Case Study: Saab

Saab AU Maritime had a healthy problem on their hands: They had grown so rapidly that they had outpaced their systems, processes, and organizational structure.

As a result, they were looking for support to manage the people and cultural side of their change as they moved quickly. Specifically, they were looking to:

• Build resilience and adaptability among rapid change
• Identify any organizational hazards coming with the changes
• Support accountability in a new organizational structure
• Create a unified culture between long-tenured employees and newer hires

Why they chose to work with SIY Global

To help them meet their goals, Saab chose SIY Global as their partner based on the following criteria:

• Fit for a technical workforce: SIY Global's evidence-based, neuroscience-backed approach was suited to an engineering-heavy team, not a generic soft-skills program
• A way to prove impact: prior development efforts had been criticized for not translating into visible changes on the job; SIY's pre/post assessment model tied training directly to specific, measurable behaviors
• Built for how the business actually works: the pilot cohort was intentionally cross-functional and cross-disciplinary (engineering, project management, safety roles), rather than limited to one department or seniority level
• Voluntary participation: employees opted in rather than being assigned, supporting genuine buy-in from the start
  
  

Designing the solution

Saab's development plan focused on adaptability, cross-functional collaboration, and empowerment. The team developed a blended learning journey that included SIY Global courses on:

• Resilience
• Team Building
• Conflict Resolution 
• And foundational emotional intelligence, through Search Inside Yourself.
  
  

The program design connected emotional intelligence development to enterprise thinking, customer excellence, and ways of working. It set out to give a cross-functional group shared language for working together and navigating change.

The results

The assessment included reports of personal capabilities and observations of colleagues. The table below shows the change in the number of participants rated effectively before vs. after the program.

The role of perception

Given the importance of dealing with change, one of the most critical improvements was helping the team view stressful situations as challenges or opportunities rather than threats. The 18% improvement was a big win for the team

This finding is relevant to a central focus of SIY Global change management programming: helping leaders examine how they interpret difficult situations and expand the responses available to them.

In participants’ words

Asked what was most valuable about the live sessions, one Saab participant highlighted a concrete approach to conversations:

“Ensure I let others finish, pause and reflect before responding, using open ended questions and the word "we".

Another valued the opportunity to rehearse application:

“The visualisation to apply techniques learned to different scenarios, in addition to the content and techniques/tools provided.”