“When we kicked off our transformation efforts, we immediately got the focus on future success based on customer orientation, and took small and big concrete actions to make it tangible and credible, an infectious movement that expanded fast.”
The CEO’s question to us
Our business unit is under pressure: we lose volumes. We want to transform our business, and make it more market, rather than supply oriented. We will create a key account management team, and want the triangle between operations, supply and sales to steer our volumes across our accounts, at optimal margin, under the leadership of a new CEO. This fundamentally different strategy requires a different organisation, ways of working and mindset. How to break out of our traditional ways of functioning, while working with the same people?
Background
This food processing, packaging and distribution business is market leader in the German and Dutch market, with sales offices across the world. Gradually it has lost its competitive edge, due to sub-optimal sales, supply and processing set-ups. The industry is also under a lot of societal pressure, around sustainable food production, and large customers, mostly super markets, are demanding on product quality and delivery, as well as on packaging, sustainability, convenience and price.
The challenge as we saw it
- How to build a new leadership community, around the new CEO, to own and commit to the new direction, which they only have been partially contributing to?
- How to build an operating model that works: beyond redrawing reporting lines, and changing titles, how to make the teams on the ground act and behave differently?
- How to balance between
- a formal structure and a spirit to work from a shared belief in the future direction,
- clarity on roles and authority, and building empowerment to act on the real time developments in the market (in what used to be a top-down organisation)?
What we did
- We set-up a 6 month campaign to gradually build and deepen the understanding and belief in the future direction, and have the leaders and their teams translate it to their roles, responsibilities and core activities in each team, starting from the new Executive Team, to the key functional teams, to the top 30 and the top 100.
- We built the appropriate level of clarity and ownership, on the new structure, reporting lines, meeting cadence and responsibilities, as well as groomed the relationships, values and (leadership) behaviours needed to make it work, in practice.
- We supported and coached the executives in their role, set up cross functional working teams, and helped to overcome emerging issues and bottlenecks.
What the client got out of it
- A future direction, translated into concrete action in the field.
- An operating model that is described at the appropriate level of detail.
- An Executive Team, top 30 and top 100 ready to lead the entire organisation to the new way of working.
- A mindset to keep evolving the business, step by step, and adopt a more specific and granular approach towards market opportunities (a unique competitive edge in the industry).
- The balance between ownership and responsibility, and flexibility and empowerment, in service to a common goal.