The challenge
Looking to broaden their product portfolio, our client acquired a company from a different pharmaceutical segment.
Faced with multiple cultures, processes and duplicative teams they needed to rapidly align on the best way to build an efficient business that delivered the best for its customers.
They needed to carefully design the merged entity and outline the rationalisations, taking care to pull on the best assets and processes from each.
Merging cultures is no mean feat, hence bringing in external facilitation to support this challenging process.
What did we do?
- We brought together 120 senior leaders from both companies, across all regions
- Strong facilitation and intense exercises – some purely behavioural and kinaesthetic - were key to bringing together disparate parties together and building trust to enable the right decisions (and concessions) to be made
- Built and brought to life different operating model options to suit different market scenarios, and stress tested their effectiveness in each market to determine the target solution for each, together with allowable variations
- Completed a live 'reverse auction' where each market pitched for their position on the roll-out, leading to the agreement of a 3-year programme, with country by country roll out in 5 implementation waves
What was the impact?
- Massively accelerated the design of the rationalised entities in a process that would have taken 6-9 months through a traditional process
- Our visual engagement tools allowed us to powerfully bring to life how each operating model scenario would work in the real world, making it easier and faster for the participants to understand the best choices for their market
- By getting each market to pitch, we created the urgency required to shape a 3 year wave plan that would deliver benefits and ROI fast
- Forged a more aligned mindset across the organisation to work together and make it happen for their markets and their clients, whilst creating the momentum and urgency to accelerate progress
6
months of time saved
