building a winning culture to create shareholder value
"Values are transforming the way we do business”
Jean-Luc Augustin, HR Director, Reed Elsevier
A radical culture change is at the heart of global publishing group Reed Elsevier’s strategy to deliver long-term value to its shareholders.
The Business Challenge: Disparate, in decline
The company had two competing boards, underperforming units and a falling stock price. Crispin Davis faced a turnaround task when brought in as Group CEO in September 1999 to unite the Dutch and British arms of Reed Elsevier and bring the company back to growth. With his stated commitment to put the company ahead of its competitors within three years, the pressure to deliver was intense.
Recognising that operational and financial strategies alone were not enough, Crispin brought in new HR Director, Jean-Luc Augustin, to instigate a powerful and radical culture change.
Attiva’s Brief: Equip for change
Values were to be at the heart of this transformation, under the banner ‘Building a winning culture.’ "The culture change was going to be global. We needed to create a glue, a backbone to bring everyone together,” explains Jean-Luc Augustin.
Jean-Luc turned to Attiva because of its experience working with organisations going through massive change. Together, they developed a strategic programme to equip the CEO and top team to lead the change through values. An 18-month roadmap, a business scorecard to measure progress and methods to direct the energy of all employees to live the values and change behaviour were all devised.
The Solution: Creating time to connect
The shaping of the values was not confined to the top team but involved significant input from people within the business divisions. "The values clarification process was more middle-up, than top-down,” explains Gavin Howe, COO of Elsevier Science, one of the business divisions. "This was critical for buy-in at operational level.”
With the values clarified, the task to drive the values into the business operations began. Butterworths Tolley and Elsevier Science have both been working with Attiva, drawing on Attiva’s principles but developing different methods to suit each business.
"Attiva’s role has been very significant in designing and helping us run the process to engage our people,” explains Paul Virik, CEO of Butterworths Tolley. "For us, it was important to spend time with the senior management team, dispelling the inevitable cynicism and giving people time to make a personal connection to what the values meant. We then wanted to equip this team to do the same thing with their own people.
"After one year, almost everyone will have gone through a process in which they have talked about values, understood what they mean and made a personal connection."
Gavin Howe agrees. "People mustn’t see this as a mantra from above. Attiva is working with us to help people answer the question 'what do you think we need to be doing to live these values?' The critical message is to let people know is: we will give you time and support to work on how you address these values and bring your individual expertise to making things better."
Both divisions are now using the Business Scorecard, developed by Attiva and Jean-Luc, to make the link between values and individual and business performance. "It is not always easy to place measurement against some of the values," explains Gavin Howe. "But the benefit is that people see you are taking values seriously internally, and values become integral to the conversation on business performance."
Business Impact: A culture in transformation
"Values are transforming the way we do business," explains Jean-Luc. "They define a set of behaviours which enable newcomers, existing employees, suppliers and shareholders to understand how Reed Elsevier does business. But this is a three to four year process. We are now concentrating on taking them to our 38,000 employees across the globe."
Paul Virik agrees. "It's about trying to make progress over time. But excitingly, we are seeing a change. People are using a different language and now have a framework to challenge and the confidence to question, in order to initiate change and new ideas.”
Having beaten its own goal by overtaking its competitors in two years, not three, Reed Elsevier looks to be winning its battle to build long-term value.