Challenge:

A scattered vision & stifled communication

Modern Niagara is a 60-year-old leading national mechanical and electrical contractor based in Ottawa.

They engaged Unstoppable Conversations to help them realize the vision of ONE MODERN, an initiative to unify the leadership, culture, and vision of the company across Canada, thus impacting the customer experience and their bottom line.

But they were scattered and divided. 

Not only did they have offices in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Ottawa, and Toronto (gained through a series of mergers and acquisitions), they were a company that was attempting to merge four distinct disciplines (controls, mechanical, service, electrical) into a unique one-stop-shop model.

Modern, already one of Canada’s top 100 Employers in Canada, now had to deal with the debilitating silos that every large organization faces:

• a lack of buy-in to a shared vision
• resistance to what “the head office wants us to do now”
• distrust from each office, sensing the others “aren’t getting it”

With this disconnect came a significant difference in performance in each region and a lack of consistency in customer experience.

Additionally, they had to deal with a lack of follow-through and accountability with key project partners.

Solution:

A breakthrough in courage and authenticity both within leadership and working relationships with other companies

We ran a series of six-day leadership workshops involving
leaders from across the country.

In these workshops, leaders began to share their hidden
assumptions, conclusions, and even resentments they had about one another.

The results were a series of breakthrough conversations that happened between leaders whose working relationships were constrained by their hidden or overt negative opinion of one another.

These conversations went well beyond “clearing the air.”

Authentic and meaningful relationships were created in which leaders found the freedom to be able to say anything to each other and be able to hear potentially upsetting information with grace and ease.

This breakthrough in courage and authenticity went beyond Modern’s internal leadership and spilled into the leaders’ working relationships with other companies.

Results:

Modern Niagara saved hundreds of
thousands of dollars in one conversation.

Modern Niagara was working on one of the most significant health care projects in Canada’s history — Canada’s first smart hospital located outside of Toronto.

One of Canada’s oldest and biggest General Contractors won
the billion-dollar contract to design and build the hospital.

As is typical in the world of construction, the tension between this general contractor and its partners began to escalate as the pressures of timelines, out of scope changes, and money constraints converged.

In one powerful breakthrough conversation, Modern’s VP of Major Projects authentically shared and took responsibility for Modern’s fears of being taken advantage of by his counterpart and their company.

The VP’s counterpart was surprised and impacted by this openness and in turn, shared his fears of Modern building evidence to eventually levy a legal claim against them.

In that unique space of authenticity, the General Contractor then shared that this was a losing project for their company, and asked for Modern’s help.

What they worked out was a contract revision that saved both the General Contractor and Modern several hundred thousand dollars each that was never going to happen on its own.

And in the process of this breakthrough, these two leaders elevated their working relationship to a completely new level.

This increase in authenticity, trust, and integrity allowed for results like this to happen across the entire country within the six-month span of Modern Niagara’s Senior Leaders engaging in training and coaching with Unstoppable Conversations.

Modern is now a company who can spearhead not only their own reinvention but become a beacon for what’s possible for their sector.