Client Testimonials & Case Studies
We have had the pleasure of working with many tremendous people. Here are some of the many comments we’ve received, along with a few case studies that illustrate the business and people problems we solve.
“Today more than ever, Wall Street is falling apart; financial institutions are no longer credible; real estate values are on a vertical down spiral. The business world as we know it has been asked to navigate frantically through corporate uncertainty as almost every organisation has been faced with an uncertain future.
Every executive team is thinking about the fundamentals of business and how to protect market share, return on sales and productivity, and how to earn positive profit margins.
Sadly, Playground/Intrawest quickly realized that we needed to restructure our overhead and workforce. There was an imminent need to become leaner, sharper, and more efficient. But how do we ask for more productivity of fewer people?
Playground / Intrawest, worldwide sales and marketing leader in the creation of resort destinations, decided several years ago to bring facilitators on board in order to maximize the efficiency of all organizational meetings. This was in an effort to ensure the highest level of leadership, maintain a clear focus, prevent turmoil created by a tremendous rollercoaster of instability, and to protect our corporate culture.
During this time, I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Renée Safrata from Renéevations. Renée was asked to facilitate various organizational meetings, including our Executive Leadership Retreat, Senior Management Quarterlys, and workforce events.
Renée, in such a short period of time, has become a tremendous mediator. First and foremost, Renée’s biggest asset is that she is a people person. She understands clearly that Playground’s greatest asset is its people and she has the wonderful ability to bring the best out of everyone while maintaining the integrity and culture of the company.
Renée also has a remarkable talent for challenging status quo, raising the bar, and ensuring that actions go beyond words. She can engage and captivate her audience like no other. I have been truly inspired by Renée’s endless ability to resolve conflict among our group of senior executives. She always manages to stay on track and maximize our time as a group.
Renée is resourceful, inspiring, relentless, imaginative, strategic, knowledgeable, and most importantly; solution driven.
I give Renée my highest recommendation, and would be honoured to discuss with you in further detail.”
Jean-Pierre Miramont, Executive Vice-President EMEA, Playground/Intrawest
“Many faciliators are secretly (or overtly) interested in being business gurus which often detracts from any session as, during the process, they are desperate to offer their business advice and insight. Renée has the rare ability to shape and drive a process with a team AND allow them to discover their own insights. She intuitively knows when to follow value versus the clock and is extremely adept at handling any interpersonal challenges that bubble up.
An undervalued trait in facilitators, Renée is extremely personal and engaging. She is able to be both vulnerable and powerful at the same time. Her room presence allows for very type A peronalities to not be threatened by her and, at the same time, she instantly earns respect. She has a very cultivated ability to practice hard and soft management interchangeably throughout the process.
Renée’s background, both from learning and experience, allows her to draw on a wide range of tools to suit any situation. In the six years I’ve worked with Renée, I have never seen her in a situation that she could not handle and she always exercises excellent judgement with respect to what the room or team needs to overcome a challenge.
In addition, Renée is an expert at giving AND receiving feedback, which, as a business leader, gives me great confidence in working with her. I am able to express myself unreservedly with her and I always know that she will speak candidly with me. In addition, she is adept at taking feedback and making mid-course corrections.
To any business looking for facilitation, I give her an unqualified recommendation.”
Jake Chalmers, CEO, Envisioning + Storytelling
“Thank you for your very generous contribution of time and effective facilitating of our recent board retreat. I have to admit to approaching these sorts of events with some trepidation but found the retreat to be not only productive but enjoyable. The way you built on the outcome of last year’s retreat proved a very effective means of showing us where we had progressed, where we needed to do more and the extent to which to which our priorities had changed or remained the same. You were able to structure and focus our discussion in a way that allowed us to address a large number of issues in a limited period of time and, in doing so, put us in a better position to tackle the challenges that lie ahead.”
Don Chisholm, chief creative officer, co-founder, dossiercreative
“Over the last two years dossier has had the pleasure to retain Renée on several projects to help lead our client workshop sessions. Renée has enabled us to deliver a much more in-depth and rich experience to our session process with outcomes that have added a tremendous value to our overall project learnings.”
D. John Goundrey, Alexander Holburn Beaudin & Lang LLP
“Anyone who has worked with Renée knows that working with her is a privilege. Through her own, very effective strategic process, Renée helps us gain and sustain a high level of clarity and focus while helping us keeping it simple. She injects a lightness of heart that is very much needed for two type “A” entrepreneurs like us. Breathing new life into people and places is her mantra…and that she does. She truly helps us discover a better way to live, work and be, and we thank her daily for that.”
Isabelle Mercier, LeapZone Strategies Inc.
“Renée provided incredible facilitation of my CEO peer group monthly, bringing out our passionate creativity and helping me be a better business leader. Renee helped me introduce leading edge concepts such as Creative Strategic Planning and Team development which solidified my new leadership team and helped my company implement a growth strategy.
In my current role as COO at Annex Group, Renée has helped facilitate a corporate planning session which has been the springboard to a new growth plan for the company. Renée’s style, enthusiasm and passion for helping people and organizations grow is just a few of the reasons I do not hesitate to recommend Renée’s services to anyone who could benefit from them. I hold Renée in high regard.”
Tom Dutta, CRI Canada
Melissa Clancy, VP Corporate Marketing, Playground