Change

A European Business School

Bath Consultancy Group worked with a European business school that needed to move from arms length manager training and development to a closer more integrated relationship with key leading companies, thus ensuring repeat business and being able to deliver more senior and more strategic development. 

The problem was the existence of a very individualistic culture in the company and the old psychological contract, which was based on “We’ll get bums on seats and you leave us alone. As a result they were not able to develop collective relationships with other faculty members and pass on knowledge about client needs etc. However, working with the whole faculty proved very difficult – although they acknowledged the problem they found it difficult to change their behaviour. This faculty-wide culture also acted as a dead-weight on the small number of people who wanted the change to happen.

BCG helped them set-up a Business Development Group which we isolated from the rest of the faculty for a period of months. They developed their own internal culture, which was highly collaborative and highly client-centred. This was enormously successful for the school and for the individuals. Over a period of time we were then able to mainstream this work and bring the rest of the faculty along with it resulting in improved business performance and strengthened client relationships.

A Large Telecommunications Company

Getting HR roles to work together - a large group event

One of Bath Consultancy Group’s global clients found that there was a challenge in the making the global HR model of Business partners, operational HR and specialist support work in the home country where over 40% of the staff were based at HQ.

The interfaces between roles and the collaboration between roles needed to improve .A year on from the introduction of the new HR model, BCG facilitated a 100 person conference where all the HR roles were present, and helped them build from what was working, and understand why this worked, as well as identifying the difficulties.

Results from the conference included a minimum framework for meeting and collaborating; job rotation to improve career development; a clearer road map for HR; and a better understanding of how to manage boundary issues with management teams.

People valued the open discussion that was instigated between different parts of HR with all HR parts under the same roof at the same time understanding/knowing each other's roles better. The conference also provided an excellent opportunity for people to meet colleagues, to hear issues and to start to understand how to resolve them.

For the business partners there was a ‘letting go' of operational roles; trusting colleagues to take them on, and understanding how they could work together and agree boundaries on their respective roles.

A Leading Consulting Partnership

Transforming the client base

A leading consulting partnership was performing well and growing in line with the market. The problem, however, was that the client base included a long list of small clients for whom the cost of sales was unsupportable. As a result, the organisation was less profitable than its competitors. 

The partners recognised the issue but they were not relinquishing the minor clients. The business was operating on a functional basis with clients ‘held’ by key partners based on who did most work with an organisation. Large-scale work was being lost to competitors who could afford to put staff onto major accounts on a full-time basis.

Bath Consultancy Group worked with the executive team to develop a programme that would shift the culture. The main targets of the programme were the partners and directors; the objective being to shift them to a position where they could maximise the firm’s rate of contact across all services. This meant that the perceived role of partner had to shift from technical expert to being that of client ‘mentor or coach’.

Reward mechanisms and targets were restructured to allow for the creation of account teams on the top 50 accounts. There were also rewards for closing minor accounts.

The programme became extremely popular and ran for more than three years; all partners in consulting adopted the new ways of working and were also clear it had increased profitability. In addition, the top 10 accounts had significant increases in revenue.

A New Approach for a Local Authority

A large urban local authority in the UK had internal problems with poor performance connected with bad relationships between key stakeholder groups. 

Each group felt like the victim of one or other of the groupings, for example the public complained about poor services from the political leadership, which put pressure on executive directors who put pressure on to the rest of the organisation. At the same time the executive directors withheld information and resources because they knew the pressure would continue and be renewed. Other groups behaved in the same way.

BCG helped them to see that each group was not only a victim but also created the conditions that made life difficult for other groups. At the same time, the local authority had a very effective way of working, which was when informal task groups worked together for short periods of time with specific purposes. At a personal level they knew each other well and were very productive in this setting.

BCG worked with each group to help them understand the problems when they worked the old way and then to look at how they could move from a formal way to using a more informal approach. Action learning sets were set up to help managers spot “over the horizon” issues and direct them into the informal system where the virtuous circle was operating.

The key successes from this process were significantly reduced management costs and better communication and cross-boundary working.

Developing Leadership Culture at University of Surrey

The University commissioned Bath Consultancy Group to support their change and transformation process to become a top 10 UK university and a top 100 global university. It was recognised that this would require a change and transformation process for at least two to three years that linked strategic change, culture change and leadership development right across the University.  BCG has worked with the University for the last two years.

This work has included coaching and developing the Executive Board and delivering some focussed coaching on Transformational Leadership to the key members of the Executive Board; designing and delivering a leadership development process for the top 100 leaders and advising on how the University can continue to manage new ways of engaging across all parts of the University. A very good foundation has been established for quickly moving forward on all three fronts on strategy, culture and leadership and BCG is currently engaged with evaluating progress on all three areas.

Improving Inter-divisional Relationships in a Large Bank

When it comes to helping companies develop processes that will enable them to work more effectively both within and between divisions, Bath Consultancy Group has a lot of experience, such as the company’s recent work with the Operations and Technology (O&T) division of a large international bank.

A newly appointed head of the O&T division recognised that interfaces between customers, head office and the country heads of O&T needed improving.

There was potential for those based in other countries to see the center of the function that collected data for the head office, instead of one that shared knowledge and added value. Relationships revolved around reacting, delivering, maintaining and cost-saving, rather than strategy.

