A medium-sized Scandinavian company had laid out a new strategy. Good process, good involvement widely in the organization, nice plan and delicious PowerPoints. However, it had forgotten to lay out a good plan for implementation - and when time passed by, it all went a bit fast.
The implementation became a "road-show", where management travelled around the countries and gave 1 1/2-hour presentations of the great PowerPoints. All managers were also gathered for a day in a cinema in Stockholm, where they received presentations from the various functions of central management. Great roll-ups were set up in all offices.
Process
A year later, management asked Brandculture for help. Concrete initiatives around acquisitions and new segments had started, but 90% of employees did not see the promises in the strategy fulfilled - and experienced that nothing had happened, "apart from management's 2 prestige projects" - an acquisition and a new segment, around which a new organization had been built. The suboptimization continued, the IT systems worked equally poorly and the general pride compared to competitors and customers was vanishing - and the new elements lived "in its own world".
A "re-launch" of the strategy and proper implementation was needed. A version 2.1 of the strategy was created and elements of these actions were implemented:
- Creating a clear and easily communicable main strategy
- Design of the organization according to strategy
- Creating leadership-commitment - above all, middle management-commitment
- Ensuring "One Company" culture with a strong customer focus
- Ensuring anchoring in everyday life in the daily work functions
- Follow-up with momentum retention
- Communication
- Staging
- A new beginning
Results
These elements were tailored into a process in which the implementation freed up huge amounts of energy and pride in the company - and the strategy came to be related to everyday life. Culture and the resistance to change had to give way to the new strategy.
The company now takes monthly market shares in all the Nordic countries. Imagine if they had remembered the implementation from the beginning.....