Client News - ongoing work with global brands
SEB Bank
Oxford Leadership Academy Sweden work with SEB bank to deliver a wide-ranging Culture Change programme
One of Sweden’s leading banks, SEB, which has 25,000 employees worldwide, has chosen Oxford Leadership Academy to guide it through these turbulent times by addressing the need for a cultural shift within the organisation. SEB’s top 400 directors and managers will follow a tailored programme delivered by OLA Sweden over the course of the second half of 2009.
SEB CEO Annika Falkengren’s brief to OLA Sweden is to facilitate the achievement of the following three key objectives:
- To reduce operational complexity across the Group
- To help management improve what they are already good at
- To help management and staff to take ownership of the business
In an interesting take, Annika Falkengren has specified that the management teams who will be following the Culture Change programme should identify the elements that make up the three objectives themselves, according to their own individual situations – change will come from the bottom up, rather than from the top down.
A pilot programme took place in June in Stockholm, to great acclaim from delegates.
The core programme will evolve through three modules – Performance Culture, Leading Change and Leading Others, and Training Leaders to Coach Others. The first module will be delivered by BTS, a Swedish consultancy company. The second and third modules will be facilitated by OLA Fellows Lasse Wrennmark, Henrik Lannerhjelm, Elena Cartasegna and Jonas Sjöholm. A total of 15 courses will take place by the end of 2009 – the intention is that after following the programme SEB’s senior management will be in a position to speed up the process of change and be more able to respond to global turbulence in a period of uncertainty.
O2 Germany and UK
O2, as part of the Telefónica Group, have been involved in the Strategic Culture Change (SCC) programme being run by OLA at the Telefónica Corporate University in Barcelona. At the request of senior O2 leaders, we have run the first session of what is set to become a regular fixture in O2 Germany’s senior executives’ diary – the O2 Strategic Culture Change Alumni Meetings.
Alumni from programmes run between June 2008 and May 2009 gathered in Munich in June this year to exchange views on the impact that following the SCC had had on them in their roles as leaders. After an opening address by O2 Germany CEO Rene Schuster, the Alumni split into groups of three, overseen by Brian Bacon and Senior OLA Fellow Gia Campari to talk about how they had applied the learnings of the SCC, and to what extent the had activated their action plans. And, of course, it was also an opportunity to catch up with colleagues whose paths they may not cross on a regular basis.
It seems likely that the O2 Alumni Meeting format will be exported to other countries – more on that next time.
Nutrimental
Earlier this year Oxford leadership Academy responded to Brazilian food giant Nutrimental’s desire to initiate a cultural change within their organisation – the shift from being a product-driven company to a customer-driven one. CEO Brian Bacon and the President and Vice-President of OLA Mexico, Juan-Carlos Murillo and Jorge Castañeda, delivered a tailored Strategic Focusing programme to twenty key decision-makers at Nutrimental. As a direct result of this intervention, the company are now implementing four separate projects designed to steer them in the required direction.
McDonald’s Germany
Over the course of 2009 OLA CEO Brian Bacon is continuing to act as a senior advisor to the Board of McDonald’s Germany and as a mentor to the CEO. More on this work in the next newsletter!
