Soft landing for organizational change

The company, an aviation industry player, was having challenges in implementing new ways of working and the staff was feeling frustrated. The business area head, with August’s support, needed to better understand the performance drivers of the organization – putting focus especially on ‘soft’ elements.

Interested in hearing more? Contact Tomi Ere

Challenge

The company management had witnessed several challenges in implementing new ways of working. This had resulted in frustration for many of the staff members in one business area. The head of the business area asked August to help the company increase understanding of the current organizational behavior. Based on in-depth interviews in the organization we were able to increase transparency and build ways to improve communication.

Brave the Future

The August team helped the company interview people on different levels of the organization to understand the prevailing culture. Overall, we found that the biggest issue was communication. For a variety of reasons, people in different business units were having a hard time understanding each other and understanding headquarters. The team suggested that the company should develop “mental models” – simple tools to visualize the local environment and, for example, describe how a new concept would work in practice.

Impact

Despite initial management skepticism about the exercise – in the past, the company had not spent time talking about culture and “soft” issues – the head of the business area realized that August had made the right diagnosis and the right prescription.

Client testimonial:

“Once we showed this new model to the organization, local staff and group functions realized they finally had tools that help them work together much more effectively. Thank you, August!”