About
BEST S.A. is one of Poland’s leading debt collection companies. Their mission is to help customers repay their debts, helping them to regain control over their finances and so restore balance in the economy.
The executive board and senior leadership team decided that their annual strategic meeting should focus on exploring ways to enhance the efficiency and competitiveness of their organisation through innovation, with a particular emphasis on new technologies such as AI. What emerged from their three-day workshop was a HumanTech approach – taking on new systems and technologies but with a strong emphasis on aligning them with a human-centric leadership and cultural shift.
The owner of BEST S.A. had a clear aim – to bring his executive leaders together to progress three key strategic focus areas and to develop preliminary solutions for implementation.
To do this, senior consultants from Impact Polska designed a focused workshop with three objectives:
- Align understanding: strengthen the senior leaders mutual understanding of the business context of BEST S.A.'s strategic transformation.
- Be inspired: spend time learning from thought leaders on digital transformation and AI and make enquiry visits to non-competitive organisations to discover their approach to strategic transformation.
- Lead change: work to develop personal relations, communication, and collaboration.
The board and senior leadership team committed to spending three days together. To hit the objectives, the programme used several different techniques and tools, these included:
Expertise: pre-programme stakeholder analysis had shown that the executive leaders saw digital transformation as one of their three main strategic focus areas, and that incorporating AI would be fundamental to any changes they would introduce. With this in mind, the programme opened with an in-depth session with an AI expert, presenting them with current and potential market solutions.
Inspiration: Impact then arranged two enquiry visits to non-competitive organisations for the executive leaders to explore different approaches to strategic transformation. One explored process, mergers, and acquisitions and the other the cultural aspect of digital transformation.
Experiential: Impact's unique approach to experiential learning proved invaluable. Over three days our facilitators effectively balanced sharing knowledge, guiding discussions on strategic issues, time for reflection, and enabling direct encounters. This comprehensive approach allowed the executive leaders sufficient opportunity to step back, understand, and actively participate in the essential transformation process. As a result, they were able to generate a series of strategic initiatives aimed at leading the HumanTech change within BEST S.A.
BEST S.A.’s investment in this three-day workshop has enriched this financial institution’s HumanTech approach to change by aligning new technology initiatives with a focus on culture and leadership.
The programme design shifted the focus for the board and the senior leadership team by addressing the complex issues they faced with a systemic approach. One example of this came during the conversations held with non-competitive organisations where they realised that to sustain a strategic transformation at BEST S.A., they didn’t just need a digital shift; they needed to lead a cultural shift throughout their entire organisation.
The impactful programme combination of digital expertise on AI solutions, enquiry visits to other organisations, and facilitated post-experience strategic dialogue, gave the executive leaders time, knowledge and insights to agree a new HumanTech approach to leading Best S.A. for future success.