September 2013 | Building cross-functional business platform teams

02 Nov September 2013 | Building cross-functional business platform teams

The senior executive team of a multinational organization dedicated to health science innovation identified the need to integrate multiple functions into a business platform team to deliver a full solution across the value chain and achieve their ambitious business performance objectives.

The parent organization was growing through acquisition…

Situation:
The senior executive team of a multinational organization dedicated to health science innovation identified the need to integrate multiple functions into a business platform team to deliver a full solution across the value chain and achieve their ambitious business performance objectives.
The parent organization was growing through acquisition. The company had grown substantially through acquisitions and there was a need to promote internal business platform and cross business platform effectiveness. Business platform teamwork was defined as a core competency that was necessary to drive innovation and compete effectively in this newly created segment of the health science industry.
Increasing competitiveness by capturing synergies across the company
Given the nature of the business, there were obvious operational synergies that could be achieved by leveraging global functions across global business platforms. Linking R+D pipelines to market realities was considered critical and this required a level of integration that was lacking.

Solution:
The senior executive managing the platform was frustrated with the speed of the change and lack of coordination among the core team and external team stakeholders. As a first step, we proposed a 2-day intensive team building intervention for the core and extended team which was focused on prioritizing platform initiatives and developing implementation plans. We included senior executives outside of the platform team at the beginning and end of the session to create a strong sense of accountability amongst the team and to ensure the leadership expectations were clear. This initial intervention was followed by a comprehensive follow-up process to ensure the continued success of the priority change initiatives.

Results:
A multi-phased program has been approved based upon the success of the initial intervention where the team alignment objectives were fully met. Optimis is continuing to work with the executive team to drive business results through better execution around priorities. The focus or our approach is to drive business results through people.