This case study describes one organization’s journey as it worked towards reinvigorating its brand. The process chosen and the choices made along the way make interesting reading.
Summary of key points arising from case study
It is important to create a sense of urgency and momentum when a major cultural change is required. In this case study, the senior management team made a strong start, and put in the effort to keep things going. This required many people to be involved and energized, and for the number of people involved to keep growing.
Commitment to culture change cannot be developed by e-mail, or by memo. It has to be done face to face and in real time. Cultural change is achieved through action rather than words, so people need to see their managers doing it as well as talking about it. In this case study there was a lot of face-to-face straight talking.
Breaking the mould is hard work! It involves planning and thinking and role modelling, plus developing and implementing supporting processes and policies.
New teams provide new opportunities. Bridges (see Leading change) describes the neutral zone as a time of tremendous creative opportunities. Similarly we have noticed that new senior management teams such as the one featured in this case study are more likely to be able to change an organizational culture because they themselves are changing.
Supporting individuals is not soft! The hard work involved in facing the real issues one to one with people pays off. It builds trust and ensures understanding. But it takes courage, especially when change involves the communication of unwelcome and painful news. Even when change appears to offer hope for a brighter and better future, some may not see it that way.
Case study description
The case study concerns a financial services organization that undertook a strategic review and decided that it needed to reinvigorate the brand. With the previous case study we focused on gaining internal alignment to the organizational service. This case study takes a different perspective. The key focus of this rebranding exercise was the external marketing of the products and services on offer, and the way that customer-facing staff represented the brand. This is best illustrated by Wasmer and Bruner’s research (1991) which maps the relationship flows between the customer, the organization and the customer service provider . They saw the major constituents of their brand as:
- marketing communications;
- products on offer;
- speed of service;
- quality of service.
As a result of the strategic review the organization decided that the key to its competitive advantage was the way in which its customer-facing employees transacted with customers and potential customers. They were referring to not just the usual types of customer service behaviour such as greeting, courtesy and complaint handling but also the ways that the brand itself was being portrayed. The customer does not just receive communication from the organization in terms of its marketing and its goods. It also receives information via the customer service providers.
To focus more clearly on its target audience, the organization segmented its potential customer market into four quadrants based on their interest in financial services and their level of self-knowledge of financial needs and potential solutions. One quadrant of the market was generally knowledgeable and sophisticated. Another quadrant had a high interest in the financial area of their lives but relatively little knowledge. The third quadrant had a reasonable knowledge base but this was not accompanied by any great level of interest. The final quadrant had little interest and little knowledge .
This segmentation generated a number of questions:
- What type of advice was best suited to each quadrant?
- Did the organization want to deliver that sort of advice?
- What was the organizational capability to deliver that advice (profitably)?
- Could the organization be developed to bridge any gaps?
The areas that showed most promise were those potential customers who either were interested in investing in their financial future but needed help in negotiating their way through the financial maze, or did not have the interest but wanted someone to do it for them, and do it well. These were the ‘Show it to me!’ and ‘Do it for me!’ customers.
Although those in the High–High quadrant were generally high net worth individuals, the people who fell into that category wanted a high level of service but were also more liable to shift their savings and investments from one financial institution to another fairly frequently. The Low–Low quadrant likewise required a high level of support but did not necessarily have the available funds to warrant that level of investment from the organization.
Once the primary focus for business development opportunities had been established, the next stage was to decide what sorts of things needed to happen for customer needs to be satisfied. This included outlining the behaviours and attitudes that customer-facing staff (and those back-office staff supporting them) needed to exhibit. Key areas included the ability to generate interest, to establish credibility, to have clarity of communication and to be proactive to customer needs.
The reorientation of the company to this particular strategy included the generation of a new set of company values. These values were not just a list of slogans but were translated into behavioural statements. These statements defined the preferred way of operating in the business and indeed also became part of the recruitment process.
The values were not only ‘nice-to-have’ or ‘motherhood and apple pie’, but were designed to align people within the organization to the company strategy and the preferred behaviours. So for example a value of ‘treat people well’ was translated into making people feel they are your number one priority, and treating all customers and each other with respect. The value of ‘say it as it is’ was translated into talking to customers and colleagues in a straightforward manner. These behaviours could be verified by observation or customer feedback. They could also be learnt.
Of course to get to the stage where frontline staff behaved in accordance with company strategy required other enabling actions, which were drawn from best practice and appropriate models of individual, team and organizational change.
