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When peter Welch, president of Cussions Polska and Uroda SA, arrived at Cussions’ newly acquired[A1]  factory in Poland in 1993, he discovered that the concept of teamwork did not exit.’ The guy who ran it before had a queue of people outside of his office waiting for decisions on everything from taking a day’s holiday to major investments. All decisions were made by one man.’ Cussions entered Poland by taking over a manufactory of cleaning products in Wroclaw. Two years later they brought Warsaw-based Uroda toiletries. They turnover increased from ￡11m to ￡50m and the smaller Uroda quickly grew into a ￡22m business. Both businesses are now major brands in Poland and export to other eastern European markets.

But in spit of these successes, it is still hard to develop new approaches. The company culture here is the result of fifty years of regulation and control, explains Welch. It’s not easy to get people to take on responsibility and be accountable when things go wrong. The sales department used to be a guy next to the phone waiting for it to ring.

To help solve those problems, Cussions brought three expatriate managers to work closely with the local sales staff in project teams. They also brought in senior Coverdale management consultant Keith Edmonds to work on the team’s managerial skills and improve communication within the team. Edmonds held two one-week programmes, working on team-building and developing creative thinking.

The imaginative ideas participants came up with were extraordinary- electric. He describes the programmes as helping people recognize that there is a rang of effective management styles. We wanted to throw new light on old problems. The participants responded very positively. In one task, they were given ￡500 and told to make as much profit with in as possible. They came up with amazing ideas, says Edmonds. They put on discos. They went to the Czech border, bought products and then sold them at a profit.

Welch believes the programmes were excellent at ‘getting people exited about their jobs’. But he warns, we need to ensure that what happens on the programme happens back in the workplace’. The results, however, are already very positive. The two programmes cost us about  ￡40,000 in total, including food and accommodation,’ say Welch, but the returns we are getting from them are huge. We saved about ￡200,000 from the first programme and we’re expecting savings of around ￡700,000 from the second one.’

The programmes also form the basis of monthly reviews, in which progress is measured against targets set in the programmes. You can see the results improving each month. I’m very pleased with the way it has worked out,’ says Welch.