“You want the truth here, right?”
When Mars Food Australia general manager Hamish Thomson first met with Ben Bars, he was looking for a business transformation consultant who would push the company to think differently – even though Mars had just celebrated nine consecutive years of profit growth and topped 2017’s Great Place to Work rankings.
“Ben challenged us, in a good way, on a lot of things we’d hung our hat on,” says Thomson, adding that one of the executives present came away with what she called “a feeling of discomfort”. Bars had issued a blunt warning: change had to start with the seven-member leadership team. His questions included, “How are your leaders facilitating innovation?”
British-born Bars has an economics degree and co-founded We Are Unity in 2012. He says the executive’s initial discomfort is typical. “You have to start by being very clear about the gap between a company’s commercial aspirations – its purpose, vision, strategy and brand – and the reality. I say to them, ‘You want the truth here, right?’”
He tells senior executives – including the CEO – that they must be prepared to modify their behaviour, if required. “Not everyone wants to look in the mirror. Our research highlights who, not just what.”
He starts by surveying and interviewing staff members to pinpoint how their
experience is affecting business performance. “We focus on their ability to perform and deliver on the business strategy – most organisations aren’t prepared to ask their employees this.” At one large financial enterprise, the CEO asked the leadership team if they believed the company had the right strategy. They all raised their hands. When he asked if they believed their people were committed to delivering the strategy, no hands went up. A month after that first meeting with Mars Food Australia, Bars presented the results of 138 hours of research and responses to a culture diagnostic survey from 219 of the company’s 320 associates (as Mars calls its employees). For Thomson, the biggest surprise was that 90 per cent of respondents were committed to changing the way they worked to achieve better outcomes. The data confirmed that Mars Food Australia had a strong culture but needed to be more commercially focused. For example, one in three of the associates felt the company’s leaders didn’t effectively translate the business strategy to them. Another surprise was that some of the things that made Mars a great place to work were holding it back. Its caring culture, for example, discouraged challenges to the status quo, while its passionate approach made the company very action-oriented – but some actions were not anchored in the business strategy. That was in early 2018. Fast-forward a year and the futureproofing project is already yielding results. Bars has helped the company launch a three-year plan prioritising six areas, including facilitating innovation. He’s identified three cultural drivers that need more work, dubbed “commercial”, “committed” and “confident” (in addition to the existing ones: “passion”, “pride” and “caring”). Changes include improved tracking of new product development and communication from leaders. Last August, the first “pulse check” on the reforms showed 80 per cent of associates now understand the company’s strategy and how it fits into their jobs, the speed of product development has more than doubled and mid-level leaders are increasingly being trusted to make decisions. Thomson calls it a “fascinating journey” and says, “My biggest concern was that this would be seen as the CEO or HR leading an isolated agenda but it’s been embraced across the business.” The results, Bars says, show the power of culture. The most common mistake, he believes, is for a company to fail to have commercial metrics attached to culture. For example, he asks executives whether they measure the pace of decision-making or the speed of change adoption. Usually, the answer is no. Another frequent problem that he identifies is the failure to connect frontline workers to the firm’s strategy so they understand how it applies to their work. “Measuring and predicting human behaviour is at the core of every business transformation,” says Bars. “In 2019, the number-one question for every CEO is: ‘Are my people committed to delivering on the business strategy?’”