University founded in 1413, one of Europe’s leading centres for teaching and research
Let’s talk business…
As a historical academic organisation, our client needed to change their way of doing business from a very bureaucratic and reactive approach to a significantly more commercially driven, performance orientated one.
Insight
Because of the complexity of the organisation, our first step was to take stock of its history, how it had evolved, its strengths, its challenges and of course its ambitions and aspirations.
Rather than use formal diagnostics, we took a gentle and inclusive approach to our ‘business immersion’. Using strategy sessions, focus groups and interviews we hosted many meaningful conversations with various stakeholders. This subtle, yet probing, in-depth analysis helped us get to the heart of the organisation in a consultative, inclusive manner.
Completing a review of organisational competence and comparing this to the organisation design helped everyone involved better understand the actual effectiveness of the organisation.
After this process, we were quoted as ‘knowing them better than they knew themselves’.
By engaging the wider business while getting ‘under the skin of the business’ we set the foundation not only for this project, but also for numerous projects we have been tasked with subsequently.
Action
Our insight helped us build and deliver a robust organisational development solution which included adjusting the organisational structure. To ensure this restructuring was successful and commercially focused, we created a ‘culture strategy’ and provided training and mentoring to the management and leadership teams to enable them to create the necessary cultural change themselves.
This support was also part of a ‘leadership development strategy’ where we designed and implemented a bespoke competency framework and associated talent-management frameworks, held assessment centres to ensure the right people were matched to the right roles, and delivered various leadership development interventions to help leaders take the organisation and its people forward in an effective way.
To help measure performance improvement, we also created and embedded a balanced scorecard approach, which is used to this day to manage the business.
Results
We’re happy to say pitchblue has successfully delivered a cultural transformation programme that has focused on nurturing the commercial knowledge, skills and competence necessary to drive the organisation forward. We have achieved:
- A refocused organisation with a genuine eye for business.
- A more rationalised and less top-heavy structure, better able to respond to changing customer needs.
- A significantly improved level of commercial acumen across the entire management population.
- A talent management system that ensures the business has the ongoing capability to achieve their strategic business plans.
