In 1997, Cadbury Schweppes announced an ambitious goal of doubling value to shareholders every four years. It adopted “Managing for Value,” a holistic approach to creating business value, including a new strategic approach and culture defined by new leadership behaviours. The Canadian national division launched a recognition program that allowed colleagues to recognize their peers for exceptionally demonstrating three core “MFV” behaviours: being accountable, aggressive, and adaptable.
After a year, the behaviours became more ingrained in the culture. The recognition program, however, had become commonplace, and the level of nominations had dropped. Cross-location meetings were held to identify ways to refresh the program and it was relaunched with enhanced features, such as introducing team nominations.
The project team realized that the original program had lost relevance and changes were required to give it new life. Asking colleagues to redesign the program revitalized the program and reinforced the behaviours the program was created to acknowledge in the first place.
Most programs or processes need adjusting after they have been launched. This is natural because they were built on assumptions that may not have been accurate or are no longer true. Refreshing them offers greater benefits to colleagues and renews the energy of the change project. Implementing colleague recommendations has the added benefit of giving control to the people who are doing the work, and therefore stabilizing it within day-to-day operations.
