Challenge

Working in a market that has been recently deregulated, this major commodity producer suddenly found itself operating in a competitive environment for the first time.
To meet this challenge, the business focussed on three areas: increasing efficiency, managing supply chain strategically (enabling them to deal with market fluctuations), and developing new commercially sustainable relationships with key suppliers and customers.
The company identified four specific areas of underperformance:
  • Dysfunctional alignment and lack of direction amongst teams
  • A reluctance and inability to manage poor performance
  • Poor productivity and time management in too many places
  • Shortfalls in customer quality and production targets

The challenge was to develop Change Leadership Cohorts drawn from all sectors of the business with a core mission to drive change. The aims of this were:

  • To break down the silo mentality that had developed around the key production facilities
  • To create a more commercially aware workforce, that makes decisions informed by greater financial awareness and the implications to the business
  • To engage and develop staff to take up new and challenging roles

Action

We spent time with the board to assess the business’s strategic choices and their implications (in terms of organizational structure and processes). Crucially, we also reviewed the leadership and management that would be required to steer the business through what was inevitably going to be a difficult period.

At the middle manager level, the overriding objective of our Management Fundamentals program was to set a ‘new’ performance bar for managers. This would help to reinforce and communicate the strategy, generate positive behavioral alignment, and capture the essence of a new empowering culture while inspiring people to achieve it.

The resulting program framework focused on these key themes, underpinned by the organization’s leadership competencies and values framework.

Result

The program targeted cohorts of senior managers (45) and middle managers (230) to address the many challenges they were facing.

Through the program, they developed a personal and professional management presence, one that inspired confidence and positive impact.

The 360 feedback questionnaires showed significant increases in strengths in all key competencies, and the program won the Judge’s Star Performer award at the 2013 Manufacturing Excellence Awards for the large Training Programs.

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