Case Study

How Great Wrap fast tracks new manager development with The Mintable

Great Wrap

Industry: Consumer packaged goods
Location: Sorrento, Victoria, Australia

A company that cares about the planet, and its people

An Australian winemaker and architect couple started Great Wrap in 2019 to end plastic waste. They’ve built an incredible brand and a small empire of world first compostable products (they break down in compost in under 180 days!), like cling wrap, catering wrap, and soon pallet wrap.

Not only are the leaders at Great Wrap planet-first, they are people-first. CEO, Jordy Kay, learned about The Mintable through the Australian start-up community. Given that the team had grown 15x in the last 8 months, he tapped Head of Strategy, Pete Burgess, to assess whether The Mintable could help them.

High-growth problems

We caught up with Pete recently and he shared about business challenges: “We’re a rapidly growing team but don’t have the infrastructure we expect to have in 12 months time. In a start-up, you’re often bringing together unique talents, early-in-career, all into one place without management experience. Scalability is all about consistency”.

Consistently investing in manager development and effectiveness requires extensive time, expertise, and resources that most businesses lack. Many start-ups defer supporting managers and wind up fighting fires and dealing with issues across the business. Pete and the leadership team saw an opportunity to make investing in Great Wrap managers turnkey.

“We can put new managers into [The Mintable] and learn what good looks like – to have a clear picture on what you should and shouldn’t do; talking through examples and impact on staff is really important too,” said Pete.

Easy process, lots of excitement

Jordy quickly gauged interest with other managers on the team, most of whom were new to people management. One of those was Madieson Ryan, Digital Marketing Manager, who has been pivotal to the company’s brand since early on. “I’d never managed someone before. I didn’t know what I was doing to be completely honest. I was basing it off of what not to do,” said Madieson during our recent catch-up.

She and other new managers were excited to try out The Mintable, “I had just switched into that role. This couldn’t come at a better time for me. Learning good habits from the start. I was really stoked.”

New people managers join The Mintable by first completing a cohort-based learning accelerator designed to build the right foundation and boost their growth. The program consists of 4 weekly, virtual, learning sessions alongside ambitious fellow managers. Afterwards, managers gain access to ongoing learning, connection, and tools.

Great Wrap was able to set up the program for new managers in roughly 30 minutes. Madieson and Pete were joined by two other managers and another team member has since joined. Their plan is to send aspiring and emerging managers to The Mintable as the business grows. Pete said, “I’m super confident that by putting them through a program, such as The Mintable, that we can put them into a management role. We will be positioned to acquire raw talent and grow them into management roles.”

Takeaways, big and small

Pete’s main takeaways: “I take little tidbits from everything. There was one about transformation of information vs transfer of information. We’ve since created a clear and defined way of communicating for the company. Those tiny little things are invaluable and The Mintable fast-tracked that learning. Hearing what other people do is really valuable too”.

Madieson’s takeaways: “That lightbulb moment of setting clear expectations before giving feedback – wow! How are you supposed to give feedback without a clear brief? It’s common sense but to hear it in that way and practice it was impactful.”

It was not love-at-first-sight. Pete remarked, “When Jordy first sent it through, I hadn’t appreciated the model. I’d been through so many trainings that I’d become numb. But The Mintable is not sitting in a room at a large corporation with copy and paste material, which doesn’t hit the mark for most people. I like to talk about things and listen. I learn really well through The Mintable format.”

Advice for other talent-minded companies and managers

Pete: “Well, without saying, “Get them to go through The Mintable” [laughs]. We can take it for granted that a lot of people know how to manage. This is an opportunity to understand what good looks like. If you don’t have this understanding, it’s going to be really hard to scale and have a good team and culture”.

Madieson: “Take the time to sit down with the people you work with and explain the landscape fully. Actually invest the time upfront and not just throw people into the deep end. I’m excited we have that bank of material to go back to and do a check-in moving forward”.

Whether you’re saving the planet or tackling another epic problem, The Mintable has your back. We give companies the confidence and expertise to support and grow their talent. We give managers the confidence and skills to lead happy, high-performing teams.

To invest in developing your team of great managers, schedule a time to talk to us today.