The Experience
To succeed, this deeply complex, iconic project required stellar collaboration from major companies as well as a constellation of smaller specialists.
The challenge was never capability, it was cohesion. In a project environment of this scale and complexity, the concern was that specialists would gravitate towards their own deliverables, disciplines and ways of working. Without a deliberate effort to create shared understanding, siloed working, miscommunication and friction between functions loomed.
This team had every expertise, specialism and technical angle covered, but they needed insight on how they could all work together effectively, at speed.
The Initiative
PROPHET was introduced to the project team, to deliver targeted business insight into how people are wired to work, and what that means for collaboration, leadership and commercial risk. PROPHET also provided tangible actions and a neutral, shared language to navigate any issues.
The Process
- 44 people were profiled ahead of a two-hour team kick-off session. This session gave the team a shared understanding, as well as providing insight to the different organisations involved and on the key relationships that needed to work together.
- PROPHET was rolled out across all project team members, cross-project leads and stakeholders. Two-hour workshops were delivered to each team, working through collective team insight and the practical implications for how they needed to operate together.
- Phase three brought the leaders of each project together to leverage the PROPHET insight directly, including a pivotal relationship session that helped to resolve a challenging dynamic and refocus the team on the final stretch of the project.
- To ensure the investment lasted, an HR Business Partner for one of the major companies trained to become an accredited PROPHET practitioner, embedding the capability in-house and keeping the data live across the framework.
Key insight
The data instantly clarified just how different the project managers were. A shared language to discuss those differences built trust and understanding.
When the teams saw their profiles side by side, they could see they were all working in fundamentally different ways.
One project had a markedly more team-oriented, collaboration-first culture compared to the other three, which leaned toward a more task-focused approach. These weren’t right or wrong but without making them visible, they were a source of friction that nobody could quite articulate previously.
Understanding team archetypes gave people a shared, objective language for difference. It replaced frustration with curiosity and built the kind of trust that made everything else possible.
Taking Action
Using data-driven insight proactively prevented costly disagreements, delays and miscommunication.
With insight in hand, teams made a series of practical shifts in how they worked together. One action stood out above the rest: using PROPHET profiles to structure and prepare for key relationship conversations before friction had a chance to develop. Rather than waiting for misalignment to surface, which in a project of this complexity could mean costly delays or quality compromises, leaders began using their PROPHET insight proactively.
One pivotal relationship session was a powerful example: by understanding each other’s profiles in advance, two leaders with very different working styles were able to surface the dynamics in their relationship consciously, agree how to navigate them and lead the project through its final phase with greater alignment and mutual respect.
PROPHET TIP: Using insight to get ahead of relationship risk rather than react to it, saves time and money.
The Transformation
This large and complex team gained a shared, objective understanding of how its people were wired, across organisations, disciplines and project phases.
People gained the permission to be different and the tools to make those differences work for the project rather than against it.
The two-hour PROPHET sessions consistently built relationships, created openness and established the trust that carried through the entire project.
The Impact
- 164 people profiled across a major multi-organisation project
- PROPHET deployed at the very beginning of a major project for the first time - establishing a new benchmark
- Stronger alignment between client and leadership, reducing relationship-driven project risk
- Meaningful shift in cross-disciplinary collaboration, particularly between teams with very different working cultures
- In-house PROPHET capability established within the HR function, sustaining the insight across the full lifecycle of the framework
- A model for high-value project environments that has since been replicated across multiple similar projects
