The Big Shift

A Purple Voodoo Case Study

The Story:

The local affiliate of a multi-national pharmaceutical company required support to roll out a global initiative that completely changed how the organization viewed and interacted with their customers. It was going to require a drastic mindset shift for everyone in the organization. The current and more traditional sales and marketing approach were well established and embedded in the fabric of the organization. It was recognized that as customers evolve, and target audiences change so must the approach but such a drastic change from the status quo was going to be difficult. The two underlying concerns were, how to move forward as one and how to demonstrate the impact of the shift.

Fundamental changes to an organization have long-lasting impacts. Critical to the success of such change was ensuring that everyone understood the purpose and while buy-in was individual and progressed over time there needed to be a moment in time when there was no looking back. Equally important was a focus on the “how” as much as the “why”. Giving teams a common language, clear direction and a framework that was easy to implement helped with adoption and accelerated change. In today’s global environment with centralized strategy, resource and support, adopting core tenants of global strategy are a vital part of leveraging it. This mind shift was just that.

The Process:

DEFINED

How new mindset adoption depended on simple, clear and specific instruction
Outcome measures that would track the uptake and use of the paradigm
The key stakeholders to enable the adoption and integration of the change

DESIGNED

Custom content and curated it, using their own language and models
System to track impact, gather feedback and articulate insights
Launch process focused on implementation and adoption

DELIVERED

Individual and team activities that:
Launched the initiative at national meeting – designed and facilitated ½ day session
Embed and ‘brought it to life’ during daily work, post launch
Empowered team leaders to continue the learning (through dialogue and best practice sharing) on-the-job
Drove individual accountability throughout organization

The Results:

Consistent language and conversation throughout organization
Insights post-session were sustained delivering better ROI on launch week investment
Better customer experience (proven through customer feedback)
Positive changes in “on-the-job” attitudes and behaviors
Better cross-functional teamwork – especially knowledge transfer and information flow
More effective and efficient decision-making; more strategically aligned workflows

The Take-Away:

Globalization of strategic initiatives are becoming more common place in today’s business environment. The role out of such initiatives can have long term and significant impacts on the organization effecting customers, employee retention and profitability. By implementing an “all-in” approach with developing the tools and investing in change, this mindset shift moved the organization forward and quickly led to improved customer interactions, sales and profitability.