The InsPiring Integrators Programme

Delivering Integrator training despite lockdown

For a company with 83,400 employees in 40 countries with a bold and innovative approach to flexible working, BAE Systems needed to find a smart training solution that was innovative and inclusive to enable them to continue to develop their integration teams remotely during the Covid -19 lockdown.

With the challenges of lockdown in 2020, BAE Systems were more than happy to accept Treehouse’s offer to run a traditional offline integrators programme online instead.  

The Treehouse Learning Platform

Treehouse are experts at identifying fresh approaches and finding creative solutions to improve organisations’ effectiveness, innovation and collaboration.

When the Covid pandemic forced them to find an alternative to offering their development programmes and executive coaching face-to-face, they invested in technology and built the new Treehouse Learning Platform.

Despite the necessity to quickly find a solution to the challenge of being unable to offer on-premise training, Treehouse were committed to building a platform that would offer the same high quality, collaborative training experience online.

The BAE Inspiring Integrators Programme

BAE had identified integration as a core capability within their organisation and integrators as key to BAE’s future success. The BAE Inspiring Integrators Programme was designed by Treehouse to help anyone in a role that relied on effective coordination and collaboration across multiple disciplines including Systems Engineers, Project Managers, Solutions Architects and Lead Engineers.

A pre-pilot survey conducted by Treehouse identified several key areas that should be addressed by the Integrators Training Programme.

These included:

• improving communication with stakeholders, customers, partners and suppliers

• how to remain customer focused

• keeping stakeholders happy and reduce rework

• the removal of obstacles, obtaining cooperation and lead change

• coordinating multi-functional teams to deliver projects

• bringing disparate elements of a solution or service together to achieve an effective end result.

Treehouse developed a programme focussed on the Who, What, Why and How of Integration:

Stakeholder mapping (the Who)

This module focussed on identifying integrators’ key customers, using a stakeholder map to plot key relationships.

Circles of Influence (the What)

The purpose of this module was to distil complex situations to identify what individuals can influence, to be able to focus time and effort on the right things.

Customer Motivations (the Why)

The focus of this module was to understand customer motivations in order to influence them more effectively.

Influencing Skills (the How)

The final module focusses on HOW to influence the customer through reciprocity and finding win-wins.

A Blended Learning Programme

Treehouse put together a blended learning programme for BAE to suit every learning style. It involved a combination of virtual learning on the Treehouse Learning Platform (using film, animation, e-learning, quizzes and other activities) to build knowledge, Virtual Classrooms to practise and build skills and Assignments marked by a tutor to consolidate learning.

Additionally, delegates participated in two Action Learning Sets to coach and support one another to deal with issues and challenges faced when they applied their learning.

Results

• 78% of delegates rated the Treehouse Learning Platform as a very useful tool.

• Delegates praised the excellent content and the ease of use of the system.

• 70% of delegates found the virtual classrooms useful and commented specifically on the collaborative nature of the course and the benefits of sharing issues and ideas.

• 78% of delegates found the Action Learning Sets useful with one delegate commenting that the honest discussions were a positive change from the work environment.

• Meeting and working with new people, learning interactively and the bitesize nature of the course were all seen as positives.

• 87% of respondents would recommend and 33% would strongly recommend the course to colleagues.

Testimonials:

“We tend to concentrate on technical skills in engineering, but integration is more about the soft skills, and that’s not something we get taught as engineers. It focusses leadership type skills on to the ever day technical task of integration, which makes it much more accessible to people like me!”

Feedback from BAE:

• Communication between Integrators and stakeholders has improved now that they make time to understand the pressures that stakeholders are facing.

• Integrators have gained confidence to take the initiative and to be more assertive when they spot improvements going forwards.

• Integrators' problem-solving skills are stronger now that they have reflected on the importance of analysing the full problem space before developing a solution.