Business Imperative
This internal strategic technology group was faced with an unprecedented need for speed and efficiency in all its markets. The global bank that it served was looking to this group to provide unprecedented levels of technological responsiveness and effectiveness. The mandate was clear: in all things "Technology," they needed to lead … or get out of the way. The parent bank was perfectly willing to outsource many strategic technology functions if that's what it took to get the results they needed.

This dramatic shift in expectations placed unfamiliar demands on a group that had originally been formed as a "necessary internal utility." The people of this group, while committed to high levels of quality and performance, had never felt the sting of competition, the urgency of survival, or the threat of replacement. The entire culture, or more simply, "the way things get done" had to be shaken up dramatically … and quickly.

Leadership Response
From past experience in other organizations, this group's leaders knew they could count on the expertise of Stratton Consulting Group's cultural change team to help them move more quickly and unerringly down a productive path of change. With an outsider's objectivity as well as validated approaches and tools, Stratton could assist leaders with unique levels of strategic insight, guidance, inquiry, and support.

Stratton designed a process to first establish the underlying attributes and dynamics of the existing culture and then define a targeted approach to identifying and achieving their "desired state." The "new" culture needed to grow out of its existing tradition while becoming dramatically better matched to the explicit challenge of the overall Bank's clear mandate.

In Stratton's assessment, certain pivotal issues emerged:

• Low levels of trust within and across the organization
• Lack of responsiveness/speed in achieving necessary outcomes
• Unclear/changing roles, relationships, and responsibilities
• Ineffective/inappropriate staff alignment
• Lack of costing knowledge (service costs/benchmarks)

The path forward was clear, but leaders knew they needed to act quickly to instill the high levels of alignment and urgency needed across the organization to effect real change. In addition, because of the scope and scale of the organization, work would have to be done on multiple fronts to make any meaningful progress. They couldn't do this alone. In addition to developing an internal cadre of "Change Agents" to help lead the charge from within, they asked Stratton to dig deeper and coordinate the broad scope of cultural change processes required for overall success.

Accelerating Toward Success
Stratton designed and facilitated several leadership sessions to help managers quickly, explicitly, and emphatically:

• Confront the issues (whether previously identified or waiting to be surfaced)
• Define new team behavioral agreements (establishing the "team culture" from which changes would ultimately emerge)
• Determine an effective decision-making and accountability process (creating the governance through which change could be managed)
• Build new team skills (preparing and equipping individuals for the levels of collaboration needed to create change quickly)
• Solidify commitment to implement and maintain necessary changes ("making it real")

Partnering with the client's internal resources, Stratton helped design and facilitate twenty Employee Orientation Sessions to engage approximately 2,000 people in the compelling business case for change and introduce the technology group's new strategic direction. As always, Stratton structured the sessions to ensure that participants could begin exploring the implications of change in terms of their daily jobs and lives.

Concurrently, Stratton worked to support the senior management team, by helping to design processes and provide coaching to:

• Improve the ongoing effectiveness of team dialogue (keeping it honest, efficient, challenging, and productive)
• Enhance leaders' ability to continuously think strategically
• Increase team discipline and rigor around strategic goals and deliverables
• Facilitate highly productive management team meetings and working sessions

Although much progress was being made to transform their culture and performance across the board, a key success factor going forward resided in the middle management layers, especially between discrete working groups within this technology division. These groups existed in diverse geographic and functional settings, creating multiple pockets with unique cultural challenges and issues within the overall organization.

Stratton worked with leaders to identify leverage points within and between these groups, both in the US and overseas. The team then designed, developed, and facilitated working sessions that not only helped identify and overcome operational bottlenecks that inhibited performance, but also enabled the groups to achieve outcomes vital to their market-ready strategy and initiatives. During these sessions, participating groups made explicit commitments to each other - including clear timeframes - to resolve any remaining issues.

Results
When asked what had actually changed through the process, team members cited the following:

• Better "organizational experience;" with real clarity of expectations, roles and responsibilities
• Improvement in the levels of trust and mutual respect
• Real progress in how we engage and communicate with customers
• Development of a more global view
• New clarity and alignment around mission and a shared sense of urgency

Competitive Efficiency Results in 12 months include:

• Driving down unit operating costs, from 21% higher than peer groups to 2% lower
• Improving competitive pricing in data storage and mainframe processing from as high as 18% higher than market average to 11% below market average

Competitive Customer Experience Results in 12 months include:

• Increase in brand familiarity, from 22% to 86%
• Increase in brand loyalty, from 24% to 42%
• Decrease in percentage of customers identified as "high risk," from 44% to 23%