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Applied Leadership Facilitation:
Problem: As part of a long-term company-wide transition effort to sustain continued global growth, the R&D organization of a leading, privately held pharmaceutical company needed to reconfigure its structure from a collection of legally separate, independent research facilities to a unified, global R&D organization capable of efficiently and effectively supporting the development of new products around the world. A critical challenge to making the transition was to ensure that the key leaders currently managing their respective facilities could envision an attractive future for themselves under the new structure -- with redefined roles. Organizationally, the change process needed to help break down any existing barriers between the separate facilities and develop new ways of operating that would promote greater efficiency and collaboration, while maintaining the organization’s responsiveness to the unique needs of specific regional markets.
Approach: We worked with the head of R&D and a small steering committee established by this executive to define a series of events and activities designed to bring key leaders from across the globe together to get to know one another better, and to collectively identify the critical strategic issues that needed to be addressed to move the initiative forward. By the end of the event, several key working groups had been identified and staffed with global teams to work on assigned issues over the course of the coming year. During that year, we coached all of the working groups on their efforts to both get each group’s assigned work done, as well as to promote lasting working relationships among all members of the group. At the end of the year, a second event was planned at which global leaders came together again to assess progress and to identify any remaining critical issues that needed to be addressed to successfully complete the change.
Results: By the time the second event took place, global leaders were very comfortable working with one another – their independent facility focus had smoothly shifted to a global organization focus. The leaders had also had enough of a hand in the process of defining the new organization that they were comfortable in their new roles, allowing the organization to successfully transitioned into a global structure.
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