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month, as most of you know, we shut down our transformation initiative. It
never got traction. Our staff survey showed that only 25 percent of our people
understood or felt connected to the strategic vision we’d all agreed on: increasing
growth by providing a better customer experience.” She explained how at first,
she and the head of internal communications attributed the low rating to
a messaging problem. “But after we talked at length to about 30 employees,”
she continued, “we realized that most of them understood our new strategy
perfectly well. They just didn’t think it would work. No one had been asked,
in a meaningful way, why they were skeptical or how they thought customer
engagement should be done.”
A senior division president raised his hand. “You mean we’re just writing off
all the work we’ve invested in transformation?”
“No, we’re not writing it off,” replied the CEO. “We’re using it as a
starting point. We’re going to develop a plan here, by Friday, for revitalizing our
connection with both employees and customers. We’ll start by talking about
what they’re really thinking.”
“We don’t even know what the other people in this room are really thinking,”
called out an executive vice president.
“That comes next,” said the CEO. “But it’s also on the agenda. Because
until we in this room understand ourselves and one another better, we’ll hold the
rest of the company back.”
Building on the momentum generated over the next couple of days, all
the formal leaders were assigned a coach with whom they continued to set