Managing Change

IMAGINE: Your key customers have never really understood your business much less your manufacturing processes and the substantively positive impacts they have on hundreds of communities globally. All they hear these days is opposition to some of your product life-cycle coming from well-meaning but largely off-base environmental groups, a patchwork of misinformed commentators, and other activists. Now some aggressive plaintiff attorneys are out there raising alarm (with what you consider misinformation) about safety around your facility sites. Meanwhile your mid-level managers operating out in those communities are in siege-mode. They don’t appreciate the critical importance in today’s climate of always keeping local stakeholders well-informed and on-board regarding all the impacts of manufacturing on their community. 

This client’s senior executive team knew that there were major weaknesses in the traditional manufacturing processes that needed updating both from the standpoint of efficiency and in terms of environmental impact. They also knew that, as a market leader in their industry, stakeholders were looking to them to proactively innovate towards a greener future in terms of their manufacturing facilities; and they knew the business was evolving quickly globally so they had to move boldly. The most impactful agreed-upon solution was a proactive $1 billion retrofit radically changing the technology driving a key process in the company’s most important manufacturing hubs in the United States. The change would not only greatly reduce environmental impact (and potential liability) but would also significantly increase profitability over the long term. The science was solid, the engineering was sound and both Wall Street and the US EPA were bullish on the prospect.

But from the get-go leadership faced fierce internal resistance from their cadre of leaders at these key facilities. These powerful mid-level professionals were content in their “old ways” of remaining profitable and staying under the radar of local scrutiny. What is more, for years company policy had been to urge local managers to doggedly defend this old-technology and to ignore even constructive criticism from customers, regulators or local activists. These front-line managers just didn’t understand that at headquarters, company leadership was dealing with ongoing and intensifying resistance from a wide range of regulators, activists, union leadership and others regarding this key part of the process. More noteworthy, a growing chorus of major institutional customers were becoming outwardly leery of the potential impact these “old ways” of operating were seemingly having on facility communities. They were also becoming vocal about the tangential risk these old processes could have on their brands. 

The Challenge: The manufacturing division was thus tasked with designing and overseeing the execution of simultaneous internal and external learning and outreach programs to not only garner internal support of the proactive $1 billion process change but that would also result in more widespread appreciation by all key stakeholders of the improved long-term profitability and significant immediate reductions in environmental impact this change would create. Progressiventures led this aspect of the charge.

The Solution: We started with a series of “360-degree” publication-based, small group and self-directed learning programs fully detailing the dilemma posed by traditional approaches to this particular aspect of the manufacturing process. These tools outlined the science of how the process-change would radically impact both profitability and environmental performance, and educated employees about the evolving market forces showing that this billion-dollar investment would result in significant regard for the company globally from both customers and other key stakeholders. This initiative was executed to include customized learning programs for diverse audiences ranging from the Senior Executive suite to the manufacturing facility floor.  

Simultaneously, a multi-pronged outreach education program was launched to key external audiences as well to build understanding regarding the substantive details of company’s environmental impact on manufacturing communities (both the reality of what it had been before the process change and the prospect for further improvements after), its longstanding and continuing scientific partnerships with key regulators including the EPA, and the specific science behind this critical change in process that would spark change in the entire industry globally.

The Result: Internal opposition to this specific process-change was transformed through broader understanding of the business at all levels into steadfast support for proactive economic, social-impact and environmental performance innovation company-wide. Meanwhile, after being once listed (frankly without proper merit) on a US News & World Report list of “America’s Worst Polluters”, the company within five years of the process (and associated cultural) change became known globally as an environmental-impact innovator and as a trusted supplier of “verifiably green products” to its customer-base (which includes many of the nation’s best-loved and most actively “socially-responsible” brands.) Partly thanks to the initiative of laying out the substance of the engineering and science behind this one process change, a larger culture shift ensued. Relations on the facility floor and in the company’s manufacturing communities improved markedly. New programs subsequently instituted company-wide now keep grassroots and management employees up to date on process innovation, safety initiatives, emerging market realities and evolving manufacturing community expectations regarding the company and its brand.  From the corner offices to the grassroots, the team is now on board!

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