Team Decision-Making
Better team decisions take time. PolyOne had one day.
PolyOne set out to sharpen how its managers decide together, in the single day it had. What they took away wasn't faster decisions. It was a different idea of collaboration: that it doesn't have to mean consensus, and that disagreement, handled well, makes a decision stronger.
- 1day, start to finish
- 1 coachper team, a senior exec
- Customeach team ran PolyOne's own strategy
A compressed program, delivered as part of PolyOne's leadership conference.
The short version
- PolyOne, a specialty-polymer innovator, had a single day at its leadership conference to strengthen how its management team decides together.
- Capsim compressed a team-based simulation to fit, setting up each team as a "niche differentiator" to mirror PolyOne's own strategy, with a senior-executive coach observing every team.
- Under real time pressure, teams hit a key realization: collaboration doesn't have to equal consensus, and disagreement, handled well, can strengthen a decision instead of stalling it.
- Senior leaders called it the best leadership conference they'd attended, crediting the observer feedback for connecting them to how their people actually think.
PolyOne makes specialty polymer materials for innovators, in industries from automotive to cosmetics. Its own tagline is a question: "what if you could redesign…?" When it came time to sharpen its management team, PolyOne asked that question of the training itself, because it had a real constraint to design around.
One day, and no more
The company wanted an immersive, team-based business experience for its managers, but it had exactly one day for it, as part of a leadership conference. That is not much time to move something as slow-forming as team decision-making. So PolyOne asked Capsim for a program that minimized the timeframe and maximized the impact.
The time pressure wasn't a limitation to design around. It was the lesson.
Built for the day
Most simulations start every team from the same parameters and let them pick a strategy. For PolyOne's compressed day, Capsim did something different: it set up each team as a "niche differentiator," mirroring PolyOne's own strategic posture, so the decisions felt like the company's real ones from the first round. Each team also got a senior executive as a coach, watching how the team behaved and decided. After each round, Capsim's Tim Treger debriefed the financial results while the PolyOne coaches fed back on how the team worked, so participants learned the business and the teamwork at once, with no time wasted.
Collaboration, not consensus
The compression did something unexpected. Forced to decide quickly, teams ran straight into their own disagreements, and discovered those weren't the problem.
There was a major "aha" moment when individuals realized collaboration doesn't have to equal consensus. Very different points of view, even disagreements, could be resolved in ways that added to, rather than detracted from, the decision-making.Tim Treger, Capsim
The financial results fueled the competition; the coaches' feedback did the deeper work, giving each leader a read on how they showed up under pressure. PolyOne's CEO, who makes team-building a management priority, watched the day through.
Several senior vice presidents said it was the best leadership conference they attended. The simulation going off flawlessly mattered, but the feedback observers provided was the critical piece, it improved our connectedness to the thinking of our senior leaders and the next level down.Cassandra Birchbauer, Director of Human Resources, PolyOne
Change how your teams decide, in the time you have.
Book a short walkthrough and we'll show you how a Capsim program fits your calendar, even if all you have is a day.