CULTURE CHANGE FOR THE LEADERSHIP GROUPS

Introduction

Our client is a major British owned multinational corporation in the financial services sector. It is a product of three very recent mergers. The Board has developed a new corporate brand and associated values for the organisation and was seeking an innovative means to launch the brand and values to the top 120 managers in the Group’s corporate head-office, and to focus this group of senior managers on their leadership responsibilities for ensuring the effective implementation of the values.

As a result of previous work with the Group on how to manage and prioritise diversity in a global business, Astar Management Consultants was approached to develop a series of workshops for this top management group.

Methodology

We had some knowledge of the issues resulting from earlier research into the management of diversity, that we had conducted two to three months previously through a questionnaire circulated electronically to a number of staff in the UK and in the main overseas operations. However, we recommended that some specific research was conducted within the corporate head-office and within an operating unit to seek views about the current values, how well these were known, understood and lived up to, and the relationship between the corporate office and the operating units.

This research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with individuals and with focus groups to include senior management and staff at other levels in both the head-office and the operating unit. In addition, we had access to internal research and findings that had been previously conducted on the role of the head-office and its relationship with the operating units.

Following the research, the key issues were identified, outcomes for the workshop programme were developed and agreed with the client and a programme to achieve the outcomes was developed.

The Programme

We recognised that the programme had to be designed to achieve the desired outcomes, but that it had to reflect the values of the new organisation, which included innovation and creativity, and that it would have to be relevant and sufficiently challenging for the group’s most senior and capable management, including the Group Chief Executive. Additionally, in view of the time pressures on such a senior management group, the programme would need to be designed to be delivered crisply and in around three hours.

The agreed outcomes for the programme were that participants would have:

• A better understanding of how well the current culture in the Corporate Office supports the Group’s values
• Considered the impact of the current culture on the effectiveness of the Corporate Office
• Identified the issues and behaviours that need to be addressed to embed the values into the way the Corporate Office works
• Identified actions that the senior management group will take to demonstrate their leadership in effecting change

The programme was developed to incorporate a theatre scenario with three scenes showing the progress on a particular work project and the impact of the behaviours of the characters who were all based in the corporate head-office. The characters were composite characters and not recognisable as any one individual in the corporate office. The theatre was developed by Astar’s full-time Theatre Producer and delivered by professional actors from Astar’s own theatre company who are very experienced in working in the corporate sector using forum theatre techniques. The programme was designed for up to 20 participants, to be delivered with one Astar lead consultant and in-house facilitators trained by Astar.

Participants in the workshop were invited, after observing the scenarios, to identify, in smaller groups, the behaviours they recognised as being current in the corporate office, including those they recognised as being pertinent to themselves, to consider those behaviours against the values of the Group, and to consider the impact on the effectiveness of the Group Office. Following on from those discussions, participants were invited to consider what actions they should take to ensure the effective implementation of the values and how they should communicate this to their own teams.

The Results

The immediate post-course evaluation showed very high levels of achievement against the outcomes, averaging at around 75%, with some outcomes as high as 80%.

One of the results was a decision to extend the ‘live’ workshop programme to other levels of staff in the Group Office. In addition, Astar was commissioned to produce a video, facilitator guide and learner’s pack for a roll-out of the training to all staff, to be managed in-house.