The Hybrid Experience

THE SITUATION

Our client has an iconic brand, and a track record and legacy of industry leadership across technologies, customer relationship and organizational management. The longstanding strengths became weaknesses however, as a radical shift in technology, customer behavior and global disruptive competitors emerged… We engaged with the Executive team and the extended team of managers across business lines, product categories and service categories, customer segments, territories and functions.

THE CHALLENGE

The client’s organization has grown into a highly efficient, professional and specialized machine over many years, leading to the historic success. The expertise has been designed to respond to specific needs in the market, and to respond to change in a certain way. Both the way the organization responds to needs and to change went obsolete over a relatively short time. This is not about the people, the organization is packed with highly skilled and competent people and leaders. It is about inevitable organizational inertia… It is not an option to re-engineer the entire organization. Overhauling the complete system of product offering, organization structure, financial model, compensation etc would be too disruptive to the organization. Changing only part of the system would not generate the expected impact. And doing nothing would lead to an inevitable decline of the business.

THE SOLUTION

We started with a one day workshop with the executive leadership team, exploring the principles of a potential future. We continued to explore how perspectives and perceptions differed and converged among the participants. We finished with a set of rapid micro-workshops on possible game-changers in the different functions. This workshop allowed to set up small virtual work-groups (speedboats) in the run of a few weeks, and these speedboats went into immediate execution of business initiatives to test elements of the future business model. There were clear instructions, training and governance of the speedboats, which allowed them to experiment freely without the inertia of the larger organization and within the boundaries of the strategy and directions of the company.

THE IMPACT

The participants in the projects were motivated to engage and take on the challenge, as they co-created the project in a way that worked for them. The conversation about change and growth changed and people found common ground to work together,circumventing potential resistance to change. A-HA moments and realizations were generated and shared with the larger audience. The speed boats made quick, tangible progress which provided credibility to the project and confidence of the way forward to the business and the company at large.