Leadership Strategy Alignment and Mobilization
SITUATION
Business unit of a Global Pharma company headquartered in Europe
Some key plants had improved performance in recent years, but these improvements were driven mainly from the top
Down-the-line leaders and employees were mainly looking for senior managers to tell them what to do
Senior leadership team members were not behaving in a consistent way
The business unit VP felt a need to align the leadership team around a few core values and principles in order to generate more engagement and energy about building a world-class operating unit
SOLUTION
Held a series of workshops with senior leadership team, with work in between
Selected four core values from a broad range, and clarified among the team
Following the workshops, asked team members to identify situations that could be used to describe desired and undesired behaviors; built agreement on those
Incorporated values into evaluation systems for managers along with other performance measures
Held plant-level workshops to get people to internalize and formulate what the values meant specifically to them and their unit
RESULTS
Early effects show that the values are being referred to daily in the organization to address behavior issues
When critical situations occur or when decisions need to be made, the senior leadership team uses values as a checkpoint to guide them
Local adjustments of the values are part of a monthly follow-up routine and discussed in each team, down to the shop floor