The Client:
Pension Fund Administrator – Africa
The initial situation:
As a senior member of the Strategy Development Team, my role was to provide support in the redefining of the organisation values and culture, so that the revised strategy would be successfully implemented. Additional project brief was to help the senior leadership team to create absolute ownership of all the strategic objectives by the very people who would deliver this.
The Solution:
Initially as the Strategy development team was working on the business elements of the strategy, we worked with the leadership and HR teams, holding town hall meetings and sessions to identify the values that would bind this group of multi-cultural individuals. Material collected from these town hall sessions, were then shared with the leadership team. We facilitated several sessions with the SLT and introduced them to new ways of looking at and accepting the feedback from the staff. From the output we were able to work with the Leadership Team and the CEO to identify and define the values that would not only augment strategy execution but would drive that culture of discipline and engagement that the CEO wanted for the organisation.
We coached and mentored the department and business unit heads to cascade the strategic objectives to individual level.
The Solution (CONTD.)
Working with my colleagues – we ensured that the language used for cascade and communication of the business strategy was ‘accessible’ and ‘understood’ by all. The aim was to keep it simple – avoiding jargon that in our experience creates fear. Here the remit from the CEO was clear; ‘I want an environment where people have fun. They learn and are happy to come to work and are fully engaged to go above and beyond the call of duty. I want them to be proud to be our face to the public out there and do so with pride’!
We added value to the HR teams by mentoring them on ’effective change management’ ways and methods keeping in mind the need for creating psychological safety for all.
Feedback from the client & key stakeholder:
‘We learnt a lot from Zakeera and the strategy team and are grateful that she remains to hand when we need a gentle guide or nudge for implementing something scary! ‘
Our reflections:
We ere cognisant that what may have worked with other clients in other locations may not necessarily be right for this client, however we had underestimated the desire of learning that we would encounter with the team and the staff! It did stretch us, but we did not fall short and left them energised for further learning, we provided /shared free resource areas.
