The Work

I began my listening process in the first conversation I had with the leadership team before I formally started the role. Spending the time to understand their current pain points and concerns for the future. I also understood what was working and what foundations could be built upon.

The agency was nationally recognised for delivering excellent client work. The client relationships were stable and the commercial results were a solid base for improvement. Its people were engaged and attrition was relatively low. However, digital marketing adoption was low and the organisation needed to quickly grow its capability in digital to ensure it wasn't left behind by its competitors. The market was a large and important one and needed to embrace and adopt a global mandate for transformation.

These observations were my diagnostic entry point. When people are absorbing inefficiencies, dealing with duplication of effort, and still managing to deliver good work and enjoy their jobs, the organisation is succeeding in spite of itself.

My brief from the leadership team was simple with a clear and defined intent: simplify the organisation through a consolidation of its capabilities, remove silos that were creating duplication and inefficiencies and build a more streamlined client proposition.

The reframe to the organisation was clear: we will find what is getting in the way of what is working well and work together to remove it. Then we will build and strengthen our capability for the future.

Before any framework or change was proposed, I mapped workflows across each client portfolio and function. I identified every failure point, assessed and measured the impact in commercial terms. I identified where each scope of work was undefined and where it overran.

My findings were presented to senior leadership for agreement and sign-off on the scale and complexity of the problem. I had to design and implement the solution whilst maintaining business and client continuity. This meant that every piece of work required iteration and a 'test-and-learn' approach.

My objectives were:

• Design and deploy a centralised operating model: PMO, delivery and resource management, built from the ground up.
• Stabilise commercial and client health across a €30m+ portfolio. Build the foundations to achieve client growth.
• Ensure employee wellbeing and identify growth opportunities for high performers through the transformation. Retention for key talent was paramount.

I was a native English speaker leading a complex transformation in a German-speaking organisation. I couldn't rely on language for informal influence and every piece of communication required crafted translation. Every facet of change management and employee engagement had to be designed carefully to avoid any misinterpretation.

The organisation had a workers' council with the authority to veto any planned change. I saw this as an input to my design, not as an obstacle. I engaged the council early and every planned change was reviewed and approved by them. I held the same position throughout the process: every proposed change was being made for the benefit of the people doing the work.

At a high level the change sequence ran in five steps.

• Step One (Clarity) - Leadership experienced the diagnostic before anyone else and agreed the problem before the solution was shown. Always-on leadership communication to the organisation started from here.
• Step Two (Measure) - Measurement was defined before any deployment began.
• Step Three (Design) - The model was built in workshops with the people who would use it. Criticism was welcomed as part of the design process.
• Step Four (Train) - Teams were trained on the thinking behind each framework, as well as the tools. The technology went live only after the people were confident to work autonomously.
• Step Five (Engage) - A town hall was held once leadership had agreed the strategy. The purpose, the timeline, and the benefits were laid out to the whole organisation at once.

Dissent was expected and accepted. I stayed positive throughout the process, and always maintained my vision for the culture of inclusion the work was building. My position was that a purposeful strategy, clearly explained and genuinely inclusive, would move the majority, which it did.