After a successful first-year shift to agile pods for the Brand Strategy teams, leaders asked CMG Consulting to deepen leadership capabilities and agile mindset, to scale the positive results they were seeing.
Key gaps we heard:
- Inconsistent psychological safety that limited healthy debate and shared ownership
- Leaders unsure how to coach, delegate and prioritize amid constant change
- Need for clearer, data-driven practices to prove value to internal partners
Outcomes
In just 12 months the joint team translated those gaps into measurable gains:
- Leadership confidence soared 4.5× – “very confident” self-ratings climbed from 10 % to 45.5 % between Aug 2024 and Jun 2025, with 91 % of leaders now moderately or very confident in their capabilities
- Anxiety evaporated: “very anxious” responses disappeared across all capability areas, while “not at all” anxious answers topped 45 % by June 2025
- Sharper performance focus: leaders reported decreased anxiety about goal-setting; and teams demonstrated a more frequent focus on outcomes sharing impactful data
- Day-to-day leadership ease: a 10 % uptick in leaders who feel completely comfortable guiding their teams
The Story
What we did together
- Leadership Coaching Program – Monthly 1-to-1 coaching, observational coaching in key meetings, and bespoke group workshops focused on Prioritization, Delegation, and Agile Leadership.
- Pod Maturity Journey Assessment – A monthly Pod level review of capabilities, with clear expectations; Coaches were focused on helping teams improve in the areas of Collaboration, Transparency & Visibility, Continuous Improvement, Psychological Safety, Customer Centricity, Strategic Prioritization & Alignment, and Data Driven Decision Making. These assessments allowed the coaching and enablement team to develop specific improvement opportunities by pod.
- Real-time Feedback Loops – Pulse surveys and group retrospecitives along the transformation journey kept the program adaptive, allowing us to shift focus to current systemic opportunities.
Why it matters
By pairing data leadership diagnostics with coaching that feels human and practical, this academic health system has unlocked the agile leadership, decision-making, delegation and cross-pod trust needed to keep refining their operating system - beginning to embed coaching capabilities.
ThriveNumber in Action
- Organizational Readiness – Quarterly planning linked strategic brand priorities to pod-level execution, making progress transparent across marketing and communications.
- Culture of Learning & Change – Practice circles and monthly share-outs created space for leaders to experiment, learn from peers, and embed continuous improvement.
- Agile Ways of Working – Pod coaching reinforced cross-functional teaming, data-driven prioritization, and the habit of rapid experimentation.
- Member Engagement – Omni-channel training equipped brand and communications teams to design with audience needs in mind, moving away from one-channel tactics.
Do you see opportunities for your ways of working and leadership capabilities to improve? Let’s talk about building the leadership muscle that makes purposeful change stick.
