Case: The art of being number one – and deserving it
The large company was the market leader, but in decline. There were new competitors in the market. The company had to change, but how? Time was a factor – the change had to happen fast.
PlanB was hired to bring about the change. It was important that the team should not consist solely of consultants, since the company needed to achieve profound and permanent change. The employees had to feel involved and the change had to be anchored and come from within the organization.
Employees were appointed to lead the work and were also points of contact. PlanB was a robust, but active support in the process. The team also decided to appoint change agents within the line-organization. Those chosen were the project managers with performance accountability.
They realized that the company was operating too many projects and initiatives in parallel. This meant that the strategic focus was blurred. Strategy is about choice, being able to select what you shouldn’t do. With the help of PlanB, the company cut down the number of projects from 270 to 12 – the majority of projects were shut down. The remaining projects focused on customer satisfaction and were compared to the new key performance indicators. They worked across the company, and not departmentally as they had done in the past.
The team also found was that the company lacked good reporting structures that related projects to the overall strategy. The company appeared to be underestimating the need for communication. Project manager competence was not highly developed within the company, and many projects had suffered from unclear objectives and time frames. No wonder that many of the projects were competing for ressources!
PlanB helped the company to develop capacity in project management. They created a project portfolio and a procedure to ensure the quality of the projects through reviews and coaching.
Communication and strong support within the company were the be-all and end-all. A communicator was recruited for each project. They published a magazine and created an intranet. Meetings with top executives and workshops united the line-organization and the strategic portfolio.
For a period, the equivalent of 250 full-time employees worked with the company’s change process. “Skip Christmas, be on the team!” was a slogan, and employees struggled to really get the new strategic direction in place. All twelve projects would be successful. During an early meeting, the company’s CEO said: “By the way, that failure is not an option.”
And they did it, in time. The process of change was a success. The difference was solid: the twelve projects had created synergies and savings of hundreds of million Euros. The company was working much more closely knit towards the same goal.
The conclusion is that in addition to the success with this specific program of change, the organization has improved its capacity to complete strategies – and thus be ready for new changes.
Read about PlanB’s services: If you work with strategy, If you work with communication or If you work with projects
