Brand Connect is Asia’s leading independent brand management and distribution company for premium drinks brands in Asian markets.

Founded in 2013, the company has moved to the second phase of the business cycle that focuses on strong growth: Brand Connect aims to become the number one choice for premium drinks brands eager to cover all key Asian markets with only one marketing & distribution partner. In November 2018, Brand Connect invited all staff from all offices and across all business functions to a regional offsite in Phuket to translate its growth mission into concrete strategic objectives and action plans for each office.

Well aware that people drive corporate growth, one of Brand Connect’s top executives approached Thinkergy to profile all of its employees and analyze its current mix of people with TIPS.

How did we approach this TIPS Profiling Project with Brand Connect?

• First, we profiled all employees across the region individually to unveil their TIPS profile and result.
• Then, we created TIPS Team Profiling Maps for the entire group, for all 7 regional offices, and for all business functions (board, marketing, sales, supply chain, finance).
• Next, Thinkergy analyzed each map to check if the existing people mix is right to support the desired growth strategy. We summed up our findings and gave recommendations for talent realignments.
• Finally, we briefed our client on how to best present the findings during their regional offsite in Phuket.

What were outcomes of this TIPS powered-strategy offsite? Here are three out of many other results:

1. Talent Gap Analysis: In our analysis of the overall people mix, we found that unsurprisingly for a young company, Brand Connect has lots of Ideas-people in its ranks. Moreover, as the company had recently taken on a strategic investor to co-fund its growth strategy, the company now also had a noticeable number of Systems-oriented people. Surprisingly, however, we found that Brand Connect is rather “light” on People-oriented colleagues, who are crucial to deliver on a strong growth strategy. Why? “People”-people are the best at building relationships with clients and at closing sales. So, Thinkergy recommended to strategically recruit a few more Partners (or alternatively Popular Promoters or Organizers).
2. Talent Alignment: We also found that a few employees were better moved to a neighboring business function to allow them to better play out their natural talents. Following our advice, Brand Connect’s executives offered one sales staff to be transferred to marketing, and intend to move a logistics manager to the sales team. These offers showed immediate resonance: The new marketing staff (an Imaginative Promoter) became one of the key idea contributors during the offsite, while the logistics-soon-to-become-sales manager (a Partner) confided to a senior executive in the evening that she had contemplated leaving because she didn’t enjoy logistics, but now will stay as she’s happy with her new role in sales.
3. Talent Awareness: Not only did all delegates become aware of the TIPS profiles and preferred cognitive styles of themselves and their colleagues, but they also realized the benefits of making everyone play on their strengths while compensating for each other’s weaknesses as a team. Moreover, one exercise also invited them to contemplate how to better relate to colleagues of different TIPS bases (Theories, Ideas, People, Systems) in order to build better rapport and cultivate empathy for the preferred ways of others.  

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