Context
Our client –a multinational European bank- embarked on an ambitious journey to ensure its future growth and competitiveness, by differentiating in service and product offering through innovation, operational excellence and providing outstanding work experience to its employees. A company-wide Lean transformation was started including the development of a new culture that would support and strengthen employee-driven continuous improvement.
Our Mission
Our mission was (next to guiding the whole Lean transformation) to:
- Kick start the cultural transformation
- Define an approach to ensure concrete and impactful results
- Ensure the C-suite was aligned on the goals and the engagement required from them
- Coach the C-suite into obtaining the buy-in of the entire organisation and fuelling enthusiasm and contributions from everyone
- Ensure the bank was educated and skilled enough to push this initiative forward autonomously many years in the future
- Prove the approach worked with first concrete results
Results
- Many years down the road, still ongoing change and enthusiasm amongst employees embracing the new culture and pushing it further autonomously.
- Many more Lean transformations conducted also exported to newly acquired companies or divisions. Continuous Improvement taking off.
Approach
- Creation of a multidisciplinary team including HR, Internal coms and the Lean team (including CSI), sponsored and supported by the CEO. Dedicated project lead assigned in the client Lean team to head up the transformation together with CSI.
- Initial surveys with employees and interviews with C-suite managers. Development of a cultural ambassador group to ensure the whole company contributed to the building of the culture.
- Numerous (and very creative) off- and on-site workshops to revisit and sharpen the mission, vision and values. Definition of desired behaviors and initiatives started to support and promote these behaviors. Key success factors: thorough project approach, strong internal and external communication campaigns and unwavering CEO and CXO support.
Main challenges
- A previous large scale – mostly visual - attempt to install a new culture needed to be integrated in this new initiative, as it was well perceived and the whole office interior, merchandising towards the employees and the outside image of the bank in marketing campaigns was visually based on that previous exercise. There were no big contradictions with the Lean culture, but many elements were lacking, and a real behavioral change still had to be started.
- Making the change tangible, but also fun and inspiring for the employees was challenging and required a fine balance of gamification and creativity, while maintaining accountability, clarity and rigor.
- Working with departments that had already matured in Lean management principles and departments that had not yet gone through any transformation.
© Copyright 2024 by CSI business consulting | Done. by Temphalla