Building a Cohesive Culture across Boundaries
Overcoming the challenge of Pocket-Cultures!
Problem
Our client, a leading provider of furniture and home offerings in the GCC region, with retail locations in 7 countries and with more than 4,500 Employees, was facing some formidable challenges in the new era and given the expansion plans to open more locations throughout the region, they need to be urgently resolved. More specifically, it was noticed that despite the established values of the organisation, the culture in the HQ was not consistent with the culture in the branches at other locations and at other countries. At the same time, there was inconsistency in the customer voice across the various branches. This resulted in a decrease in Employee Engagement, despite the growing revenues, enhancing fears that top talents will be migrating to competition due to the increased pressure. Furthemore, the client’s culture team noticed that there was a disconnection between the management at the HQ and the management at the branches. Given the above, the Consultants of TTM Associates were invited to help enhance the process of examining the current state of the client’s values, to embark on a journey of cultural improvement and values reinforcement throughout the organisation, with a special focus on “Teamwork” value, whilst taking into consideration all the client’s core values.
Client Needs
After digging deeper during the needs’ analysis phase, the Consultants of TTM Associates together with the client’s team decided to assess the Culture’s Values and Employees Engagement levels across the organisation in all the locations throughout the region. The TTM’s approach on Culture was implemented to deeply assess the entire situation.
This entailed:
- More than 4,500 Employees
- Retail locations in 8 cities throughout the Middle East
- 7 Level Hierarchical structure
- More than 37 nationalities
TTM Solution
The TTM team implemented a multistep approach for Culture transformation
Strategic Thrust review:
- Examined the synchronization between the business strategy, internal system(s) and structure and if they are consistent with the clients’ aspiration
Values-Assessment
- Runa Values Assessment exercise across the organisation using the Barrett Values Survey to identify:
a) The Current Organisational Values
b) The Individual values preferences
c) The Aspired Organisation Values
d) The Culture entropy
Coaching the client’s values team on the results which was focused on:
- Making them aware of the Gap between the Current vsthe Desired culture (organisation wise)
- The organisation’s Culture Entropy: the percentage of energy spent on unproductive work
- Sectoral: Different Branches, different departments, and Employee Levels
- Values Gaps: between the desired and current sectors’ cultures
- Individual executive team leaders’ values assessment and their impact on the organisation’s culture
- Fit evaluation of the current values to the strategic thrust and on the desired culture
- Assessing the Values Dictionary and developing a clear Road Map for values activation
Outcome
This innovated initiative, enable the client to revamp their values and synchronize them with the vision, the business strategy, and the organisational structure. At the same time, the client developed and simplified their values directory into easy to understand and applicable set of behaviours. Finally, the client enhanced their internal capacity of their Values champions to launch their Values-Based Organisational culture across all branches with a clear road map and a values activation plan. As a result, Employee Loyalty was greatly enhanced, leading to greater levels of Employee Performance, increased Employee Engagement levels, thus further enhancing the entire Employee Experience.
