1. Challenge: Describe your challenge, including all relevant information.

Working as an regional manager I had to manage multiple branches spread widely over the country  for this pan european scale-up trading company. This case is concerning all purchasing personnel  within the value chain of this company where the company’s customers were buying their products  through an online auction model. As of the very rapid growth we had to deal with (100fte and 1mln  revenue growth annually in my region alone), the maturity phase of the company changed along the  way as well. Where we first found ourselves in a start-up phase to prove there was actually a  (big)market for our idea where we solely focused on dealmaking we now had to focus on the quality  of the growth and product itself. This meant that the employees who were amongst one of the first of  the company, and teaching everybody else on the job with their hands on experience, had to get  new insights on how their purchases were being perceived in this new era and to what purpose so  they understand why they needed to change. The challenge was that the employees were all spread  over the branches and in addition had created their own sense of company culture and standards.

2. Application: Describe how you applied the tool you selected to your challenge

In order to change the way  in how people perceived their work, storytelling was selected to make  the new strategy tangible and create a meaningful cause in which they could believe in will benefit  theirs (for that person's own spectrum of work that is) and the company’s mission. We had to  convince that the current standards were not sufficient for a sustainable growth, let alone the  progressive character in which we were finding ourselves in, and wanted to relate to the customer  perception and how it affected the value chain and let them ultimately relate to their own line of work.   Storytelling is a tool which provides the company's strategy to be more accessible and tangible  ultimately  because it enables you to relate to in a way that personel can see where their work is part  of this greater purpose and cause so they can make an emotional attachment to it. In this case they  were getting more committed because of this.     For the kick off of this new strategy I was visiting the branches one after another to have team  meetings because this way, instead of mass communication, made it more easier to adapt to local  standards and culture. During these meetings I was telling that particular team about what other  departments had come up with and what they had dealt with (e.g. lower than standard quality and  the effects of this to their work)  to meet new standards and serve the customer more sufficiently.  The starting point was how the customer was affected by the current standards and how changes to  created by the department prior in the value chain prior to the customer,  positively affected this  perceived quality. The trick was to eventually make clear that it was made possible because of their  knowledge and insights of the products and the quality of the purchases.

3. Insight: Describe the insight you gained from applying the tool you selected to your  challenge

During this period it became clear how the company evolved in terms of different cultures and  perspectives and to what extent. As I was talking to my employees and gathered feedback and  updates after the meetings on how it had affected their work, various generic assumptions arised.  This, for me, was an eye opener on how to build the company in terms of culture and communication  wise and accelerate the maturity level even further. Various areas of improvement arised and I had a  sense of arised ownership and support within the department. They wanted to support the cause  and be proud of it. It became clear that innovation was the way on how we have built the company  and  a necessity for further growth. The evolving mindset made it perfectly clear on how prepared  the mind was en has become during this period. This period resulted in major improvements on the  sense of ownership within the department and quality metrics improved by 60%  as a result of that.

4. Approach: Describe what you might do differently next time:

In this case I chose to make a more personal approach to each and every branch in my country. For  some it came as a slight surprise or were suspicious about an underlying untold motivation of some  sort. To make this approach even more successful in the future i will implement an communication  scheme with clear content on the new course and context so this new course would already be more  expected in advance. Also i would incorporate a more visual explanation of the value stream within  the company so it is more clear and more appealing for the departments at hand.

