Fast-growing retailer
Upgrading communication capability
This is the case of the well known, large and fast growing retailer which invited us to help them support fast growth with a communication review.
In fact it was less a review of existing practices and more a developmental process as little existed to review. We were amazed to find so little infrastructure for such a huge and admired brand.
But once we had started to interview the senior European management team we realized that growth had been fast and nothing had fallen over because of the lack of more formal communication infrastructure. It felt like a giant start-up in which people instinctively connected. Plus the management team had enjoyed the huge benefits of consistency and good relations. It all just flowed.
Colleague workshops revealed more insight. As explorers in organizations we get a quick fix on whether they are fundamentally happy and productive or a bit repressed and dysfunctional. Here there was joie de vivre and love of the brand. There was also little reported use of information as power; such a hallmark of the repressed & dysfunctional organization.
It easily explained why they had got where they were, pretty well relying on short lines of command, local teams and most of all collective goodwill. So what was the problem?
It boiled down to both problem and opportunity. The problem was that fast growth was stretching those short lines of command and there were just too many new people to expect them all to pick the company culture up intuitively.
The opportunity lay the in providing a simple communication infrastructure that would:
- Enable the European management team to present a singular profile and sense of one company.
- Make explicit to everyone the underpinning beliefs of the brand so that colleagues did not just have to guess and sense it.
- Make it more easy for newer territories to pick up on the best of what had preceded them in the European start-up markets in terms of values, ways of doing things and the customer journey.
- Operationally enable people quickly to assimilate standard practices.
- Enable the rapid sharing of positive brand experiences and news.
- Provide opportunity for feedback.
The initial review process was reviewed at the first ever European leadership meeting and agreement breached to pursue execution which is being enthusiastically embraced. Expect more!
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