Culture Transformation

We love shaping new cultures. We transform organisations and teams by breathing purpose into environments, where well designed cultures release real performance

The pandemic has provided real evidence of the role culture-making and culture-building now holds in organizations. As the world has rewired its norms, one thing that has stayed constant is the need for employees to belong to a purposeful culture. Culture is mindset and behavioural change at large scale. A culture in which all layers of leadership are aligned, invested, and actively breathe meaning to the organization’s values and goals will ultimately advance organizational health, performance and sustainability.

Since 2007, CorporateDNA has driven culture transformation across 36 countries through reorganizations, restructures and mergers. We intentionally shape environments that drive and engage teams, making them bigger than the sum of their parts through collaboration and a win-and-grow mindset, to thrive in change and complexity.

We had our Americas All Hands Leadership meeting this week in NYC. In preparation for the event we used all the tools and learnings from our work with CDNA.

The All Hands was an overwhelming success, but the best part is the commentary on the leadership team being so cohesive. I have received dozens of emails from the event and they all use words like inspiring, authentic, genuine, collaborative, bold, motivational, honest, aligning and many others.

If you ever need reminding of why you do what you do CorporateDNA, remember our session and know the results were impacting far beyond those of us who went through it.

Andrew Morawski, President and Country Chairman
Vodafone Americas

CorporateDNA has been trusted to deliver multiple culture transformations as an essential lever; at the intersection of strategy, performance and organizational health. We have enabled culture transformations at various levels

Organization Culture
Country/Market Team Culture
Functional Culture
Team Cultures

Our Culture Transformation methodology, DNA’s Culture Ecosystem is inspired by a Solar System model of 10 distinct culture planets working collaboratively, to fuel the company’s purpose at its core (the organization’s Sun) with purpose at the centre of the organizational universe.

This model enables leaders to think of these ten “Culture markers” as interdependent and essential elements that make up a larger, visible macro-culture.

Winning Mindset with Winning Habits
Market Identity, Culture, & Brand Perception
Competitive Ability
Agile Decision Making
Courageous ownership of Transformation
LT Maturity & Trust
LT | LT -1 -2 Empowerment to Speak Up and Scale Up
Keep / Kill / Change Processes
Meeting and Dialogue Effectiveness
Inclusive Culture

CorporateDNA knows all the processes, tools, and levers for highly experiential execution that delivers results.

Here are our illustrative tools that activate the magic of the 5H©:

Vodafone Americas
(HQ: New York)

Sponsor: President, Vodafone Americas

Vodafone New York appointed CorporateDNA to deliver an in-country leadership transformation to work through a crucial point in the region’s purpose – to boost brand visibility and performance success. In the Americas region, which consists of the United States, Canada, and Latin America, Vodafone works with hundreds of customers across retail, finance, logistics, telematics, the public sector, and manufacturing, and is focused on delivering fixed, mobile and IoT solutions to multinational customers.

We undertook an 18-month journey starting with the LT (Leadership Team) to unpack the lived realities and perspectives of each specific member, followed by mindsets and behaviours that will help the team stay relevant and become future fit. Through that process, we also dispelled myths and assumptions that were dragging the region down and which no longer served the current purpose. Along with team and individual coaching, we created a new “smell of the place” with energy, conviction and personal skin in the game. By keeping relevance, understanding, confidence-building, and authenticity in the forefront of our practice, CorporateDNA’s culture transformations had profound impact, especially on the country level.

Levi’s China

Sponsor: President AMA region and CEO, Levi’s China

Levi Strauss & Co. appointed CorporateDNA to deliver an intense and intimately engaged culture transformation for 36 members of their Greater China Leadership Team from 2018 to 2020. The pinnacle of this journey was in successfully launching their first Asian flagship “beacon” store in Wuhan set up to deliver a 10X strategy in China. There was an unprecedented series of changes from 3 preceding Managing Directors in 2 years to finally settling the organization under the leadership of its first Asian CEO, along with major restructures and corporate remodels.

CorporateDNA ran a series of workshops, training, and engagement exercises to shift the GCLT (Greater China Leadership Team) from a pressure-based and siloed working culture to a deeply connected winning leadership team with new mindsets and ways of working. We partnered very closely with The US HQ of Levi’s and its Global CEO, Chip Bergh to help Levi’s China become an intimate and important part of the Levi’s family and to activate inclusive, collaborative, and people-centric behaviours, so that they could breathe motivation, trust, and collaboration into their strategy and execution.

CorporateDNA coached the CEO and the LT through this personal and professional transformation journey, where the GCLT was finally seen as a winning culture and a true ‘dream team.’

Coca Cola Japan

Sponsor: President, Coca Cola Japan

CorporateDNA delivered a culture transformation journey over 18 months for 25 Leadership Team members in Coca-Cola Japan, during a challenging and intensive growth period for the OpCo in the lead up to the Tokyo Olympics 2020. CorporateDNA partnered closely with Coca-Cola to build an environment of psychological safety and emotional assurance, inspiring the LT to innovate and create a speak-up culture, invigorating courage, and executing acceleration plans to deliver breakthrough performance, in preparation for the Tokyo Olympics.

Working closely with the President, our work involved both collective and individual LT sessions to ensure the team “elevated” its game in Japan to the next level as an important member of the Coca-Cola Family.

HEINEKEN Vietnam

Sponsor: GM, HEINEKEN Vietnam

We were invited to lead HEINEKEN Vietnam’s culture transformation during the pandemic as Vietnam went from being one of the top 3 performers in the HEINEKEN family to a stage of uncertainty and a sense of “plateau”. Starting with the Management Team led by a very promising GM, we enabled 70 “change champions” in HEINEKEN Vietnam to transform their OpCo, by coming together to become purpose-driven and authentic, uncaged Leaders.
CorporateDNA enabled HEINEKEN Vietnam to make essential shifts toward confidence, determination, and motivation. The OpCo leadership shed dependencies such as a culture of silence, parent-child dynamics, and following rather than leading, while unleashing their leadership potential through creativity, courageous conversations, and an empowered speak-up culture.