The need to develop his leadership team was recognized immediately by the new manager. With the help of Bath Consultancy Group, the leaders identified patterns that were stopping them from working effectively with customers and country managers globally.

Leadership top team events were held and action plans were established to help the team work in new ways across a global structure.

As a result, relationships with key customers improved significantly on a strategic partnership level, those based in other countries saw O&T as sharing their knowledge more successfully, and change happened effectively and efficiently.

Realigning Strategy and Culture in a Context of Major Political Change

Capespan, a South African-based business, was in the process of moving from regulation to deregulation.  
Increased competition and a consolidation of retailers, along with a major political change in South Africa, meant the company would have to take a giant leap in competitiveness.

The business needed to change its strategy in order to succeed so, with the help of Bath Consultancy Group, the top 25 leaders and board members undertook a Strategic Review.

The review led to a strategic change, which included a merger with Unifruco and the creation of "Capespan" as a brand. In order to reap benefits from the merger, the CEO recognised that there would need to be a programme of culture change throughout the organisation.

The first step was to create a shift in the thinking within the company, which had been owned by growers, from being somewhat parochial to truly global. Initially there was resistance to this change - so Bath Consultancy Group worked in partnership with HR to overcome this.

The people within the company needed to experience the "new reality" in order to change so a change agent network was created to work with teams at all levels. Events were held to shift people towards the new reality through an experiential shift. A key technique was that they were taught to think like a competitor.

As a result, Capespan stayed as No 1 exporter of fruit in South Africa and held on to its market position better than any other regulated product business after deregulation. The company became a global supplier with a total "fruit basket" concept and the change happened more effectively and with greater speed than it would otherwise have done.

Remodelling IT Through Culture Change

The company had been through five heads of IT infrastructure in just two years.

The IT function of a major investment bank was perceived by its customers as providing poor service and being unresponsive to changing business-driven needs.

Partnership relationships had broken down between IT infrastructure and applications development and there was a lack of clear direction. There was also an apparent inability to anticipate and respond to rapidly-changing business requirements in overall growth; as well as a bullying culture that led to poor performance and low morale.

Bath Consultancy Group's approach was to do a cultural assessment through one-to-one interviews and focus groups, which did not just identify but also helped to shift culture. This was played back to the top team at an off-site and led to a series of initiatives - both changing communications and leadership. A key part was connecting and supporting middle managers.

As a result, feedback from stakeholders improved significantly. In addition, computer network performance indicators improved as a result of improving leadership team working in Network Services - they were able to work on fixing business as usual and changing the bank for the future.

Shaping Innovative Programmes and Projects with PSMW

Bath Consultancy Group worked for 18 months with the Public Service Management Wales (PSMW) Team, which is hosted by Welsh Assembly Government. 

The team aims to develop the capacity of public service managers and organisations to work effectively in collaboration across boundaries in order to improve public services for and with users, citizens and communities. PSMW is itself a partnership with over 80 member organisations in Wales. 

A BCG team helped to shape the innovative programmes and projects that PSMW commissions to support the aim of citizen centred services. In 2004 the Making the Connections strategy document gave PSMW an even wider role in helping reshape the Welsh Public Service workforce.

Some of the key PSMW activities that BCG has helped shape are:

• Connect 4 Cymru – a ground breaking programme designed to support and develop middle managers involved in driving cross boundary change
• People Exchange Wales – facilitating interchange opportunities between public sector organisations
• Action learning sets for senior managers across public service

BCG’s approach has been to make the medium the message. This has meant shifting mindsets:

• From a purchaser/provider client/contractor relationships to deep and committed partnership
• From linear planning to continuous cycles of planning, action, reflection and adjustment
• From an exclusive focus on individual development to relationships and systems development

A Venture Capital Company

Moving to a truly global business

A venture capital company, which was in the process of moving from the public sector to the private sector, needed to succeed as a FTSE 100 company within two years.

Although the company had a reputation as a successful investment organisation with strong individuals and teams, it lacked the necessary strategy, culture and leadership style. The existing culture was British and bureaucratic. The executive team accepted that they had to move from being brilliant investment managers to managing a leading global business. They also needed a greater customer focus in order to help grow the international business.

The CEO recognised that a new strategy had to be developed, rolled out and implemented within a two-year window and worked with Bath Consultancy Group to clarify the correct strategic direction and appropriate leadership style. Each part of the organisation was then involved in adjusting behaviours and creating a new style.

The result was that the share price doubled in the first two years and then doubled again within the next two years. In the most admired companies survey the organisation moved from being low in the FTSE 250 companies to reaching 46th and since then has become the leading venture private equity company globally.

Developing a Communications Strategy for an Investment Bank

The IT department of a large investment bank needed to cope with an intense period of rapid growth. The department’s main priorities were to put a focus on front office clients and to cope with changing business priorities. 

There were several challenges that needed to be overcome - interdepartmental friction, mutual distrust between teams and lack of effective delegation, as well as internal communications being characterised by the latest story on the grapevine, rather than by official communications media.

Bath Consultancy Group worked with the company to facilitate a two-way communications process using focus groups, interviews and other culture sampling techniques. BCG also created an effective feedback loop joining top, middle and bottom levels of the organisation and assisted with creating a newsletter.

As a result, the department was able to unite around a common purpose and strategy, leaders were able to increase the level and rate of delegation because people were clearer about what they needed to do, and management regained control of communications.