A new plant was constructed with the vision to be the company's first BBBEE initiative; placing young Africans at the helm of the management team. When Kaya got involved, the plant was operational for two years, producing currently 35% of its total capacity.

However, this initiative came with several obstacles. As the management team were quite young, some managers lacked general experience in the world of work – employees placed in management positions straight out of school, and those with work experience lacking industry knowledge. Frustrations around the lack of managerial leadership competencies, problem solving skills, people management skills, plan-fullness (including pro-active thinking) and culture created disharmony within this team.

A Team Acceleration Project was proposed. The initial phase of the Team Acceleration Project entailed discovery. The purpose of the discovery phase was to inform the later design of initiatives by delivering quantitative and qualitative information related to team effectiveness, interface effectiveness, team composition, team member role dynamics and individual capability. To this end Kaya conducted a Team Effectiveness Survey (TES), individual psychometric assessments, and semi-structured interviews with the management team with the objective of determining a baseline for current team functioning and to lay the foundation for the identification of key themes and commensurate recommendations.

The team profile, as assessed by the TES, was typical of a team in the transition phase between storming and norming as represented in the team life cycle. A number of the characteristics of the team correlated strongly with teams in a similar phase of maturity. Although only five areas namely collaboration, co-ordination, team structure, clarity of purpose and supportive organisational context assessed in the effective range, the remaining scores did not represent any major concerns given there were no signs of severe team dysfunctionality. Areas requiring development between various internal sub teams and in some cases, between individuals, was to be expected in that phase of team development. These were addressed through action plans and programmes. Due to the broad scope of areas requiring improvement, the team underwent priority setting exercise in order to determine the key development areas on which to focus.

After attending various lunch-time power workshops on identified topics as well as individual coaching, the management team is now a model for the rest of the organisation.