Getting started
The whole change started with a comprehensive strategy review and the generation of a programme plan with specific projects covering areas such as brand development, systems development, business lead generation and defining the customer experience. This was kick started by the senior management team with some input from relevant stakeholders. However initially it was a ‘top-down’ process which drew a lot from the machine metaphor. Using Kotter’s terminology a sense of urgency was created (‘with the market as it is we cannot carry on as we have been doing’) and an overarching vision developed.
The next layer of managers below the senior management team were enlisted to form part of the guiding collation. A change management team was formed, tasked with managing the transition from both a task and people perspective, with sponsorship from and direct reporting line into the senior management team. Quite soon however the changes picked up their own momentum.
Gaining commitment
It became apparent that not everyone was dissatisfied with the status quo. People were a little unclear about the desirability of some of the changes, and some of the more impractical aspects of the proposed changes were accentuated. The senior management team by now had extended the members of the guiding coalition to involve a critical mass of 85 ‘strategy leaders’. It was their task to reinforce the need to change, and to develop a clarity of vision that could be translated into tangible objectives and behaviours throughout the organization.
This translation process occurred over several months, and became an iterative process with all staff. Conversations were had, which set out what the managers wanted to see but involved staff at the front line talking through the practicalities. This process raised some points about the original thinking which needed amending, and enabled staff to get a much better idea of what was required of them.
Breaking the mould
The transition from the old to the new was effectively dealt with by the good use of programme management, led by the senior management team, and supported by a specially constituted change management team. Feedback loops to and from key stakeholders including staff were an integrated part of the process.
The generation of a set of values which were translated into behavioural imperatives, coupled with values workshops with all staff, set a benchmark for the organizational culture. The values helped to minimize organizational politics by encouraging ‘straight talk’. This was impressively role modelled by the senior management team and the change management team, who were open and honest with both good news and bad.
A key aspect of the new way of doing things was the openness to ideas wherever they came from and the development of an enabling and empowering culture. Creativity, risk-taking and learning were encouraged through the co-option of diagonal slices of staff onto change initiative working groups and by scheduled reviews throughout the transition period.
Self-esteem and performance can drop during periods of change. In a sense this is unavoidable – a natural and normal reaction to change affecting individuals (see Personality and Change). Key interventions here included demonstrable listening to staff concerns and many examples of staff issues being dealt with in a way that satisfied them but did not compromise the general business direction. In addition objective third-party consultants were used as additional support for individuals and groups of individuals who were most affected by the changes. Line managers were prepared with full communication of the changes to pass on, and open access was given to more senior managers to tap into their knowledge and experience. Greater emphasis was put on coaching through the line, which quickly enabled managers to tackle performance issues arising from the change.
Building new teams
The realignment of the organization as a result of the new strategy had a number of knock-on effects on different teams. The senior team was a newly configured team at the beginning of the strategy review process, and acquired a new sales director part-way through the process. An important component of the time its members spent together was attending to their team development process. The development process was focused on the tasks in hand – strategy review and strategy implementation – but on a regular basis members took the time out to look at where they were as a team, and how they were performing and inter-relating.
The generation of the values was both a real and a symbolic act for the senior management team. Having generated the values, they translated them into actions for themselves. They offered this to the rest of the organization as a guideline, but wanted different parts of the organization to discover what the values meant for them personally as a part of a team. This, together with the senior management team role modelling the values, was seen as a crucial part of the process.
The realignment within the organization meant that other teams and groups throughout the organization were affected to a greater or lesser degree. For example, the increased focus on savings, investments and mortgages led to a division of labour and separate reporting lines for staff within the branch network. In addition the centralized contact centre was required to develop greater links and better lines of communication with the national advisor salesforce. Both these examples necessitated a breaking down of old groupings and the development of a new set of teams and consequent relationships.
Supporting individuals
People processes formed a large part of the change plan. This included a communication strategy that was in line with the new values of openness, honesty and straight talk. Processes were put in place to ensure that individuals displaced had clarity around their situation and guidelines as to how things would progress. Selection to new posts was made using an equitable process, and the new reward scheme was aligned to the new strategy and values.
Outplacement was provided for those leaving the organization and counselling provided for those who needed to talk their situation through in a confidential setting. Coaching and mentoring were provided for more senior managers who had to take up new roles and needed to make sense of the changes and make their own adjustments within themselves.