Case study: 'Coffee is a Team Sport': How Belbin provided an understanding of natural talents to enable transformation

"I would like to share our story. It has been a wonderful journey, and it continues to be a great learning opportunity for me and my team."

Alejandro Cadena, Co-founder and CEO, Caravela Coffee

The beginnings of change

In 2021, at Caravela’s Coffee Leadership summit, CEO Alejandro Cadena set the 16 members of the Caravela Leadership Team a task. To devise the strategies, measures and goals that would take the company forward, to achieve the objectives it needed to in order to continue to grow and realise its aims for making coffee a better industry.

The Leadership team were given the autonomy and responsibility for running with the task, not the Co-Founders or CEO. Over the following six months they were expected to make progress and report back. It was acknowledged that as a group of 16 that would have challenges, but the hope was that they would make use of committees to move forward with their task so they could report back on their collective progress.

Six months passed. No progress had been made. A year passed. Still no progress.

Analysing team dynamics was the key

All members of the Leadership Team completed Belbin Self-Perception Inventories (SPIs) with Observer Assessments. This generated their Belbin Individual reports which were then combined to create their Belbin Team report.

Prior to the next scheduled Leadership Team meeting all members were provided with their feedback. The hope was that they would understand the roles they played and would come to the next leadership summit and act more in a team way. 

There were mixed reactions to the feedback. Some people were surprised by the results, some were ‘really mad’ about the results, declaring “That’s not me!”.

The resulting Team report and Belbin Team Role Circle spoke for itself. It very clearly and visually illustrated the real reason behind the lack of progress.

Organisational evolution and management transformation

This exercise and experience proved to be a landmark moment for Caravela Coffee. 

Given the realisation of the absence of key Team Roles to ensure action, they looked to the Leadership Team to identify those who had some Implementer strengths and who would ‘step up’ to fill the role. Some were found but progress on the original strategy task still did not happen. And the same reasons were given.

Time for real change.    

The business went on to be transformed from the bottom up. One of the aspects that makes Caravela Coffee unique is that most of their employees are from the communities that grow the coffee. They are the sons and daughters of the coffee farmers. The company  decided to really empower their people, who were all committed to their purpose, to move towards working as a team rather than having managers.     

All but six of the original Leadership Team left as this shift in organisational structure was not for them. Those that remained were part of action which now began from the bottom up, not the top down.

Building sustainable change

PSA Consultores have continued to support the work and change at Caravela Coffee. During the most recent piece of work, the focus was on balancing the team leading the organisational transformation. This effort prioritised coordination and communication as key pillars to ensure psychological safety and team cohesion in their strategic initiatives.

Workshops using Belbin exercises with their teams are a core element of ongoing team development. It has been noted how they are now working more as a team, using different tools and different thinking to ‘become a better company’ with motivated people and the hope is that this will mean better coffee for generations to come in line with the company’s mission.

Throughout the process at Caravela Coffee, PSA Consultores has been a strategic ally, offering clarity on the organizational reality and guiding cultural change through the Belbin methodology. Thanks to this approach, Caravela has effectively and sustainably advanced its transformation.

'Coffee is now a team sport'

“Belbin for us has been a fantastic tool to really understand what we need. First, what was going wrong and then what we needed to fill in the team, to the point that now we say, ‘coffee is a team sport’.” 

Coffee is a complex system. At the point you receive your espresso or cappuccino in a café there has been a whole team of people working extremely hard to get it there. From the coffee growers, the coffee pickers, all the different people working at different stages to get the coffee to the end consumer, it really is a team sport.

The analogy used at Caravela Coffee is one of a football team. Everyone can move around their role. In football, defenders can score goals too if needs be. Even goalkeepers can make goals. In coffee, the goalkeeper is the coffee farmer. If he loses the game, everyone will lose as there will be no coffee. The barista is the forward. And the fans are the coffee drinkers.

“This analogy has been inspired by Belbin and the role it has played in our company to help us understand people’s natural talents and the role they can play.”