Fostering Team Work

Change Management – Biotechnology

Total Quality Management in Biotechnology

This is a major organisation providing biological and genetic expertise. It currently operates in 49 geographies with its European HQ in Edinburgh, Scotland, and its US HQ in Alabama. At the time of the intervention, this organisation had a large number of Joint Ventures partners Worldwide.

Strategic Direction & Health Check

Initially, the intervention was to design a 'health check' to assess how well the organisation had developed a culture to support its growth in world markets. The diagnosis of the business resulted in;

• Re-structuring key top team responsibilities and the structure of the business.
• Re-designing specific technical roles into operational ones, where staff were both technically capable and organizationally focused upon the customer.
• A strategic review re-shaped the business from a purely functional organisation into 49 Virtual businesses - each with it's own Business Plan and Profit & Loss Account.
• Leadership and 360 degree assessment helped managers to understand the pressures they needed to confront as 'Business Leaders' to drive their teams to success.
• Process-mapping the 'core processes' that cause performance to happen.
• This organisation was a company owned by Hillsdown Holdings which has since been sold to a larger US organisation and acquired key businesses making it the largest player in its market.

Strategic Review - Operational Improvements and Benefits 

• Over a period of five years, the top team and their Direct Reports each attended a series of workshops focusing upon critical issues for strategic review and implementation.
• Psychometrics and team development were to become the tools for performance improvement and personal development.
• During this time, the organisation moved from being a purely technical driven business to a more commercially aware enterprise.
• Key responsibilities and roles within the business were constructed and new OD strategies became integrated into the HR strategy for the business.
• Customer Focused Teams became the common language with technical, sales and operational staff working in and across many Virtual Businesses within the larger company.
• Practices that evolved in the UK were exported to the US HQ.