The Challenge
After undergoing multiple reorganizations due to M&A since 2016, a multi-billion-dollar (5B) global petrochemical organization with 4800+ employees were left with a fragmented culture, short-term financial focus, and some micromanaging leadership whose style of command and control exacerbated already stressful employee experiences. These issues were preventing the company from becoming agile and effective in an ever-changing industry.
Our Approach
A 3-Year Ongoing Culture Transformation Journey to move from independent companies to fostering one Global Culture.
Together, we designed a Culture Transformation Journey to drive behavior and mindset shifts. This global initiative involved everyone in the organization, from the President, VPs, and global leaders to operational staff and factory employees.
Modeling Success for Sustainable Change
We utilized Axialent’s Conscious Business methodology and frameworks as well as the ADKAR Change model to help leaders model the desired culture and ensure successful knowledge transfer to employees.
Key program elements included:
- Quantitative Culture Assessment (OCI: Organizational Culture Inventory from Human Synergistics) in 2019 and Qualitative Culture assessments (Interviews and Focus Groups) every 2 years to measure progress, beginning in 2021.
- Throughout 2020-2022, we conducted a series of five 2-day workshops (adapted to webinars during the pandemic) for senior leaders in each country. Sessions focused on action plans, coaching to shift mental models, and tools (behaviors and skills) to increase effectiveness in day-to-day management, communication, and decision-making, as well as a plan for individual behavioral assessments every 2 years to measure progress (LSI: Lifestyles Inventory from Human Synergistics).
- A 2-day High-Performance Team offsite (in 2022) for the President and VPs, including The Patrick Lencioni assessment framework including individual and team action plans supported with individual coaching.
- A Culture Ambassador program to accredit internal facilitators, ensuring the program’s scalability and transfer of skills to the remainder of the organization.
- 8 Culture Dynamics: to reflect as a team on the Culture Manifesto, the behaviors that drive culture, and to help achieve professional and personal goals. Meetings were 90 minutes and conducted through a Top-Down cascading process facilitated internally, starting with the President and working down through all levels of the organization.
- 6 E-learning courses: Self-paced interactive modules to empower all employees to deepen their learning, featuring Conscious Business frameworks applied to everyday scenarios.
- 6 Culture Bits: short videos capturing the essence of key Culture Dynamics distributed internally to non-exempt employees.
Our Impact
In terms of reach, we worked with over 120+ Global Leaders in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, UK, and USA, introducing the behavior changes required for the desired culture shift.
We also trained approximately 40 internal facilitators through the culture ambassador program and reached 1900+ additional employees through the Culture Dynamics and E-learning modules.
Our client’s Culture Transformation journey is an ongoing project with progress measured every 2 years. The latest data shows a significant increase in constructive behaviors (affiliative/collective achievement, trust/humanistic-encouraging) and a decrease in the defensive passive-aggressive culture (blaming others/oppositional and avoidance).
The Net Impact score confirms a successful transfer of the Conscious Business concepts into the organization, both at an individual and team level, resulting in outcomes such as:
- Increased awareness of undergoing transformations
- Increased engagement, motivation, and a sense of purpose
- Visibly higher levels of collaboration
- Progressing toward a coaching leadership culture that fosters empowerment, authentic communication, and accountability
Furthermore, the global culture transformation project became a key lever to:
- Build a cohesive, aligned, and high-performance Leadership Team
- Clarify and align the way people are expected to think, act, and interact at work
- Empower employees to adopt effective mindsets & behaviors on three culture pillars (Empowerment, Agility, Open and Authentic Communications) in their daily work and interactions
- Execute the company business strategy: Globalization, Digitization, and Expansion
The true success of culture transformation rests in the people. Our approach empowers internal resources to make things happen, with managers preaching what they learned, and individuals at all levels putting new systems into practice and holding one another accountable. We sincerely value the hard work and contribution of our client to make this project and this journey a success.
