A careful mix of team-building and individual development activities
Growing from three to an international team of 30 in just eight years, Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI) sought external input to help articulate the team’s culture and collaborative engagement, as the fully remote team continued to grow during the Covid-19 period.
“We were growing quickly and wanted to develop some common touchstones and experiences that new and existing team members could embrace,” said Dr Fiona Solomon, ASI’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
The purpose of the ‘ASI Team Development and Wellbeing’ program was to create a resilient, collaborative and results-oriented team culture in a period of current growth.
“Helga helped develop the program,” Fiona said, outlining the program’s 60/40 split between team workshops and individual coaching. “The team workshops were co-designed with various senior management folk to cover team culture and strategic workstreams.
“Helga brought together a coaching panel of diverse skills and expertise to enable team members to have a choice of who they wanted to work with. Their individual development goals were up to them and their chosen coach.”
Key activities
- Annual series of workshops for the full global team (3-4 sets of 3×2-hour workshops on a given theme per year)
- Annual coaching program offering individual team members us to six sessions per year
Helga has been a brilliant partner in this work and we expect our collaboration to continue. She knows the mission and the team. She brings a joie de vivre to her work with us.”
What
Facilitation and coaching, 2021-2023
About ASI
Aluminium Stewardship Initiative (ASI) is a not-for-profit organisation that runs an independent third-party certification program for the aluminium value chain.
Organisational culture needs
- Program planning
- Coordination of a coaching panel
- Team-building workshops
- One-on-one coaching
Aluminium and sustainability
Aluminium used today comes from both mined bauxite and recycled sources. Seventy-five per cent of the aluminium that has ever been produced is still in use. It is used in a very wide range of sectors, including automotive, aerospace, energy, building and construction, packaging, consumer goods and more.
ASI’s standards are designed to drive transformation of the sector. Beyond the standards, ASI engages directly with Indigenous communities and collaborates on data, research and other activities.
ASI considers a full range of ESG issues and aims to keep pace with evolving expectations. The organisation’s four sustainability priorities – climate, circularity, nature-positive and human rights – are seen as critical and interconnected. It works with the full value chain and in 2023 has over 300 members globally from industry, civil society, Indigenous groups and other supporters.
Standards and credible certification
ASI began as a two-year project from 2012 to 2014, following a collaboration established in 2009 between the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Nespresso.
Around 30 aluminium industry groups supported the two-year project, with the aim to define standards and scope a certification program.
“I was brought in to turn the project into a live program,” Fiona said of her appointment as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the new member-funded ASI in 2015. “I set up the strategy, governance and business models, as well as the technical program.”
Fiona’s focus on sustainable development began in 1997, where she spent 10 years at CSIRO leading its sustainability-focused program for the minerals industry. She heard of the opportunity to head up ASI towards the end of eight years as Director of Standards Development at the Responsible Jewellery Council.
“I put my hand up,” she said. “But I proposed to not run it like a project or as part of a consultancy. I knew it needed to stand on its own feet as a multi-stakeholder membership initiative for ASI to achieve its goals.”
Once incorporated in 2015, the governance/business model was established, members adopted the constitution and the new board was elected in 2016. Operational funds increased from AU$350,000 in the first year to AU$6 million in 2023.
From 3 to 30 in 8 years
“For the first few years I was the only employee,” she said. “It took a while to develop sufficient resources to employ full-time roles across the range of skills we needed. It has been constant growth in recent years. In 2019 we had eight people. In 2020, 16 people. We’re a team of 30 now.”
Spread around the world and all working from home offices, the Covid-19 pandemic halted travel for everyone for two years, particularly for those based in Australia.
“So, we had new colleagues who had never met in person,” Fiona said. “It was also time to think about a new foundation for team engagement. The biggest contributor to our carbon footprint was travel, so while there would be a role for in-person meetings again in future, we also needed to build resilience remotely.”
A culture deck as catalyst
As the ‘ASI Team Development and Wellbeing’ program was getting ready to be rolled out, Fiona was developing a team culture deck to communicate to the wider team.
“In early 2021 I listened to an audio book on Audible about Netflix culture,” Fiona explained, waving goodbye to an ASI new starter who was onboarded in her dining room just that morning. “It was by Netflix’s former Chief Talent Officer, Patty McCord. I found it gripping. It was what I needed to hear at the time. I remember thinking, ‘I think we can make it simple’.”
The book was Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility. McCord put forward the concept of a ‘culture deck’, and advocated radical honesty, transparency, leading by example and understanding the difference between a team and a family.
Fiona kept the ASI culture deck short, simple and focused. “Unless it can be said from memory, people won’t remember it.”
Creating a resilient, collaborative and results-oriented team
Ongoing team-building workshops
The program kicked off in early 2021 with a series of four team-building facilitated workshops, reinforcing the culture deck’s four key elements.
Workshops continued into 2022 and 2023 with workstream leaders designing the format with Helga, to “allow for diversity” and to “keep the program fresh”. One of the coaches also ran a series of 10 monthly workshops about wellbeing in the workplace.
“I wanted to rotate around the team to do workshops about their streams, so that people can share their thinking and don’t end up working in silos,” Fiona said. “The workshops were a way to build communication between and across the different streams. We deliberately mixed people in break-out activities to form new relationships and hear different perspectives.”
The team found the workshops “collaborative and friendly” and showed that “we are all on the same page”. “For teams that work remotely like ours, this kind of interaction help us to keep focused,” one team member said. “It allowed different ways of communication and sharing to be explored,” another said.
Individual development activities
Team members had access to a panel of up to half a dozen coaches from a diverse range of cultures, backgrounds and genders.
How it worked:
- Depending on the role, team members had access to up to six sessions per year
- They selected the coach from the panel
- The team member and coach co-designed the coaching structure and goals
“The team have really valued the coaching and talk about how it has helped them work on development goals,” Fiona said. “We envisaged it as a one-off, but most people wanted to do more. So, we have enabled a multi-year approach for those interested to continue.”
A foundation for future growth and evolution
The confidential feedback and ongoing review process plays an important role in the ‘ASI Team Development and Wellbeing’ program of work, helping guide future team-building plans.
“It’s a rolling program – and it will continue to evolve,” Fiona said. “Team culture remains an important touchstone for us. We will continue to recruit and onboard new people. We want to effectively support their work, collaboration and achievements here at ASI.”
