Case Study · Changing Social · Microsoft-partner consultancy · One way to manage for a scaling change business
Changing Social built one shared way to manage across the business as it grew, from the Managing Director to its newest managers.
Changing Social built one shared way to manage across the business as it grew, from the Managing Director to its newest managers.Managers developed in the first cohort
0
from the Managing Director to an aspiring manager, across operations, delivery, sales, marketing, product, consulting and Power Platform
One programme · every level of management
Expanded
after the first programme, Changing Social commissioned a full two-cohort programme for senior leaders and line managers
9.3/10
facilitation rating from the cohort's workshop feedback
Every level
the Managing Director to an aspiring manager, defining together what great management looks like at Changing Social
Executive Summary
- Sector
- Microsoft-partner digital consultancy (M365, Power Platform, AI adoption)
- Buyer
- People & Talent leadership
The Brief
Bring Changing Social's managers together, from the Managing Director to first-time managers, to define what great management looks like at Changing Social in their own words, rather than have a standard handed to them team by team. 10X's role was to facilitate that, aim it with a diagnostic at the behaviours that matter most as the company scales, the way managers handle performance, delegate and coach, and document what the room worked out into playbooks the managers keep.
The Outcome
Sixteen managers, from the senior team to an aspiring manager and across every function, built the standard for how Changing Social manages, together, and 10X documented it into playbooks they own. The clearest signal is that the partnership widened: after the first programme, Changing Social commissioned a full two-cohort Performance Programme, one for senior leaders and one for line managers, for 2026 and 2027. And in the work itself, managers changed how they delegate, handle performance and coach, in their own words and in what they did differently the following week.
From the leadership
We were growing quickly, and like a lot of fast-growing businesses our management was being worked out team by team as we went. We wanted to get ahead of it and agree together what good management looks like here, from the senior team to our newest managers, rather than have it handed to us.
Because the way we manage came from us, it stuck, and it is written down in our own words. It worked well enough that we have built it into how we run the business, with a full programme now for our senior leaders and our line managers.”
Georgie Kemp
Director of Operations, Changing Social
01 / The trigger
A change company chose to manage its own growth the way it asks its clients to: deliberately, and ahead of it.
Changing Social spends its days helping other organisations adopt change well, the move to Microsoft 365, to the Power Platform, to Copilot and AI, always with a people-first approach rather than a purely technical one. Founded in 2016, the business had grown fast on the back of that reputation, and with the growth a whole management layer had formed: directors and heads of function, operations and delivery managers, technical experts and team leaders stepping up for the first time. Changing Social chose to treat its own management the way it asks its clients to treat change. Rather than let each team invent its own version of managing as the company scaled, the team decided to define how Changing Social manages, together, deliberately, and ahead of the growth.
The shape of the room was the interesting part. Changing Social did not want a programme for the senior team in one place and a separate course for new managers somewhere else. They wanted the Managing Director, the Commercial Director, a Head of Marketing, a Principal Consultant and a first-time manager in the same room, working out together what great management looks like at Changing Social rather than having a version of it handed to each of them. The Chairman came to the launch.
It is a deliberately harder thing to do well than a single-level cohort, and it was the point. In a consultancy that scales by putting mixed teams around a client's problem, the team wanted its managers to learn the same way: across functions and across levels, learning as much from each other as from the front of the room. As one manager put it in an early session, the business is authentic and genuine, and the work was about communicating that intent consistently as it grew.
So the brief to 10X was not to import a management model and train people in it. It was to facilitate the cohort defining their own, aimed by a diagnostic at the behaviours that decide whether a scaling business stays well managed, performance, delegation and coaching, and to capture what they agreed into playbooks the business keeps. The job was to draw out the answers already in the room, across every level at once, so management at Changing Social means one thing wherever you sit.
02 / Built for how they manage
The diagnostic aimed the programme at the few behaviours that decide whether a scaling business stays well managed.
10X did not arrive with a fixed course to install. We started with a diagnostic, the Manager Strength Index, paired with Team Voice interviews that ask Changing Social's own people what is really happening on the ground. Together they pointed development at three behaviours where this cohort had the most to gain, rather than a generic syllabus, so the programme spent its time where it would move the needle.
What the diagnostic pointed at
Three behaviours that quietly decide how a scaling business is run.
01
Managing performance and behaviour
The conversations managers tend to leave too long. Making feedback normal rather than a formal event, and setting the standard clearly instead of walking past it.
02
Delegation and accountability
Handing over real ownership when it feels faster to do it yourself, held with real deadlines rather than 'as soon as possible'. The reframe that stuck in the room: delegation is an investment, not an inconvenience.
03
Coaching and developing talent
Growing the people on your team instead of doing the work for them, asking a better question before jumping to the answer, so the same problem stops coming back to your desk.
The development was built on the behaviours the diagnostic surfaced as mattering most for this cohort, not a fixed curriculum. The Manager Strength Index sat alongside Team Voice interviews to ground the work in what was actually happening at Changing Social.
The rhythm
Learn it, do it in the real job, then come back and troubleshoot it.
Each focus area ran the same way. A skill workshop set the approach and the practical tools. Then managers took it back to their own team and used it on a real situation in the weeks that followed. Then the cohort came back together for a troubleshoot session to work through what actually happened, with the room solving each other's live problems rather than the Performance Partner handing down answers.
Development was the work itself, not a thing that happened next to it. By the closing session the managers were not discussing theory, they were comparing how they had changed a real conversation, a real delegation, a real piece of coaching, the week before.
Three focus areas, three turns of the loop, managing performance, then delegation and accountability, then coaching and developing talent.
What we captured
The answers the room worked out, written down as Changing Social's own playbooks.
