Located
about 800km southwest of Beijing, amid some of the most remote country in
China, is an immense copper reserve called Zhang Tiao Shan mountain.
Ausmelt’s unique and proprietary smelter lance technology was
just what the Zhang Tiao Shan copper company wanted.
The challenge now was for a team of nine professionals to implement
its part in the project - commissioning the heart of the large smelter -
in a remote area, under time pressure, across language barriers and to a
standard of excellence that showed what Australian companies can do.
General
Manager and CEO Paul Abbott contacted Team
Results. The challenge - what could be done with the project team to
guarantee a level of performance in China that matched what Ausmelt itself
had done with its smelter lance technology?
After
talking at some length with everyone involved in the project, Paul Abbott
and Team Results Director John Kolm agreed on the parameters for a 2½ day
tailored simulation, which was run at a country retreat near Trentham in
February.
Having
had prior input into what each individual wanted to gain from the
simulation, the Zhang Tiao Shan team arrived in
Trentham with very little idea of the project they would be asked to
manage - not unlike the real team challenge they faced deep inside North
China. They quickly
discovered that they were managing a hugely enjoyable but very demanding
project, weaving together all the themes of remoteness, time pressure,
communication barriers and need for excellence that they would face in
China about four weeks later.
“In
a nutshell, cohesion was vital to our success”, says CEO Paul Abbott.
“The team needed to understand their strengths and weaknesses and to
develop strategies to use when they were over there.”
After
2½ days of alternately devising and then reality-testing team strategies
for handling the challenge ahead, the “ZTS Team” not only succeeded
with their simulated challenge but emerged very confident that they now
had strategies and understandings that :
·
Worked
·
Were born of reality and not the
whiteboard
·
Would deliver results for Ausmelt
and personal wins for every individual.
“We
now have a team in China that is relying on each other”, adds Paul. “They are managing very well in a difficult environment,
and what they learnt over the couple of days certainly made a significant
contribution. It was money well spent.”
