added 25% to our workforce in the last three years, we continue to grow and on the back of that we have given great importance to team competence - a boat can only go as fast as the slowest rower – working as a team, it is important to have the same rhythm and cadence.

“This offsite, with Andrew facilitating, was to ensure we are all rowing at the pace we want to, delivering faster, evolving how to develop the talent in our team, giving them tools to grow in their roles. People are our biggest asset and if they are doing great, I have a fabulous succession plan in place.”

As facilitator, I was well briefed by Brian Dunleavy - Chief Commercial Officer for Viadex and their head of people talent, Manda. There was a lot of prep work put into the offsite session between us to ensure it went as smoothly as possible maximising every minute this team had together at the ranch. That also included meetings with the three owners and the extended team separately before arriving in South Africa. On this Dino commented:

“These things are significant in cost and impact, and how well the facilitator is briefed and prepared, as well as how well he gets to know you all in that space is crucial. It is definitely not a one-way thing – you have to have a team that works hard on the content before-hand and is fully willing to drive the relationship – the time Andrew and our team put in was critical to the success of the 4 days. 

“Equally, it should not just be about agreeing to CEO’s agenda – it’s about hearing concerns and suggestions, taking onboard ideas, including the whole team. That is what drives how effective the session is – Andrew got that 100% right.”

It’s great to hear that from Dino and one thing I truly enjoyed was that the company understands its six core values. That became a big driver of what we did, making sure that everyone was held accountable to exhibit those behaviours. They are: Be kind / Have fun / Stay relevant / Own it / Do the right thing / Team up. On meeting each of the individuals and then seeing them in action together, I felt very positive about the team – Viadex clearly have a very well assembled line-up and they proved to be one of the best in-house teams I have worked with.

The feedback from everyone was that they were really pleased around the professionalism and in the content, but what was previously unknown was the chemistry especially when the team were used to the same person previously delivering these sessions. As a new person to the offsite sessions, I knew that the chemistry would either be there or not, and within first half day Dino informed me that he was completely at ease and looking forward to rest of event. In that feedback Dino continued:

“Andrew was really engaging, introducing materials and exercises around psychometrics to cut through to the root of the problems. Ultimately, he made us all leave our frustrations at the door and work out how to make things better, drawing out those skills to build a high performing team. He was continually evaluating us all to make a transformation and get the team to what we felt was its final format. From that position we can start to tweak performance and drive engagement. We also had people new to our company there, and Andrew helped involve and integrate them into the team.”

As a CEO, Dino appreciates that getting everyone all in one place means people giving up their weekends, so as well as having to be confident that facilitator will make it worthwhile, he also invests in an inspirational venue away from a town or city with amazing facilities, that is well provisioned where everyone is looked after – as Viadex is a geographically dispersed business with only 40% in South Africa, bringing those over from the UK, he knew he needed to create the right mood, making each member feel valued. 

The introduction for the role came through Trust X where I had previously worked with Brian Dunleavy. Brian said to me:

“It was important to me to know what we could get from this. I wanted to return to the office with a strong belief that we had improved our brand, and our culture, enabling us to shine brighter as a team than before. We looked at the strength and future of the company, evolved our plan and you helped us validate it, acting as the cox and giving us the oars to row. The company spent a significant investment into this, and as well as enjoying time getting to know the new team members, the offsite event served its purpose. Well done Andrew for taking us so succinctly on this journey.”

Going forward it has been agreed that as well as repeating what we did but with new content, to actually merge my own energy and ideas with the existing facilitator will be a great synergy, so I can’t wait to work with Viadex again, and soon!