Advantage Success Case: sanofi-aventis
What you need: Get everybody moving in a new direction.
We know it’s a challenge leading people from nodding heads to true buy-in. We make sure that executives, senior managers, and key talent understand and get aligned with your new strategic direction.
Issues You’re Facing
- Executives expect the new message to trickle down on its own
- Current management development and leadership training doesn’t help senior talent execute on the new strategy
- Coaching is inconsistent and managers don’t have a process for holding people accountable for changing behavior
- Employees don’t understand their role in the new strategy or why they should act differently
How We Can Help
- Align culture around company strategy
- Bridge communication gaps between managers and workers
- Create buy-in for change
- Manage in times of uncertainty
- Achieve on-target performance from individuals and teams
- Compete in a challenging and evolving marketplace
ADVANTAGE SOLUTIONS: The Advantage WaySM, Symphony, Applause
Driving Performance and Engagement Through Frontline Leadership
Sanofi-aventis boosts competitive advantage by equipping leaders to execute on a new high-performance strategy.
Challenge
In the fast-changing pharmaceutical industry, winners must be able to rapidly adapt – or die trying. That was the challenge facing pharmaceutical giant, sanofi-aventis, whose nearly 100,000 employees operate in more than 100 countries.
The company was facing several market shifts and the CEO realized that creating more sustainable growth would require the company to transform. Instead of sticking to its traditional narrow “blockbuster” product profile, sanofi-aventis needed to become a comprehensive global healthcare leader.
A new Performance Management Process was already in the works. How could frontline leaders achieve the mindset and develop the competencies to leverage the new management process — and create effective performance partnerships with their people in support of the new corporate strategy?
Success Solution
“Sanofi-aventis had an insightful understanding of how markets had evolved and the strategic transformation this would require for the company. They also realized that frontline leaders were the critical link in making sure that individuals and teams were aligned around and could execute the new strategy,” says Advantage Partner Kelvin Yao.
An Advantage management development initiative focused on helping the entire sanofi-aventis team execute the strategic shift described by the CEO. The leadership training aspect of the initiative had a dramatic impact on thousands of managers and contributors worldwide.
Frontline managers became more aligned with the new strategy and better able to execute it. Both managers and contributors gained a better understanding of how to use the new Performance Management Process to develop ongoing, performance-based partnerships that supported new strategic goals.
The company felt that Advantage “offered unsurpassed value” by creating organization-wide strategic alignment with the new strategy, achieving measurable impact from training, and customizing learning to fit with the Performance Management Process.
Sanofi-aventis also felt that Advantage’s ability to simplify highly complex and detailed processes, deliver learning online and via classroom, and create a strategically aligned initiative in less than three months were key benefits that led to outstanding results.
Sanofi-aventis is confident that having invested in their frontline leaders via the Advantage initiative, the company will create a high-performance culture that outperforms industry peers and will ultimately improve bottom-line results.