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Case study 1 · Growing talent without losing the culture

Attract talent. Develop leaders. Keep the culture.

Global design engineering

  • Attracting and retaining talent
  • Creating a healthy leadership culture
  • Developing the next generation
Photographic concept of professional squash equipment on a competition court under intense tournament lighting
Photographic concept · Professional coaching. Foundations under pressure.

The engagement at a glance

Before & after.

Reported results
working relationship
10+ years
people per cohort
6–8
academy development and handover
5 years

Reported results

Team assessment

BeforeAfter

  • Communication

    Before
    After

  • Relationships

    Before
    After

  • Alignment

    Before
    After

  • Execution

    Before
    After

  • Capacity

    Before
    After

The bars compare team-assessment scores before and after the engagement. What do the five measures mean?

Before The starting point

Growth was stretching the culture and senior team.

A rapidly growing engineering design company had client demand, overseas expansion and a need to recruit at every level. Engineering and HR wanted technical and people development to work together. New graduates, experienced hires and established leaders needed the same culture, language and management tools. Senior people were spending too much time responding to foreseeable escalations, while delivery commitments left little room for long training programmes.

After Reported after

Shared foundations and an academy owned internally.

All five reported team-assessment measures increased. Capacity rose from 37% to 67%, alongside clearer communication and alignment. The academy gave internal teams a common approach to feedback, development and leadership across regions.

Changes in practice

The starting need and the changes reported.

  • Culture
    Before

    Integrate new talent at every level while preserving the culture.

    Reported after

    A common playbook and leadership language across cohorts and regions.

  • Development
    Before

    Development had to fit around live delivery commitments.

    Reported after

    Focused sprints with immediate practice, followed by internal ownership of the academy.

01

What we did

Inspired began with an intensive for the senior team, using squash to make the pressure problem tangible. We then translated the lessons into an engineering leadership playbook and an academy that reached from emerging talent to the C-suite.

  1. Experience pressure on court

    Professional and Commonwealth squash players coached leaders on world-championship courts. Each leader focused on one foundational skill or tactic at a time, experiencing how pressure affects attention and decisions.

  2. Make the foundations dependable

    The players showed why reliable foundational shots matter. Leaders applied the lesson to engineering: keep the project moving, understand the risk and avoid unnecessary exposure when a spectacular solution is not required.

  3. Build a shared playbook

    The team identified useful communication habits, behaviours that damaged relationships, ways to simplify alignment and the standards needed for dependable execution. Coaching responses to mistakes helped make learning and speaking up part of the culture.

  4. Develop every level of leadership

    An academy served emerging talent, leaders of teams, leaders of leaders and leaders of the business in cohorts of six to eight. Focused delivery sprints connected the tools to immediate workplace practice and involved stakeholders from the C-suite to graduates.

  5. Hand ownership to the business

    Over a five-year academy development and handover period, internal teams took ownership of the programme. The wider working relationship has continued for more than ten years.

Applying this to your team

Start by agreeing the behaviour you want to change, the situations in which it matters and how you will review progress. We can use examples from your current work to shape the engagement and establish a useful starting point.

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