Case Study
The presentation included a well-balanced combination of workplace and lifestyle attributes of each generation – making it accessible to business executives and spouses alike.
Oldcastle
About the client
Oldcastle, Inc., is the North American arm of CRH, plc, one of the world’s leading building products and materials companies based in Dublin, Ireland. Oldcastle operations include more than 35,000 employees working in more than 1900 locations in 50 states and 4 Canadian provinces. The company has the largest manufacturing footprint, the greatest product breadth, and is not in a category where they do not lead. source: www.oldcastle.com
Business need
After restructuring the company, Oldcastle leaders sought a creative way build relationships among the new leadership team. They brought the leaders together, including their spouses, to find common ground before working toward new goals in the reorganized business. The leadership team needed an approach that was fun yet professional, sophisticated yet simple. Recalling the impact he’d recognized from a Generational Insight presentation nearly a decade ago, CEO Mark Towe invited Cam Marston to kick off the meeting with a discussion of generational differences.
Insight and impact
In preparation for the small group gathering, Cam and Oldcastle determined that every individual attending the retreat was also a parent. This fact provided the common denominator necessary to engage a broad audience; Cam provided the insight to spark discussion. During a 90-minute session at the very start of the meeting, Cam introduced the leaders and their spouses to the dynamics of generational character traits. The presentation included a well-balanced combination of workplace and lifestyle attributes of each generation – leadership, delayed adulthood, sacrifice, generosity – making it accessible to business executives and spouses alike.
To further underscore the personal stories and connectivity of the information, each attendee was asked to use color-coded stickers to identify the generations of their children as well as the generation they personally connected with. This visual representation of the audience and the common ground between them, combined with the factual and anecdotal explanations provided by Cam, achieve the leadership team’s goal of creating a shared experience and vocabulary that the attendees built on throughout the day and are able to continue in their new roles.
