--Woolworths New Zealand

We have worked with this major high quality fresh food retailer with over 70 Superstores and employing over 10,000 people since 1985 when the CEO was concerned about changing his very traditional command/control type of organisation. After conducting an audit of the organisation we were commissioned to develop a culture change programme designed to create a participative organisation better able to cope with the increasing competition being experienced in their market.

--Sky City Entertainment Group NZ Ltd

Centell was invited to carry out an audit of the Sky City culture as a prelude to making recommendations on the action the organisation should take to maintain and improve its business effectiveness. The project was led by Tom Jaap who conducted a series of interviews with all the senior executives and staff from different parts of the organisation. A number of focus groups were held with a wide range of operational staff to obtain their suggestions on what changes they would like to see implemented that would enable them to operate more effectively. Tom was invited to present his findings and make recommendations to the chief executive.

Click here to view comments from Paul Walsh
General Manager Group - Human Resources
SKYCITY Entertainment Group Limited

--Comworth Systems Ltd, New Zealand

Centell has had a relationship with Comworth since the mid 90s that has covered assignments dealing with culture change, business improvement, merger integration, and executive coaching. The Comworth Group has grown since the mid 90s from a key supplier of printers, faxes and ancillary equipment include software design, programme installation, mobile phones etc. This growth has taken the numbers employed from the low 30s to over 150 in the past five years. Centell's involvement has been very much concerned with assisting the chief executive develop business strategy with particular focus on the people aspects to assist the business to recruit, develop and retain effective teams in its three business units. The latest work has involved providing mentoring and executive coaching to new general managers of two of the business units and this work is planned to continue during 2004.

--Massey University

Centell was invited by Human Resource Associates NZ, a partner organisation, to be involved with them in teaching executive programmes to the Massey MBA students. Centell is contracted to run two programmes that run for one day each for each of the MBA streams. The programmes entitled "Conceptual and Strategic Thinking" and "Personal Branding " have been running since early 2001 and are set to continue for the foreseeable future.

--YWCA Future Leaders Programme

Centell was invited by Adele Lendich (Director of Future Leaders Programme) to run a Self-Awareness Workshop as part of the 2nd Annual Leadership Forum held on June 11th 2005. AUT Campus.

We worked as part of a DFID team on this project. As the first stage we devised the National Strategy Template for Child Protection and led a series of workshops for Judets (County Councils) on how to complete this template and rewrite their strategies to a more consistent format and with a clear focus on deinstitutionalisation.

We followed this with a series of project linked at raising capability in the national authority and the Judets in the following areas:

--Smithkline Beecham

A major change in purchasing philosophy and working practices worldwide led to the formation of a new corporate purchasing team. Its role was to lead, influence, train, coach and advise purchasing professionals, purchasing agents and line managers in the business around the world. The company agreed clear financial savings to be met through improved purchasing activity and the corporate managers were seen as the keys to bringing this about. We carried out a 'culture mapping' exercise to determine the readiness of the current team of purchasing colleagues in the UK to cope with and implement effectively the proposed purchasing change strategies.

--Seaboard Offshore

This safety, supply and survey vessel company used us to assist with a move to changing the culture of the organisation from command and control to a more team based way of working. As part of this we worked with Masters and Ships Engineers on how they were to take more accountability for the decisions surrounding the maintenance and operation of their vessels. There was to be less direction from the 'support' office, and roles were redesigned to work more in the 'support' mode than the directive mode.

--Agrevo

This Anglo German agrochemical company used us to design a project management workshop for UK colleagues, whose roles were changing more to a project basis. One workshop was held for engineers specifically and the remainder, two per annum over 3 years, was open to all colleagues in the organisation.

--Laing Industrial Engineering and Construction

We delivered a facilitation skills programme for this organisation as part of the development of project managers to lead continuous improvement initiatives on sites where they were working around the world. LIE&C managers had previously been trained in presentation and negotiation by David Pride and this additional contract came about as it was recognised that focusing on continuous improvement was a contractual differentiator in the tough construction marketplace. LIE&C, in differentiating itself, chose this, amongst other initiatives, to improve its contract winning and commercial success track record.

--The British Library

We designed an 18-month development programme for the Directors of the British Library, which included facilitated business sessions as well as training and development sessions. During this time we also facilitated networking with other organisations to share best practice ideas. The development programme was commissioned by the Chief Executive particularly to enable the Directors team to tackle key challenges facing the organisation in the time frame covered.