Shifting behaviors that are crucial for future success – at scale

Client need

After adopting a new strategy, a European multinational food packaging and processing organization supported its execution by undergoing an ambitious cultural transformation. Two focus areas of this effort were improving its meeting culture and helping employees learn from successes and failures. The organization’s leaders partnered with BTS to leverage a “sprint” approach to changing behaviors at scale, enabling employees to work in a more productive, dynamic, and capable fashion.

The solution

The first sprint, which focused on meeting management, reached 2,000 employees around the world over the course of two months. The approach included recruiting a network of culture “champions” from all levels and geographies in the organization, empowering them to drive change and implement specific Go-Dos (action items that shift habits in the flow of work) with their colleagues (managers, peers, and teams).

Champions were set up for success by:

• Starting with a 3-hour network kick-off and change-upskilling session
• Moving on to a 2-hour sprint kick-off session, going deeper into the “why” and “how” of the sprint topic
• Concluding each sprint with a 2-hour close-out session, assessing impact and ensuring continuous learning

During the second sprint, which lasted four months, an extended set of participants set out to strengthen a culture of learning from success and mistakes. Following the same setup as the first sprint, these culture champions conceptualized growth mindsets, psychological safety, and lessons learned. They also received Go-Dos centered on risk-taking, experimentation, creating psychological safety, and sharing knowledge acquired; all this began a broad movement around learning from both success and mistakes.

Results

Findings from both sprints indicate a clear impact on actual on-the-job behaviors:

• Average hours spent in meetings per week reduced from 21 to 18
• Average number of participants per meeting reduced from 6 to 5
• People who reported positive experiences in meetings increased from 56% to 69%
• Number of people answering affirmatively about having a growth mindset and experiencing psychological safety in their teams increased by 5 percentage points
• Number of people who reported completing “lessons-learned” activities often increased by 23 percentage points

Champions also reported improved curiosity, engagement, discipline, clarity, awareness, focus, and overall outcomes. They also embrace simple interventions that bring efficiency, open up conversations around psychological safety in teams, and apply a growth mindset that colleagues have been longing for.

Client feedback

• “Overall, I have tremendously enjoyed working with you on our project and believe we have really been able to achieve successful outcomes together. Both sprints have had successful outcomes and we have been able to build a very motivated group of culture champions.”
• “It is fantastic to see BTS involved in the other programs. Today we finalized the first sprint, and we already can clearly see concrete results! Well done! BTS is making a difference at our company!”