A leading UK retailer had recently undergone a takeover and needed to ensure alignment between the group’s strategy, and its own in-house plans. It also needed to overcome frustration amongst the leadership team that, despite a belief that strategy was clearly and consistently communicated, there was a general lack of engagement within the operational teams. The company was interested in whether OKRs could help them tackle some of these challenges directly, and help them to more widely embed an agile mindset.
A limited scope, pilot implementation allowed us to softly introduce a number of different concepts, such as cross functional working, greater transparency, and an open door policy where any members of staff, regardless of role or seniority, were encouraged to immerse themselves in the OKR process. The great benefit of running pilots is that they allow highly valuable intelligence about challenges and successes to be gathered and used to inform any wider rollout, helping to ensure higher impact and reduced risk in the long term, whilst the creation of a 'coalition of the willing' can be critical for the success of any change initiatives, ensuring both early engagement and providing the organisation with a ready made team of ambassadors to subsequently take the ideas and processes forward.
The result? Engagement immediately increased as a wide range of individuals from different parts of the organisation began to recognise systemic problems that weren’t unique to them or their areas within the organisation, coupled with the mandate and top level support to actually resolve them. A recognition of shared values and the need to place the creation of customer value at the centre of all decision-making. Greater alignment between group, business unit and personal objectives. And the quiet adoption of a more agile mindset.
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