New power through organizational and cultural change

People & Organization + Organizational Transformation

How we helped a communications division break down silos, clarify decision-making, and build a collaborative performance culture

Initial Situation

The organizational structure and lack of a shared vision were hindering the performance of the communications division of an organization with just under 2,000 employees.

The division’s media-specific departments (TV, radio, print, online) were in four separate facilities, competing with one another. There was no mechanism for co-ordination, no central planning function and performance was focused 100% on their own department.

This resulted in expensive duplicate structures and led to low effectiveness and efficiency. Teams working in parallel even led to mixed messages.

Therefore, the executive board wanted to dissolve the silo structure of the division with its +70 employees and to change its corporate culture into a collaborative one. A viadoo Guide was hired for this task.

Challenge

Main challenge for us was to break down silo structures in which the employees had settled for decades.

Fear of losing status, responsibilities and comforts spread among them.

In fact, members of middle management had to rethink and relinquish competencies, and long-standing animosities came to the surface.

As a result, only a minority of the employees in the comms department were in favour of the new culture of collaboration.

Solution

First of all, it had to be made unmistakably clear that the board wanted the reorganisation and that there was no way of getting around.

We then supported the project team to develop a joint mission statement.

We then translated the vision of a united communication division into clear goals and aligned the organizational system behind it (defining roles, assigning responsibilities for decisions, etc.).

We then addressed the fears and reactance of middle management. To this end, our concept was to give them as much freedom of action as possible in shaping the path towards the given target.

Therefore, we had implemented working groups on specific topics or issues. Other members of the staff could also participate voluntarily.

Results

In the end, we created a simplified, more effective communication department, providing clear roles and accountability, and fostering organization-wide cooperation. We even designed a Corporate Newsroom setup for the future.

New meeting structure led to more integrated comms and started helping to overcome silo thinking.

Joint process & role definition, tool selection, working groups, and tangible benefits led to collaboration.

Sticking to production sites & modernizing hardware & software increased buy-in and reduced resistance.

To embed the new collaborative culture, executives anchored it in their teams by identifying behaviour, KPIs, rules, parameters that ran counter to the new mindset, and developed KPIs to track success.

These changes led to faster, better decisions, resulting in higher effectiveness und reduced costs. In fact, it safed ten percent of the overall budget.

As we naturally take the confidentiality of our clients seriously, we anonymize our success stories. However, the cases are real.