Situation

Working together within a global automotive programme, this household name in automobile manufacturing sought to create the most efficient international automotive alliance in the world. To achieve this ambitious strategic imperative, both companies engaged Cordence Worldwide to provide expert capabilities, & trusted advisory in culture, change, & collaboration.

This change management initiative was established to enhance awareness between inter-company cultural differences, to foster collaborative mindsets, & build effective behaviours between alliance team members. The goal of addressing these target areas was to nurture & develop a new internal project culture that promotes sustainable high-performance teams.

Complication

The nature of the relationship between the two parties meant that to support inter-company cohesion and sustainable economic success, a neutral external team was necessary to bring both organisations together in a balanced and impartial way to achieve their ambitious objectives.

One of the challenges uniquely faced on this project was how to maintain balanced cooperation, close collaboration, & equal sharing of relevant project information to both parties (respecting NISP rules) who in a traditional industry context are competing automotive businesses.

Action

The Cordence Worldwide network of external change experts (State of Matter for the Australian workstream) supported each individual project utilising an agile prototype & learn method of execution, in conjunction with leading change management practices forming a structured overarching strategy to address this engagements unique requirements. State of Matter was chosen for this initiative as we were uniquely positioned to offer expertise in building sustainable high-performing teams & organisational change management.

Outcome

To address each requirement and deliver the results envisioned by this engagement, six foundational elements were created to form the pillars for the initiative. This approach was implemented to ensure comparability in organisational learning across all parallel workstreams. These elements included interventions such as: team kick-offs, follow-up workshops, leadership coaching, virtual collaboration sessions, detailed cultural analysis, ongoing team retrospectives, and survey-based pulse checks.

These evidence-based approaches formed the strong foundations for the engagement which was further supplemented by individual workstream solutions based on local requirements. This dual approach provided the necessary balance of flexibility and comparability to measure progress and achieve clear results supporting the broader international strategic objectives.

Capabilities Applied

Cultural Analysis
People-Centric Change
Sustainable High-Performing Teams