Mining Company

Client Context

Our client is the largest company producing long steel in Brazil and had consistently achieved positive financial results in 2019.

Despite this, the organization showed signs that its traditional way of operating, which brought financial performance and an engaged workforce until 2019, needed to be evolved to a new context of challenges that presented themselves both from a business point of view and the need for innovation, as well as a differentiated look at the customer and its people within the organization.

Case Study

Some decisive factors that motivated the company to investigate the potential of its culture:

1. Increased competition in Brazil and the world, with the entry of the Chinese into this market, which would bring down the price of their main products. For this reason, the company would need to increase the share of value-added products in its portfolio and increase the productivity of its Industrial Units to reduce the price of commodities.
2. The world demands an acceleration of decarbonization, which requires a major revolution in terms of production, so that they can achieve the global goal of steel production in a more sustainable way.
3. Profound social changes, especially with new generations, demand more inspiring and less authoritarian leadership. The more conservative management began to put the engagement of its talents at risk.

For this reason, the CEO decided to deeply evaluate what culture would be necessary to achieve his future objectives and also investigate how much the organization's current culture would be aligned with these strategic needs.

Our diagnosis showed, in December 2019, that:

• There is a strong sense of pride. Proud of the company's ability to surpass itself, to be ethical, correct, strong and be recognized for it. People are engaged, have a powerful focus on results and are proud of it. They are capable, give their all and are loyal. There is the feeling that “We can do anything”.
• It seems that these attributes, for the majority, can still accommodate frustrations with some other issues, such as the way in which results are achieved, translated here as visible distance between company leaders, excessive hierarchy and control, lack of focus and low fault tolerance.
• The culture at our client has a paradoxical relationship with risks. At the same time as innovation and greater productivity are sought, there is a heavy burden on hierarchy and excess control. The belief that one cannot make mistakes interrupts the learning process that is necessary to promote the development of autonomy with responsibility and relax hierarchy. This becomes a vicious circle.
• The company was still looking inwards , it was not prepared to make difficult decisions on behalf of the client as this could, in a certain way, compromise short-term goals to the detriment of better results in the long term.
• There was weak sharing of common vision between areas. The focus was on individual gain, to the detriment of producing results for the whole.

With these points, the biggest risk is that the space for accommodating these beliefs was closing, making it more difficult for people's ability to contribute, innovation and engagement for those who want to do things differently.

Defining the desired culture:

With the challenges in mind and aware of the strengths and shadows of current culture, our client decided to boost its culture through the archetypes: One Team, Customer Centricity and Overcoming, through the key behaviors: Customer Focus, Empowerment, Openness , Humility and Collaboration.

The work carried out throughout the journey:

Phase 1:
Diagnosis (CIS) and definition of the desired culture ( Blueprint ) carried out at the end of 2019

Phase 2:
Having defined the desired culture, the focus was to prepare the foundations for change:

• LBE – the entire ExCom embarked on an individual and collective journey of change. The executives underwent a customized 360 assessment to become aware of how they were being perceived in relation to the desired culture and received individual support to support their evolution process. Added to this, they had team sessions, working not only on the evolution of key behaviors but also on the team's confidence (using Lencioni 's Assessment ). Meeting observation sessions were held so that we could give concrete feedback on how they were modeling the new culture.
• The development of a robust culture plan was led by a team of influential leaders, prepared by ZXG to, firstly, be agents of change and knowledgeable about the method for change and, finally, the owners of the organization's Culture Plan to ensure an adequate and focused process of cultural change.
• Training the HR team – Being the main point of support for leaders in changing behavior and owners of many of the main systems, cultural messengers, HR leadership was prepared to act strategically and contribute to the acceleration of change.
• Training of the team of influencers, who were prepared to vibrate the new culture within the company's various Business Units spread across 5 Brazilian cities.

This phase 2 occurred amid the Corona Virus pandemic , a time when the company needed to accelerate some aspects of culture, especially collaboration and empowerment , but the results were very positive, both from a business point of view – our client was the Unit with the best business results among all our client operations in the world.

Furthermore, we carried out the first Pulse Check and identified very positive results, with a level of awareness and understanding of the culture above 90%. Even facing the challenges of the pandemic, the company achieved a very high level of commitment from its more than 6,000 employees, achieving a result of almost 80% commitment in the survey.

Phase 3
With the ExCom prepared to model the new culture, the LBE program was extended to an additional 30 senior executives within the company. The cultural activation process for managers began with a modular culture leader development program, customized to drive the key behaviors of the desired culture, in depth. Meanwhile, ZRG supported the Executive Committee with mentoring and governance support for the journey.

Integrated Culture Plan: While the Executive Team and managers evolved in their programs, a process of immersion in the new culture was created, so that practical learning could consolidate the desired changes:

• The business unit leaders and teams were involved in an immersion program where they had the opportunity to lead the cultural transformation in their process by drawing up a transformation plan for their Site or Matrix Area. They did this by integrating the business priorities and culture. They worked with the beliefs that prevented the team from going further.
• This was part of an integrated culture plan we support the company to build through a deep practical learning together process

In addition, we trained two more groups of culture influencers, reaching a number of 110 influencers in the company.

At the end of phase 3, we carried out a new Pulse Check and, once again, the results were exceptional considering the size of the change that was being made. Growth in each phase of culture activation was 4 to 6 percentage points. Fantastic result for just one year of evolution.

Phase 4:

• We started year 4 with new work to activate Supervisors to analysts, through our hybrid training program that involves some digital trails and meetings to discuss and deepen learning.
• Meanwhile, we evolved in the development of ExCom with mentoring and counseling, team meetings to discuss progress and strengthen trust.
• At the end of year 4, another measure of progress was made by retesting the culture diagnosis. The results showed an evolution of more than 10 percentage points in the level of experience of culture for leadership levels. The cultural strengths were consolidated and the barriers became clearer, which allowed the company to make adjustments to its Culture Plan with greater focus and assertiveness. Ambitious goals for both business and cultural impact were set for the 5th. Year of the journey.
• We are starting, in 2024, the 5th. year of the cultural journey, as a strategic partner of our client. The first step is to revisit the Culture Blueprint and identify key elements to prioritize over the next two years, considering a recent review of the long-term objectives strategy.
• We will continue to support the development of leaders in cultural management through culture clinics, retesting of the 360 survey, mentoring and an important audit of symbols and systems that will help the company make necessary adjustments to its Culture Plan to maintain the tipping point .
• The success of the journey is being achieved through the discipline of keeping senior leadership engaged and committed to shaping the culture, intentionally adopting symbols and adjusting systems so that cultural messages are aligned with the desired culture, and maintaining impeccable governance in managing the plan. of culture, with change challenges aligned and connected to the business strategy and the company's purpose.

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