GLOBAL PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY

Challenge

The top leadership and HR leader of a $17B division of this $60B company wanted to drive a new way of working for a high-performing executive team and the organizations they led. While they consistently hit annual targets, they were risk-averse, siloed, and never dramatically exceeded market growth expectations. They were also caught in a “check with the boss” culture, which was a barrier to innovation.

Merryck Support

Working with HR and the leader, Merryck reviewed strategy documents, financial performance and growth forecasts, and prior internal assessments. We subsequently conducted 1:1 interviews with the leadership team and key stakeholders, identifying clear strengths, opportunities and blind spots. Deployed the Culture Values Assessment, providing the team with a view of current and desired cultural values, and the leadership implications. Each leader saw their individual results, as well as the compiled results of the entire team. We next facilitated a two-day session, in which the group:

• Reviewed the collective data in comparison to their individual results
• Identified priority values for advancing the strategy and performance of their organization
• For each crucial value, identified behaviors that would lead to or undermine the desired culture
• Applied those values in real-time to the business to develop specific plans for beating growth targets,
  collaborating across silos, and taking same-year actions in key markets
• Created and embraced a charter (their word) for cascading the values and making them real

Business Impact

Culturally and behaviorally, the group evolved, debated and embarked upon thoughtful risks and innovation, and exceeded that year’s targets, in some cases dramatically. Partly as a result of the change in values, they shifted their compensation to incentivize collaboration and innovation, and to ensure the new behaviors flowed throughout their global structure. Instead of looking to the President for approval, leadership meetings became highly interactive and action-focused as they problem solved across markets and functions. Within 18 months, following a total company re-org, the President was selected to run one of the company’s two major units, now including retail/consumer operations. Merryck again enlisted to repeat the process with the new leadership team.