Scenario
A global airline with a reputation for excellence wanted to stay ahead of its competition. This involved studying customers’ expectations and identifying its next strategic move. After accomplishing this, one of the next steps called for changing the culture of the airline.
Approach Adopted
No one activity can change the culture of an organization; it involves multiple activities happening simultaneously. So in phase one, leaders had carried out initiatives such as CEO speeches, training, revising of reward and recognition, reviewing processes, developing new products, identifying the service champion and launching internal newsletters.
In phase two, they launched a new communications message that articulated the critical business reasons the airline was changing. Leaders also explained to staff members what they would be expected to do differently. The communications included capturing successful service experiences that exemplified the strategy in action, then turning them into a book of stories. The book was given to all the stations in 60 countries to communicate behaviors that the company expected.
Simultaneously, they identified ways to align the people with the process changes by revising rewards and recognition programs. They also reviewed processes to identify improvements and further the support given to the “champions” who led the way.
As the process changes were rolled out, they constantly reviewed measures to ensure they were tracking items of importance for the new strategy. In addition, they launched reviews to ensure that the organization was doing what it was supposed to be doing. They redesigned the company’s intranet, organized launch events, ran business simulations to reinforce the new message, gave internal newsletters a fresh look, created a cascade kit to assist managers in communicating key messages and held a competition globally to identify the "best of the best" process improvements,
Coupled with strong senior management leadership, these activities led to the airline's successful strategy implementation. Within six months, the culture started to change.
