How AQai® Certified Partner Jay Reid gave a multinational's 30-person People & Culture team a shared adaptability language, and a single-page map of where their adaptability investment would land hardest, ahead of an enterprise HR platform rollout.
All 30 People & Culture team members completed the AQ® Assessment, generating individual AQme® profiles and a department-level AQteam® report.
Directors, HR Leadership, Compensation, Generalists, and Talent Acquisition, each benchmarked against AQai's global average.
A 60-minute Executive Debrief, a 2.5-hour full-team Learning Session, and 1:1 60-minute coaching.
Seventy percent of participants asked for a 1:1 coaching follow-up after the session.
AQai® Certified Partner Jay Reid led the 30-person People & Culture team of a multinational services group's Canadian operation through a multi-tier adaptability programme, spanning an Executive Debrief, a full-team Learning Session, and 1:1 coaching, that built the shared language and cross-team insight the team needed to position itself as advocates of adaptability ahead of an enterprise HR platform rollout.
The client is the Canadian operation of a global services multinational. Operating bilingually in French and English from its Canadian headquarters, with many French-first staff, its People & Culture function supports a multi-functional services workforce across the country.
Following an earlier engagement with the client's Senior Leadership Team, the People & Culture team commissioned a programme to position themselves as “advocates of adaptability” ahead of a planned digital transformation: the rollout of a cloud-based enterprise HR platform that would change how every employee experienced HR services.
The 30-person team, spanning five sub-teams (Directors, HR Leadership, Compensation, Generalists, and Talent Acquisition) and operating bilingually with many members French-first, had no shared framework for understanding how individuals and sub-teams would respond to a change of this scale, or which adaptive capacities would carry the weight of an HR platform implementation across the wider organisation.
Enterprise HR platform rollouts succeed or fail on adaptive capacity at the human level, particularly Hope, Unlearning, and Grit, and the People & Culture team itself was the cohort most likely to shape the rollout's success across the wider organisation. Without visibility into where the team's adaptive strengths and gaps actually sat, the company risked positioning its most influential internal champions on uneven ground.
All 30 People & Culture team members completed the AQ® Assessment, generating individual AQme® profiles, a department-level AQteam® report, and five sub-team reports (Directors, HR Leadership, Compensation, Generalists, and Talent Acquisition). To respect the team's bilingual reality, communications were developed and translated by The Making Box rather than relying on automated platform invitations, and many staff completed the assessment in French.
The engagement unfolded across three phases. First, the Directors sub-team took part in a 60-minute Executive Debrief that surfaced the initial AQ® team results and analysis. The following week, the full P&C team joined a 2.5-hour interactive online AQ Learning and Debrief Session that introduced the AQ® framework, explored the team's data, and gave participants language to apply to their own profiles. To ground the learning, five randomly selected staff then took part in 1:1 60-minute coaching sessions.
The analysis went further than a typical team report. Jay built five sub-team comparisons against AQai's global average and a tenure-based segmentation contrasting 0 to 2-year and 2+-year staff. Using a “Strong Four / Be Aware Two” methodology drawn from AQai's Coach Only Report, he identified the four highest-scoring Ability and Environment sub-dimensions and the two lowest for each sub-team. He then cross-mapped these findings to five organisational priorities the client had named (HR Platform Implementation, Personal Development, Sustainable + Flexible Workforces, Talent Development + Succession, and Engagement + Equity, Inclusion & Safety), producing a matrix that linked each priority to its three most influential AQ® sub-dimensions and gave the client a single page that translated assessment data into actionable focus areas.
The Directors sub-team took part in a 60-minute Executive Debrief that surfaced the initial AQ® team results and analysis, giving the leadership tier an early read on the department's collective profile.
The following week, the full People & Culture team joined a 2.5-hour interactive online session that introduced the AQ® framework, explored the team's data, and gave every participant language to apply to their own profile.
To ground the learning, five randomly selected staff each took part in a 60-minute one-to-one coaching session, translating the shared framework into individual application.
Grit was the team's strongest Ability, while Unlearning came in as the second-lowest Ability average, with 40% in the medium band. Mental Flexibility was universally low across all five sub-teams, the only sub-dimension below AQai's global average, and became the single highest-leverage development target across multiple priorities.
