“There was space for the transformation to happen, also literally, with the set-up of the transformation room”.
The CEO’s question to us
We had a consultancy describe our new strategy and operating model, on paper. We see issues in making this strategy stick in our organisation. In our fast paced market we cannot afford to fail in implementing this or do it slowly. We need teams and people to take ownership to realise our strategy (now).
Background
This leading German e-commerce platform with entities across Europe had recently been bought by an American/ German private equity consortium, with plans for accelerated growth, bringing in a new CEO. The platform was geared towards the supply-side (how to make sure we have plenty of goods and advertisements on our platform) and needed to shift its focus to attracting the end-users to avoid being wiped out by large, mostly American competitors, with a strong brand in B2C platform business.
The challenge as we saw it
- How to shift the focus of the organisation, and essence of the current operating model, from the supply side to attracting traffic/consumers?
- How do we migrate from a typical ‘hierarchical’ organisation with cascaded authority to a more fluid organisation with different cross functional teams empowered to take responsibility for the key KPIs?
- How to shift the thinking and acting patterns in the different teams, fast and deep?
- How to build trust and transparency in the midst of a profound transformation journey, affecting every single person’s job?
What we did
- The ELP Network-team together with (the limited) HR business partners and scrum coaches, put together in 2 weeks’ time an operational team and plan.
- Through various team dialogues people internalised the strategy and made it their own.
- A communication event around the why and what of the new organisation. Employees were given the space to voice their concerns or doubts about the new ways of working and engaged people in a more explicit and transparent type of dialogue.
- With key teams, we translated the organisation chart into a full-fledged operating model: governance, information flows, roles and KPI responsibility, meeting cadence, but also values, behaviours and capabilities, summarised in a team charter. We looked at interdependencies between team charters.
- Real ‘teaming’ of cross- functional teams with focus on key outcomes, clarity on responsibilities and interactions/interdependencies, fast feedback and decision making and continuous learning.
- Increasingly placing the key leaders in charge of steering their teams, accelerating their own leadership development.
- We made the status and progress visible and tangible by setting up a ‘transformation room’: walk-in meeting room with all the relevant information for, and from all key teams.
What the client got out of it
- The company improved its relevance and value, resulting in a successful IPO 18 months later.
- Strategy and operating model are translated into concrete actions, and embedded in the daily operations, routines and meetings.
- People that are able to connect, interact and continuously transform their learnings into the new operating model.
- Upgraded HR processes and HR systems to support the operating model and culture
- A change in behaviour and internal climate, with focus on ownership and performance, explicitly experienced in faster decision making with the use ‘the collective intelligence’.
- Short communication lines and review cycles of critical KPIs.