We are leading similar 6-9 month transformations for HEINEKEN Korea, HEINEKEN Malaysia, HEINEKEN Taiwan, HEINEKEN Sri Lanka and HEINEKEN Myanmar.

Unilever Philippines Board

Sponsor: Chairman, Unilever Philippines

Over a 3-month coaching journey, CorporateDNA created a strategic partnership with the Unilever Philippines Board that was built on trust and challenge, enabling them to identify their personal and organizational goals with increased productivity and brand visibility.

CorporateDNA helped take the Board to the next level of leadership, working closely with the Chairman to explore how he wants to lead the team and how the team wants to be led by him. We focused on strong sports psychology to focus on areas of development and excellence in their inner game and outer game. We developed the team’s future focus and breakthrough habits for a dramatic impact on leadership effectiveness, market performance, and marking a culture change that has started to cascade throughout the organization.

GSK Mexico Board

Sponsor: GM, GSK Mexico

CorporateDNA helped deliver a culture transformation in GSK Mexico – which is the most profitable market within the Emerging Markets portfolio, yet one of the

GSK Mexico was determined to overcome a highly competitive and fragmented organizational culture that operated on fear-based and siloed ways of working. CorporateDNA helped the LT make essential shifts from fear and defensiveness to courage and authenticity, parent-child relationships to accountability and self-initiation, and obstacle-oriented thinking to solution-oriented thinking and agile decision-making.

In all our Culture Transformations:

We target mindset and behaviour changes that ”release” inertia and drive performance. We craft these behaviours clearly for a shared vocabulary, providing a single reference point to track progress in our culture transformation journeys.
We tease out culture ”blockers” to treat the root cause, not symptoms. The perceptions people have about “right” and “wrong” drive behaviours. We focus on signals, stories and cues, based on how meetings are run, feedback is given, conflict is handled. We identify the rules of the “acceptable vs. unacceptable ” in an organization’s culture, and lay them out on the table to help organizations reframe them.
We call out “critical moments that matter,” where a new behaviour will be way more powerful than the old behaviour in driving results. This is important because with the scale of culture change, not everything can and will change all at once. By indexing on the moments that matter, the flywheel of change spins faster and generates more momentum.
We instil rewards and positive nudges to role model and reinforce the desired culture. For a culture shift to take hold, we spotlight the behaviours and ways of working that will accelerate value. This becomes self-reinforcing and generates a centre of gravity within the organization, to accelerate the momentum of the emerging culture “being born.”
We create opportunities for people to role model the new culture and witness overcoming barriers to change. We create curiosity and appetite through early tastes of success, celebrating small wins. We design a human-centric approach that lets individuals make new choices and drive new behaviours because they feel enthusiastic about them.
We shape and deliver the journey in equi-powered ways. The leadership team gets extended from a centred core of titled leaders to empowered minus 1s and minus 2s.

Engage us when:

What we Deliver:

Your team is new and looking for a clear purpose, clear goals, and role alignment

CorporateDNA’s 5H© process will work through any misalignment or general ‘void’ to create a shared belief that enables members to align on how their individual roles can help deliver the team’s goal.
This results in a renewed sense of direction and engagement.

Your team’s atmosphere is negative and in need of a transformation

We work through team dysfunctions to transform the team climate, by establishing a strong and psychologically safe environment that helps achieve great business results by upping courage, ownership, and trust in equal measure.

Team members are communicating infrequently and making poor decisions without assessing both rational and intuitive decision-making methods

We focus heavily on improving team empowerment through increased ownership, effective communication flows, and cohesive decision making.
A key area of development is in building skills to have real debates versus holding onto false harmony.
Our constructs are known for being “loose but tight” – constructing decision-making boundaries with enough room to make empowered choices.

Team members fail to use a collaboration style that engages across functions and business units resulting in siloed teams

We build horizontality to break across team silos. The process looks at getting each member invested in their peers’ worlds, appreciating challenges, and collaborating on solutions.

Your team is ready to mature, grow their leadership capabilities and empower each other

Our team development program looks at developing each member as individuals by leveraging their strengths and weaknesses, and then building on each other’s differences.
Team leads are then developed as an owner and change catalyst by learning how to not only lead their teams, but to empower them to lead back.
Our horizontal and vertical leadership structure works with teams across all levels.

Your team does not fully see the value of inclusion diversity

When team members do not value diverse experiences, backgrounds, and skills, this results in less successful decision-making and solutions.
We look at restoring the value of inclusion and diversity through sourcing the origins of bias and dialling up inclusive leadership from a place of energy and renewal, not correction and remedy.

Your team is lacking mutual trust, unable to manage conflict and repair relationship issues

We believe that one of the core strengths of a high-performing team is their exceptional level of interpersonal trust.
Trust is what allows team members to leverage conflict in a constructive way, strengthen bonds and create transparent dialogues.
With a tried and tested “trust equation,” we encourage trust. We deepen healthy tensions, while bringing conflicts to the surface as a source of creative tension, in a depersonalized way.

After several DNA sessions, I can give you my heartfelt and conscious feedback. I think this has been a very interesting personal learning process, connecting with concepts like vulnerability on a day to day basis has been of great value for me, and I see it reflected in the team. Last week we had our Leadership Team day and the communication flowed with much more ease. I feel the team takes more risks to speak up, to raise their hand, etc. We’ve clearly started to care and trust each other more.

It has also been interesting for me, because I see a personal gain, as I apply (my transformation) at home with my family on a daily basis.