Developing New Agility in Global Markets

CHALLENGE

To help an American multinational that acquired a mature European industrial controls company create a new corporate culture aligned with its more entrepreneurial business strategy. Further, to recruit a technical expert who could understand the competitive landscape and win the trust of longtime employees while bringing the kind of inspiring leadership style required to create a new vision for business growth in the global marketspace.

ACTION

It was clear from the start of our engagement that taking stock of the legacy organization's culture was essential to creating a roadmap for new business possibilities. The company was known to be slow moving and restricted in many ways by matrix reporting lines that forced a lot of memos, meetings, record-keeping and overly analyzed decision making. The culture failed to produce new innovations. The workforce was in need of renewal.

We engaged our proprietary TRANSEARCH Orxestra™ Method to clearly define the culture the company had and the corporate environment its new American owners wanted in order to realize more short-term objectives. Our intensive study revealed the legacy culture looked more like the kind of organization built to serve client markets 20 years earlier, and less like the agile, technology-intensive innovators that were beginning to redefine our client's industry space.

From this, we developed a profile of the kind of leader the American, private equity-owned parent company wanted to put new investments behind and that employees could believe would lead them to a bright new future if they were willing to bring open minds to the challenge.

The new leader needed to strategize at the top level but earn the trust of a skeptical workforce at the individual worker level. He or she would need to draw on experience gained in fast-moving companies known for agility, risk-taking and the kind of bias-to-action required to turn private equity organizations into winning investments. The next leader would need to excel managing teams and motivating their members. She or he would be expected to bring tremendous energy and set the example so that it would radiate positively across the company.

IMPACT

After examining the culture our client's management wanted to create, Our TRANSEARCH Spain team identified a particularly well qualified candidate who brought both deep technical acumen and a reputation for leading in fast-paced, growth-oriented private equity portfolio companies.

We presented a finalist candidate who brought high intelligence, a flexible approach and a willingness to explore whether our client was truly committed to providing him the authority to push the changes required to achieve ambitious business goals.

Our TRANSEARCH Spanish team served as advisor to both our client hiring company as well as the individual candidate, creating trust and a deeper relationship as they got to know one another better. It helped that this executive leader was clever, self-confident and a person of strong character. Ultimately, our team and our client's management came to the same conclusion about his unique capacity to communicate, to empathize with others and, along the way, to enlist their support for changing the way the company worked.

CLIENT PERSPECTIVE

Our team was able to hold a unique mirror up to our client's organization so that it's leaders could see how its legacy culture had enabled its historical growth but also inhibited its future expansion. The executive we recruited to the company has flourished, changing the culture to accelerate decision-making and inviting new investment that eventually led to its sale, and a significant profit for its shareholders.
The company's new owners consider this leader a cornerstone piece of their strategy and he continues to deliver outstanding results and attract new talent to invigorate the corporate culture.