Launch of a company roadmap following the arrival of a new CEO

Industry

Incubator and acceleration of technological innovation

Localisation

France

Project type

General management roadmap definition

User

Wevalgo

Context and objectives

End results

Wevalgo Services

Wevalgo Value Added

The company was in a difficult situation, with a very degraded social climate and conflicts among the members of the management. A new CEO was appointed and wished to make a diagnosis to define the company's 3-5 year roadmap.

The diagnosis consisted of a phase of interviews with senior management and some members of the Board of Directors, an analysis of the main governance tools (strategic plan, management dashboards, etc.) and a seminar for the Management Committee.

Company 3 - 5 years roadmap

The 3 to 5 year roadmap has been defined, including a profound transformation of the way of working

The Management Committee has been fully mobilised and aligned to implement the new roadmap. Conflicts have subsided thanks to the sharing of the diagnosis and the consensus on the transformation plan.

In the words of the new CEO, it was a real success:

"Wevalgo helped us to launch an improvement plan through a highly effective double trigger approach. 1st stage: hand-stitched online questionnaires, i.e. hyper-targeted and relevant to prepare the 2nd stage: face-to-face in-depth interviews. Result: in two weeks, a management team fully reinvigorated, armed with the right questions and ready to tackle our transformation project with confidence.

And the icing on the cake: the site's results graphs are beautiful and almost addictive".

Wevalgo was heavily involved here as we co-conducted the diagnosis in association with a partner consultant.

Wevalgo carried out four activities:

design and administration (invitation, follow-up of responses, reminders) of an online questionnaire to all participants (around 15) in order to prepare individual interviews. The Wevalgo platform automatically consolidated the responses and produced the various analyses and results reports.
individual interviews with about ten people to deepen the answers to the questionnaire
analysis of governance documents
overall synthesis and preparation of a preliminary roadmap
The consultant with whom we were associated participated in the interviews and facilitated the management seminar to define the final roadmap.

The online questionnaire used was based on a standard " scoping " model, with about 30 open and closed questions. This base was then customised with the help of an interview with the CEO, to adapt to the company's context.

The implementation of the roadmap was entrusted to our partner consultant as Wevalgo remains focused on the diagnosis.

Immediate credibility of the consultant

The preparation phase of the interviews using online questionnaires was crucial.

The respondents found the questions very relevant and made them really think about their business. They invested much more than the minimum time to answer the questions (sometimes 2.5 hours when 1 hour was enough). This allowed us to gather a very rich material and to immediately establish a great deal of credibility, which was crucial for the future.

And this even before we ever met the people!

Afterwards, the face-to-face interviews were very effective. They were not in "question" mode as in traditional interviews. They were in-depth and thoughtful sessions on the salient points from the analysis of the online questionnaires. Elements that allowed us to find out for each person whether they were in consensus or not on each of the themes discussed.

Not what the management thought

The majority of directors expressed in the questionnaires that the strategic plan was not sufficiently detailed and concrete to define an operational action plan.

In fact, the analysis of their responses pointed us to the fact that the strategic directions were not sufficiently defined. Therefore, the strategic plan could not be developed as it stood.

From the first face-to-face interview, we were able to confirm this hypothesis and make each director reflect on this analysis of the situation.

This was a major and rapid step forward, which would have required at least a second round of interviews if we had not had the benefit of this prior analysis. Moreover, it further strengthened our credibility and added value for the client.

Confirmation of the roadmap scope

The performance management system (dashboards, performance review meetings, action plans) was evaluated as very ineffective by management members. Analysis of the system's main documents fully confirmed this assessment. It then became clear that this should be part of the roadmap.

Clear priorities for improvement

As we had collected the priorities of each member of the Codir in the questionnaires, we were able to discuss them in face-to-face interviews and understand the reasons for this prioritisation. We were able to show as factually as possible that these priorities were based on elements of "low maturity". In addition, we were able to see the level of consensus, which was important, on the different topics. This greatly facilitated the preparation of the seminar to define the roadmap.