designing and delivering a business transformation programme across 8,300 stores
the challenge
Our client had lost its market-leading position, costs were rising and a ‘tell-do’ culture was taking its toll. Early diagnostics from across its 250,000-strong army of loyal employees uncovered a culture crying out for change. A lack of collaboration, ownership and customer focus was compounded by overly complex processes and unclear performance management systems that were driving metrics rather than behaviours.
It was our job to harness that force and create the capacity, capability and will for change at all levels in the organisation.
the results
With a team of consultants ranging from 16 to 25 at times, and 88 client change leaders, we actively engaged with more than 300,000 store and regional staff. We introduced them to the concept of ‘freedom in a framework’, transferring skills and building capability.
This helped us to achieve a statistically significant uplift in sales and margin, and an impressive reduction in team member turnover – which in turn continued to an overall programme RoI of over 29:1.
how we got there
Our programme spanned three phases: discover, design and enable. During the initial design phase, we tested our hypotheses across two pilot regions: San Francisco and Dallas.
We mobilised teams through self-discovery diagnostics and storyboarding, defining the problem we had to solve together. We analysed all aspects of field operations and support centre interactions, looking at culture and leadership, performance management, operational efficiency, and customer behaviour. This culminated in an insight-rich story, owned by the whole business, driving the business case for change.
The design phase focused on getting engaged people doing the right things to delight customers and drive performance improvement. Store and regional level interventions focused on isolating and improving areas of opportunity identified during diagnostics. We combined tools and techniques such as problem solving, lean process mapping, RACI, plan-do-review and coaching and feedback with leadership coaching to create a self-sustaining culture.
During the enable phase, we worked alongside internal change agents to empower the wider workforce to implement the solution design. We also implemented a visual performance management system centred around balanced scorecard to give line of sight from the board room to the shop floor and drive continuous improvement and ownership of performance.
