Nordic Pharma: Leadership Essentials
Nordic Pharma: Leadership Essentials
Our client is a rapidly evolving pharmaceutical company that found a cure for disconnected working practices.
For any company focused on territorial expansion, a multicultural workforce with a global presence can only be a good thing, surely? Correct – but only with the proviso that everyone is pursuing a unified vision and a clear, consistent growth strategy.
This case study explains how Nordic Pharma successfully brought about a business-enhancing cultural transformation aided by its award-winning Leadership Essentials learning programme, designed in collaboration with The Oxford Group.
Our client’s needs:
Nordic Pharma had a five-year plan for sustainable growth in its sights, expanding through acquisitions, portfolio evolution, and innovation. However, unifying a disparate workforce behind the desired outcomes was a challenge. The organisation’s geographically dispersed staff and affiliates worked in country-based teams with different styles and values. The potential for error via miscommunication was therefore significant.
To pull these siloed strands together, the Global Head of Human Resources and Communications and her team began identifying core company values, key messaging and streamlined working practices aligned to Nordic Pharma’s new people strategy. However, effecting a business-wide transformation would require support from the company’s leadership: 32 senior leaders from different countries.
Our solution
Aligning leadership strategies and employee interactions was vital, so Nordic Pharma engaged The Oxford Group with a brief to deliver ‘short, sharp, experiential learning’ that would:
- Increase competence and confidence in core leadership/management skill areas
- Create a platform for leaders to network and learn from each other, and
- Positively impact performance and engagement across the whole business.
We worked closely with the client to develop the Leadership Essentials programme. The core modules – Leading through Change; Effective Communication; Creating Conditions for Team Performance; Building Motivation; Developing People – were designed to communicate these company values clearly to leaders so they could cascade them through their teams.
The programme was rolled out from September 2023 as a series of 90-minute Zoom sessions, each covering one topic/key sub-themes, and concluded in December 2023 with an in-person ‘grand finale’ attended by all 32 participants. Participants were split into two targeted 16-person cohorts (senior leaders and middle managers) to maximise efficiency in delivering the programme to mixed levels. Participants had already been encouraged to build insight before the programme by completing short theory/reflection questionnaires, reading relevant articles and viewing videos – our Read Watch Do approach to preparation to optimise the learning on the programme.
The impact
A survey designed by independent learning evaluation consultants and sent to learners a few months after attending quantified success. Firstly, in terms of reaction, Leadership Essentials received a Net Promoter Score of +53.85 (50 is considered ‘World Class’).
Evidence of application of learning: Secondly, the evaluation proved that learnings were being applied, with 84% of respondents selecting 7/10 or higher (10 = regularly, every day). This application is clearly delivering change in their behaviour, demonstrated by improvements across all 14 learning objectives. For example, ‘applying appropriate leadership postures’ increased from 6.48/10 to 8/10.
Evidence of impact on performance: The evaluation noted impacts across all the strategic success factors witnessed by the cohorts, including learners’ level of motivation rising from 7.67/10 to 8.08/10 (10 = excellent), teams’ level of motivation rising from 7.21/10 to 7.71/10, and – most importantly – teams’ contribution towards business goals rising from 7.50/10 to 8.08/10.
To validate whether Leadership Essentials was a major factor in these shifts, learners were asked ‘how much credit would you attribute to the programme itself for any change?’. All learners agreed it could take some credit, with 88% giving the programme most of the credit.
In 2023, Nordic Pharma enjoyed its best financial performance to date, particularly in the last quarter during which the programme was making the difference outlined. The company is so pleased with Leadership Essentials’ strategic contribution that plans are in place to repurpose the programme with a new cohort from a different corporate tier.