Improving commercial success without compromising culture

A 10-year-old, founder-led UK medical publisher was acquired by a US publishing group backed by aggressive private equity investors, amid the broader shift from print to digital. Following the rapid acquisition of five US companies, headcount grew tenfold in just two years, bringing major integration challenges, including conflicting legacy systems, high attrition, and new change leadership teams on both sides of the Atlantic.

After 18 months of deal negotiations with the US, the UK teams were left with a continued passion for their brand, but without direction or purpose, with a culture of low accountability and a sense of uncertainty about the future. The previously successful model in a Print world focused on quality outputs, but not customer data or feedback, whereas in the digital world data is everything. Without a shift in focus and a rapid reversal of the revenue trajectory, the business was at risk of failing altogether.

Definitive and urgent action was needed in the UK to create a shared set of goals and transform the culture, while at the same time developing an optimum design and integrating the UK business into the US group to drive change leadership efficiency.

Project One was brought in by the Group FD and CEO together with the UK FD. We’ve worked closely with both leadership teams and their senior people throughout, helping them to build new bridges and relationships to support seamless working once integrated.

Over the first 3 months, we developed a vision and strategic goals working with the US and UK leadership, completed a current state assessment across every lens of the operating model, designed the TOM and developed a business case and roadmap.

The lack of a US TOM and fragmented and fluid landscape in the US have presented challenges of course, but as usual the cultural and people aspects present the greatest risk to success. Behaviours and beliefs are deeply engrained in a business’s personality, and they take time, skill and tenacity to change. We started with change leadership workshops focussed on aligning behind common strategic goals, developed these through team level contributions into individual performance management objectives. We built operational governance to manage the delivery and keep the organisational focus. We ran listening sessions with all teams and heard what the had to say, using this as a template for leadership priorities over the coming months.

In parallel, we’re now delivering the first stages of the transformation including introducing new capabilities, software migrations and process redesign, plus a series of ‘test and learn’ activities to find ways to boost the revenue and profits.

Our involvement over the first 6 months has played a crucial role in providing clarity of vision, direction and purpose to our customer. We’ve made significant progress in shifting the culture to one of accountability and customer centricity – while at the same time driving practical steps on the transformational change leadership roadmap. This may be the start of the journey, but there’s now a clear destination and road ahead for everyone.