Decoding uniting a unicorn

Situation

How to decode and spread the success DNA of one of Europe’s fastest-growing companies while running even faster?

The founders and management team realized that to secure future success while still growing its business rapidly across multiple markets. There was a need to define and scale the success DNA of the organization.

The company had grown to 3000 employees, and the pressure on key players in the organization to both deliver on their growing promises, onboard people, and stay alive and sound was often an unsolvable equation. High performers joining the company had a similar hard task in offloading these key people since they were under high pressure to deliver. The mass of the organization did not know the core purpose of the company and therefore mistook the company for any traditional player.

The founder had wanted to do this earlier but had had a hard time finding the right support, and this was too important to fail with and all of a sudden, instead they were 3000 people in great need of support.

The Task

People Heart Business were invited as partner in this situation. A situation with a great need of support and yet many conflicting priorities. The task was as often in the partnerships jointly defined. To leverage the potential in the organization there was a need to stop running and prioritize defining the success DNA to further scale and professionalize the organization for future success. The task to both define and align around purpose, culture, add strategic focus areas. People Heart Business was equally focused on getting the right things in the fancy power points as building a movement for the success DNA, and therefore the work to a large extent relied on co-creation with the organisation.

The solution

  • Through a 6 months co-creation project, gather the management team, leaders, and employees in the organization to analyze, discuss, and define critical aspects of the Success DNA.
  • Define external trends that will impact the organization going forward and, in this context, contribute to strategic organizational learning and development of relevant direction and expertise.
  • Build trust within and between organizational units to better understand and collaborate around strategic priorities.
  • Build a framework for “the company way” including purpose, culture, and strategic focus areas while simultaneously strengthening leadership capabilities, and most importantly ownership for the realization of the Success DNA in both senior management, earlier bottlenecks and employees out in the organization.

The results

Wide alignment and engagement for the organization’s success DNA, robust and ready to take on the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.

  • Awareness and engagement for the journey ahead, in the core and width of the organization through an accessible company model covering critical aspects of the success – the purpose, culture, and strategy.
  • Allyship for the journey through involvement in the process and clear expectations on leaders and employees to contribute to the success through individual and joint ownership.
  • Ability to scale the success DNA through a leadership toolkit supporting strategy and culture into action in all parts of the organisation.
  • Distributed leadership for the success through awareness and training of leaders throughout the organisation.
  • Increased collaboration across functions and markets enabled by uniting people around joint strategic focus areas, culture, and purpose.

Partner quotes