ProOS In The Field
Real challenges, across industries and geographies. Some details are anonymized at our clients' request.
The Politics of AI Project Prioritization
One of the worl'd’s largest technology groups.
The challenge: Every quarter, the central AI team had to choose which projects to fund. Around eighty proposals arrived from across the business, each with an executive champion. The process consumed a full month and was one of the most politically charged activities on the calendar. It was slow because it was political, and political because it was opaque.
What we did: Instead of asking which projects to greenlight, the team asked a sharper question first: what criteria should decide which projects move forward? They defined four weighted criteria, anchored the ratings to objective definitions, and narrowed eighty proposals to a top ten. Then each executive reviewed a focused set, and their reasoning was captured directly.
The result: A cycle that had taken four weeks or longer was done in half the time. More important, the politics fell away. Everyone could see why one project rose above another. A quarterly flashpoint became a routine, well-understood process.
Partner or Frenemy?
A US-based cybersecurity company
The challenge: A gap in the company's product had been filled by another vendor, and no one was sure what the relationship should become: partner, future competitor, or acquisition target. The question sat unresolved for nearly six months, tangled across product, sales, and partnerships.
What we did: The head of strategy brought the groups together in ProOS around one question: how should we proceed with the partner? Four options were on the table: status quo, partner, build, or acquire. The team worked it in a single session, held it open for two colleagues in another time zone, and reconvened days later.
The result: The question that had stalled for six months reached a clear direction in under a week, and landed on a path most participants had not initially favored. The process did not eliminate disagreement. It converted disagreement into direction.
A university's business affairs division
Overcoming Resistence
The challenge: A communications leader had guided her team through naming a new campus building, and the board approved the recommendation. The hard part was still ahead: winning over change-resistant staff.
What we did: Instead of building a new pitch, she walked the team through the Challenge Plan, the questions they had worked, the alternatives they had weighed, and the reasoning behind the choice.
The result: They were on board, quickly. In her words, the fact that a group that "hates everything" got behind it just by seeing the reasoning was "amazing." When people can follow the reasoning, commitment follows.
More From The Field
A SaaS company, go-to-market. As the company scaled, its sales-to-delivery handoff was fraying, with customers repeating themselves to each new team. Rather than impose a fix, the leaders of both teams redesigned it together. The solution held because it was theirs.
A leadership team running on EOS, planning. ProOS layered onto their existing cadence. As they put it, it "drew more out of their leadership team than any planning session they'd run before."
An operations team, production workflow. Problems that had slowed production for months finally surfaced, including several created by the team's own leaders. Everyone left heard, and specific changes went out with success metrics attached.