At Character level, Hope stood out: 63% of the team scored in the hopeful band and none scored in the fearful band. As one of the three sub-dimensions tied to the HR Platform Implementation priority, Hope gave the rollout a psychological foundation to build on.
Jay's 'Strong Four / Be Aware Two' analysis read each sub-team's highest and lowest Ability and Environment sub-dimensions against AQai's global average, so the conditions around each group, not just individual capability, informed where support would be needed as the platform rollout landed.
The People & Culture team needed to know where a 30-person, five-sub-team function would be strong and where it would be exposed before leading an enterprise HR platform rollout. AQ® measured that across Ability, Character, and Environment, at individual, sub-team, and department level. The standout move was a dimension-priority cross-mapping: Jay linked each of the client's five named organisational priorities to its three most influential AQ® sub-dimensions, so the HR Platform Implementation priority resolved to Hope (63% hopeful, none fearful), Unlearning, and Grit. Mental Flexibility, universally low and the only sub-dimension below AQai's global average, surfaced as the single highest-leverage development target. AQ® is what turned a complex team report into a single page that told leaders exactly where their adaptability investment would land hardest.
The People & Culture team left the engagement with what they had come for: a shared adaptability language and a clear, data-backed view of where to focus to support the platform rollout. The HR Platform Implementation priority was tied specifically to three sub-dimensions: Hope (63% of the team scored hopeful, with none in the fearful band), Unlearning (the team's second-lowest Ability average, with 40% in the medium band), and Grit (the team's strongest Ability). The analysis told leaders exactly which lever to pull next.
Mental Flexibility was identified as universally low across all five sub-teams, the only sub-dimension below the AQai global average, and emerged as the single highest-leverage development target across multiple priorities, including Personal Development and Sustainable Workforces. Participant survey data captured an immediate behavioural shift: average mood rose from 4.00 to 4.57 across the session, group connectedness from 4.20 to 4.61, and participants rated the experience 4.7 out of 5 for fun. Seventy percent of participants requested 1:1 coaching follow-up.
The engagement also surfaced a product feedback item that the client's bilingual context made unavoidable: French-first staff completed the assessment in French but received their results in English. Jay flagged this for AQai® product team attention, and the engagement closed with concrete recommendations on cohort sizing, awareness-versus-development session sequencing, and language localisation that have shaped subsequent partner engagements.
The content and delivery was amazing. Honestly, one thing is for sure, we loved it. You were fantastic. We need this. Everybody needs this.
Jay helps people foster adaptability and creativity at work, aiming to do so with minimal fuss and maximal joy. He's served teams at Shopify, Google, University of Calgary, The Co-operators, Nature Conservancy of Canada and hundreds more.
View partner profile →AQ® measures the human adaptive capacity a rollout depends on, so leaders can see where a team is ready and where it is exposed before the change lands. In this engagement, Jay Reid mapped the client's HR Platform Implementation priority to three AQ® sub-dimensions, Hope (63% hopeful, none fearful), Unlearning, and Grit, giving the People & Culture team a data-backed view of exactly where to focus.
Jay Reid, an AQai® Certified Partner (Level 2) and co-founder of The Making Box, designed and led the programme. The Making Box is a Canadian creative learning organisation that pairs AQ® assessment science with game-based, experiential learning for corporate teams across North America.
Yes. For this bilingual Canadian team, communications were developed and translated by The Making Box rather than relying on automated platform invitations, and many staff completed the AQ® Assessment in French. The engagement also surfaced a product recommendation on language localisation that has shaped later work.
A.C.E. stands for Ability, Character, and Environment, the three dimensions AQai® measures for a complete view of adaptability. Ability covers learned skills like Grit, Unlearning, and Mental Flexibility; Character covers traits like Hope and Emotional Range; Environment covers the conditions around a person, such as Team Support and Work Stress. In this engagement, Grit was the team's strongest Ability while Mental Flexibility was the universal gap.
AQ® scales from individuals to whole departments. Here, all 30 People & Culture team members were assessed and their results configured into individual AQme® profiles, a department-level AQteam® report, and five separate sub-team reports (Directors, HR Leadership, Compensation, Generalists, and Talent Acquisition) benchmarked against AQai's global average.
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