Organisational Change

CLIENT: Publisher

SECTOR: Media and Publishing

PROJECT: Experiencing, Leading and Implementing Strategic Change

THEMES: Organisational Development

AUDIENCE: Divisional Heads and their Teams

LOCATION: US, UK and Mainland Europe

The Organisation

Founded in 1880, our client publishes a wide range of medical and scientific publications and journals in both printed and electronic/online versions. It has a presence in 24 countries and employs 7,000 journal editors, as well as 70,000 editorial board members and 200,000 reviewers.

The Project Context

The Company produces high quality publications to inform the medical profession, including doctors, nurses, hospitals and medical and nursing schools, researchers and pharmaceutical companies. It now faced the challenge of fully embracing the electronic age. necessitating considerable changes in working practices and in the skill sets required to remain a continuously innovative global market leader, able to develop and apply specialist knowledge creatively and profitably. This significant shift required senior level commitment to develop the change strategy and drive it forward within each leader’s business area.

The Requirement

The business required support to work with the management population globally, initially in the US, UK and mainland Europe. The key deliverables were to help to identify the ‘live’ Cases for Change that will support the overall global change programme, and to ensure that managers had the requisite skills to manage the change for themselves and their teams.

The Solution

As a key partner/deliverer, Our perspective on change and transition drew on our experience of working with client organisations’ change and transition requirements. In this instance, our client required us to focus on a core group of 400 Leaders of Change. Follow-through activity ensured the understanding and buy-in of their direct reports. The project’s diagnostic and development phases enabled us to develop a blended model of Webinar, Workshop and Coaching support, resourced internationally.

Objectives for managers included:

• understanding the strategic impact of change
• developing emotionally intelligent responses to people issues
• recognising their responsibility to encourage their people’s commitment to change
• identifying the challenges and opportunities for leadership when delivering change
• agreeing the Action Plan to deliver the desired outcomes from business specific Cases for Change
• agreeing on follow-through support activities.

Programmes were delivered as both a strategic and an operational intervention, designed to ensure that participants gained a clear view of available change management approaches. Highly participative and interactive workshops incorporated change facilitation diagnostics and models, as well as exercises enabling participants to explore models of change theory. Participant outputs included a clear personal change action and development plan, and a greater understanding of their own leadership strengths and development needs.

The agreed approach provided our client with a valuable opportunity to assess how to pragmatically apply acknowledged best practice to ‘close to home’ change and to transition issues relevant to Managers in support of their implementation strategies and plans.

Evaluation

Feedback from the Leadership Team has been very positive. All participants are  focused on the skills and behaviours necessary to change the culture and meet company and client expectations, and leaders now demonstrate a greater appetite for development and change. Team and Individual Coaching assignments are continuing, and ASK^® has been approached to roll-out the programme in AsiaPac.

Delegate Quotes

“The Anglo-Dutch business has embarked on a slow-but-steady transformation from a company associated with a hotchpotch of trade journals and events to one providing professional information services.”

“It has definitely opened some minds in terms of their reactions to change and it was great that we got to experience it as a group.”“Slowly but surely, there has been a “sea change of perception”, as one analyst called it, as the business has regained its status as a solid [organisation] to invest in.”