Shifting to a Culture of Accountability

The Business Challenge

Our client, a global manufacturer with 77,000 employees in 69 countries, needed to adapt quickly by developing technological innovation to thrive in in a rapidly changing market. To fund the technological innovation required, an ambitious transformation plan was created with stretch targets across every level of the organization.

After two years, the easy and obvious savings had been realized; going further required a more radical shake-up of ways of working. The company needed to move from an expertise-led, hierarchical and siloed culture where long-serving, heroic leaders are deemed to know everything in their specialism, to one of openness, humility and collaboration, where leaders actively encourage disruptive thinking and inter-disciplinary cooperation to find new solutions and opportunities.

Bottom Line

A strong link to business need, coupled with deep behavioral work, helped leaders to let go of control and defensiveness, to embrace humility and to welcome challenges. Equipped with that mindset, they were able to open up to the level of innovative, disruptive thinking required to transform and survive.

Outcomes Achieved in the First 12 Months of Our Work

• $400 million dollars of savings, exceeding the stretch target.
• +40 point increase in e-NPS scores from employee population.
• 67% of leaders improved their 360 scores in half of the key behaviors.
• One third of the top 200 leaders were rated as role models of the new behaviors.

Workstreams

• Deep dive culture diagnostic to understand the root causes of the current culture and identify the key mindsets, behaviors, symbols and systems that needed to change to support the strategic priorities.
• Prioritization of the few key behaviors that were most needed to achieve the transformation plan and cost savings.
• ‘Leading by Example’ interventions for Executive Team and the top 200 leaders, including 360, coaching, observation and team workshops on leading culture and mastering the culture goals.
• 18-month culture plan focused on a few key systems changes to reinforce and embed the behavior and creating a dashboard of metrics to track progress and assess the business impact of the culture change.
  360 retest for every leader after 6-9 months to track individual and collective progress.

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