Their Challenge
A global manufacturer of specialty chemicals and ingredients realized that in order to differentiate themselves in the market and grow in line with their goals, they needed to shift from a product-focused strategy and become more customer-centric. This new strategy required a company-wide change in mindset. While the organization could internally manage the technical and structural changes to their business, they needed a partner to help systematically shift behavior across all levels and functions of the organization to be consistent and aligned with customer needs.
Conversant partnered with the organization to implement the cultural side of their transformation, starting with translating the desired culture into discrete actions at the individual level so that every employee could understand the impact of their work in customer experience.
Our Approach
Senior leadership knew their strategic objective but they needed to define the organizational commitments, leadership behaviors, and competencies necessary to support that cultural transformation. Conversant helped the executive team create a “Customer Experience Commitment” –a clear and essential narrative that every employee could understand, demonstrate, and talk about with confidence.
To kickstart broad engagement in the cultural shift, an Advocate network was formed consisting of 75 key leaders tasked with learning about and practicing the identified behaviors. Weekly virtual meetings over the course of several months kept the behaviors and conversational skills they learned top of mind and supported integration into day-to-day work. Those leaders went on to co-host Catalyst Conversations with Conversant facilitators, engaging a majority of the global workforce in a shared language and understanding of the new culture.
The Impact
Change leadership requires “caring longer.” To enable leadership to sustain progress, Conversant has slowly transitioned out of a primary role while providing leadership development and coaching support where needed.
Following Catalyst Conversations and a Global Customer Success Forum, Conversant supported the organization to implement a customized 360 assessment that combined the principles of Connected Leadership with the behaviors defined by the Executive Leadership Team. The 360 assessments served as a sustained measure of the organization’s commitment to its customers and reinforced a lasting cultural shift. Within four years, over half of the organization had received or given formal feedback to their leaders, peers, and direct reports through the lens of customer centricity.
“We could have come at clarity very mechanically, from an engineering mindset. Conversant’s approach was much more conversation-based, exploration-based. It really helped to make things approachable and built out a piece of the transformation that we couldn’t do ourselves.”
- Sr. Director of Strategy, Manufacturing