The troubleshoot sessions were not just about solving the problem in front of someone. They were about capturing how Changing Social's managers had decided to handle it. For each focus area, the Performance Partner facilitated the cohort agreeing what good looks like here, then documented it into a playbook in their own words.
That is the difference. The standard is not ours and it does not leave when we do. It belongs to Changing Social, written by the people who have to live by it, and it is what the next layer of managers will be brought into.
How we measured
We built the diagnostic to develop managers, not to grade them.
The Manager Strength Index is not a verdict managers brace for. Each manager gets feedback against the behaviours that make up good management and a personal picture of what to work on next, so the measurement is a map they use to get better rather than a score that ranks them against each other.
That is the principle in practice: we measure to drive development. It pointed the programme at the right behaviours for this cohort, and it gives Changing Social a way to see movement over time as the partnership grows.
03 / Every level, one room
Every level in the same room, working out together what great management looks like at Changing Social.
This was never a programme for the senior team alone, nor a separate course for new managers. Sixteen managers, from the Managing Director to a first-time manager and across every function, came together to define what great management looks like at Changing Social, then to hold each other to it. The rooms were deliberately mixed, so a Sales Manager worked a real problem next to a Principal Consultant and an Operations Director rather than only ever talking to their own team.
Who was in the room
Directors and execs
the Managing Director, the Commercial Director, the Operations Director, a PMO Director and the Head of Strategy & Change
Middle managers
Heads of Marketing and DCaaS, plus Sales, Training, Operations and Product managers and a Senior PM
Team leaders
a Principal Adoption & Change Consultant and the AI & Power Platform Lead
Stepping up
an Operations Manager moving into management
16 managers, four levels, one room
Why the mix mattered
The Managing Director in the same room as the first-time managers, on purpose.
Putting a director and a brand-new manager in the same cohort is harder to run than a single level, and it was the point. In the sessions a manager worked a live problem next to the person who reported to them, a director talked openly about a delegation they had got wrong, and managers took each other's methods away, one adopting a peer's simple weekly habit for surfacing what the whole team was working on. The principle in plain sight: managers learn fastest from each other, and the work was about unlocking the experience already inside the business rather than importing answers from outside it.
The language they built together
By the end, the same handful of lines ran through every room.
The clearest sign that management now means one thing at Changing Social is how the managers talk about it. Some of these lines came from the work, some the cohort coined themselves and the rest of the room took up. Across levels and functions, they became the shared shorthand for how to manage here.
Feedback is normal, not formal.
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.
Structure is not micromanagement.
Separate fairness from forgiveness.
Be curious, not judgmental.
Small fires are easier to put out.
04 / What changed
The clearest signal: Changing Social came back, and went wider.
The strongest evidence at Changing Social is not a score, it is a decision. After the first programme, Changing Social commissioned a full two-cohort Performance Programme for 2026 and 2027: one cohort built for senior leaders and one built for line managers, each aimed at its own set of behaviours. A pilot became a deliberate plan to develop the whole management layer.
Underneath that, managers changed how they manage. In the troubleshoot sessions they did not report what they had learned, they reported what they had done differently the week before, on the three behaviours the diagnostic had pointed at.
What changed in the work
A team built AI-assisted self-coaching into the week: reps run their own call recordings against a sales framework to get instant feedback, so they sharpen themselves between sessions instead of waiting for the manager.
A senior leader stopped delegating with 'as soon as possible'. After a direct report asked when something was actually due, he started attaching a real date and a checkpoint to everything he handed over.
A manager deliberately stepped back from a live client engagement, dropping out of the daily sync calls and trusting the team to run it, having matched the work to where each person wanted to grow.
Instead of quietly fixing a piece of work that came back wrong, a manager screen-recorded herself redoing it and talked through why, then sent it back as coaching, so it would not simply land on her desk again next time.
A sales manager set up a weekly 'pitch and practice' session, a safe space for the team to rehearse and give each other feedback, so the standard got set by the group rather than only by the manager.
A team leader moved probation and development reviews to written monthly and stretch goals the person owns, so progress is visible and the report drives it, rather than the manager chasing it.
The common thread, in their own words, was a shift from telling to asking: a beat of silence and a better question instead of jumping in with the answer.
The cohort rated the Performance Partner's facilitation 9.3 out of 10, with the workshop content close behind at 8.7. For a genuinely mixed room, from the senior team to first-time managers, it landed for all of them.
In their own words, what changed in how they manage
Hear it from the managers in the room.
“The sessions have been very engaging. The point around micromanagement and doing it out of fear was not something I'd considered before. I've already started raising team successes in our daily stand-ups as a direct result.”
“Being someone who loves a framework, the delegation model of What, Why, Who, How, When was exactly what I needed. I can see it as the best way to avoid micromanaging through clear delegation. Even if it means handing over things I love to do, I now recognise that watching someone else grow into those tasks is far more rewarding.”
“The key takeaway for me was direct engagement and applying principles immediately within the team rather than overthinking them. I also realised I need to celebrate more wins publicly so the broader group sees and experiences success, not just me telling individuals privately. I've already started acting on that.”
“This has been a priority area of development for me, so having the opportunity to share ideas with and learn from colleagues has been really impactful. The facilitation provided a strong balance of enabling conversation amongst colleagues while building on points with real expertise.”
05 / Start here
If you are scaling a technology business and want your managers to define one shared way to manage, in their own words, before growth sets the standard for you, or you are turning your technical and expert people into managers and want development aimed at the behaviours that actually matter, that is the work we do.
Every partnership between 10X and a client is entirely bespoke and unique. Book a no-obligation call with one of our Development Experts to scope how we could support you and your situation.