Putting the right people together, on purpose
Nellis Architecture brought the Personal Profile Analysis into one part of its business, with our consulting insight layered on top. Two years on, it shapes how teams there get built, led and developed.
CLIENT
Nellis Architecture
LOCATION
Dubai, UAE
SECTOR
Architecture
01
CLIENT
CLIENT
Nellis Architecture
Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
INDUSTRY
A Dubai-based practice whose work runs through several project teams, staffed by people from a range of countries and cultures, some of them working remotely.
ORGANISATION SIZE
The engagement started with a core group of around 12 people. That has since grown to 24, and every one of them has a PPA profile on file.
ENGAGEMENT TYPE
What started as a one-off exercise in 2024 is now simply part of how the business works. Every new joiner completes a PPA within their first few months, and the client now asks for re-profiling of people who have been with them a while.
02
THE CHALLENGE
The situation before we arrived
There was no burning platform, and that is precisely the point. This was a business getting ahead of the problems most companies only address once they hurt. New work kept arriving, small sub-teams of three to four people were forming, and leadership had to decide who would work with whom, largely on instinct.
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Without a shared way of understanding how each person communicates, processes information, and leads, the risks were predictable: strong leaders clustered in one team while others drifted without direction; a naturally direct, fast-talking colleague paired with someone who needs to receive information slowly and process it carefully; friction mistaken for bad attitude when it was really a mismatch of working styles. And with a team drawn from many countries and cultures — as is the nature of a Dubai practice — those differences in style were only amplified.
ORGANISATION SIZE
The work itself. With projects coming in steadily, teams had to be right from the start: sensible groupings, leadership spread evenly, and the right people on the right projects and clients. A badly composed team burns its energy on friction instead of the work. And when people don’t feel understood, or end up somewhere that doesn't suit them, they leave
03
OUR APPROACH
OUR APPROACH
Personal Profile Analysis (PPA)
A behavioural assessment focused on how people behave at work, delivered with Kaleidoscope’s layered analysis and consulting insight. The assessment itself is an 8-minute questionnaire built on scientifically validated behavioural theory; each result is then unpacked with the individual in a one-hour debrief and turned into a practical, everyday brief. Later extended into organisational design.
WHAT WE DID: STEP BY STEP
1
Profiled the core team first
We began with the leadership core at Nellis, building a behavioural picture of the people who would anchor each sub-team.
1
Extended to every team member
We then profiled the members of each small team, roughly 12 people in the first phase, and placed profiles side by side to see how communication styles, drive, and decision-making would interact.
1
Re-examined the team structures
With profiles in hand, we pressure-tested the existing groupings: were leadership qualities spread evenly? Were complementary styles paired together, and potential clashes anticipated before they surfaced?
1
Embedded it into onboarding
Over the following two years, every new joiner has completed a PPA. Results are debriefed with the individual first, then shared with leadership and the relevant team lead, and each person is encouraged to share their profile with their wider team.
1
Scaled it into org design
As the business grew, with more people, bigger teams and colleagues across countries, the PPA library became the foundation for a full organisational redesign, including a group PPA session with the broader leadership team to map what the business had, and what it was missing.
WHAT MADE OUR APPROACH DIFFERENT
The PPA measures behaviour at work, not personality.
Personality doesn’t change; behaviour does, with a new role, a new team, new circumstances. That makes the PPA a living tool rather than a label: profiles can be re-run after a couple of years and compared, revealing whether shifts are serving the person or straining them.
Every profile is unpacked by hand
We map the findings visually, analyse the outcomes in detail, and layer them with what we know about the person and the business. The result is deeply personalised, and it compounds. From the base report, clients can go further: how best to work with this person, how they prefer to receive communication, and how they prefer to learn. The assessment is the starting point; the consulting insight wrapped around it is the product.
04
THE OUTCOME
WHAT CHANGED QUALITATIVELY
Smoother project execution
Teams built around complementary profiles spend less time managing friction and more time on the work.
Communication with empathy
Colleagues now read each other differently, understanding that a direct style or a slower processing pace is a way of working, not a problem and adjust their approach accordingly.
Early warning, handled with care
Where profiles surface red flags, leadership can come alongside the person early, before a quiet struggle becomes a departure.
05
THE OUTCOME
THE INSIGHT
When the team’s profiles went up side by side, leadership saw what no one had named: one motivator carrying the emotional load of the entire team, too few natural networkers in a business that lives on relationships, and a shortage of the driving, assertive energy needed with demanding clients. Every profile was unpacked by hand, mapped visually, analysed in detail, and layered with what we knew of the person and the business.
THE DECISIONS
Teams were re-clustered around complementary profiles. The missing behaviours, networking, drive, were written into role descriptions and future recruitment criteria. Development became deliberate: exposure plans that help people “dial up” what doesn’t come naturally. The pace of change has been considerable: as the business scaled, teams have been regrouped or realigned at least four times in two years, each time checked back against the PPA library to keep the balance right. And as the organisation grew across countries, the full PPA library became the foundation for redesigning the organisation itself.
STANDING PRACTICE
Every new joiner completes a PPA within their first months. Results are debriefed with the individual, shared with leadership and their team lead, and offered to the wider team. And the client, unprompted is the one proposing to re-run profiles for longer-serving team members. It is part of their language now. Their full-team collection is exactly what the PPA range calls a “living library”, a team map kept current as people join, grow, and change. Nellis Architecture has become our internal benchmark for what an embedded PPA practice looks like.
We don't just advise.
We operationalise.
Start where you are and grow as you need
WHAT CHANGED QUALITATIVELY
Individual PPA
"Understand this person"
One person, fully interpreted: report, debrief and a practical brief.
Team PPA
"Understand how we work together"
Profiles interpreted together as a living team map, facilitated and kept current.
Recruitment PPA
"Find the right person for your team"
The same lens applied to hiring: role blueprints, shortlist comparisons, fit checks.