Summary
Henkel is a multinational company with a diverse portfolio operating in various industries, including adhesive technologies and consumer brands. With a commitment to innovation and sustainability, Henkel has established itself as a leader in adhesive solutions, catering to industrial and consumer needs.
Since launching our Crazy Goal Programme with the Henkel UK ACC division in 2022, we have gone on to launch two more Crazy Goal Programmes with their German & Swiss and Nordic regions with great success.
Watch our journey with the Henkel ACC team
How Did we Get There?
The Challenge
Henkel first reached out to Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? after seeing keynote speaker and co-author of the book, Harriet Beveridge, deliver as headline speaker at Henkel’s senior leadership conference in Croatia.
The Regional Head of Western Europe came to us wanting a partner to support the regional leadership teams they were responsible for. They wanted the opportunity to think and act very differently. Each region wanted to define their next three-year strategic plan. As a backdrop, the whole ACC business faced unprecedented macro-economic challenges combined with organisational performance not achieving the results they desired. Previous ‘top down’ iterations of strategy cycles across the three regions had failed to provide the critical combination of organisational clarity. There was a lack of emotional connection to a compelling ‘gold medal’ outcome or a methodology that drove and aligned day to day actions for teams within these regions against an organisational plan.
Henkel were looking for fresh inspiration through a transformative approach. Ultimately, it was Ben’s compelling story of performance transformation (from ordinary to extraordinary) that most mirrored what Henkel were looking to achieve.
The Solution
Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? designed a bespoke 2-year Crazy Goal Programme working with different populations across the UK & Ireland and German & Swiss businesses. Due to its success, Will It? then went on to launch a third Crazy Goal Programme with Henkel’s Nordic region.
This approach included:
- 1:1 diagnostic interviews with Leadership Team (LT) members to understand respective regional challenges / opportunities. This summarised and themed data was shared with LT members to prime them around key areas of focus for the work in their respective regions.
- Work with each LT to define their individual ‘gold medal’ ambition (Crazy Goal) for their region to achieve in three years’ time. They also then identified the ultimate performance areas (and critical few KPIs within these) that needed to be met to deliver their Crazy Goals.
- A series of working sessions with a wider group of ambassadors from across each region to identify and prioritise the key 12-month organisational deliverables (inputs) that delivered the equivalent 12-month organisational KPIs (outputs). These ambassadors would go on to lead project teams formed around each deliverable.
- A set of three co-delivered ‘all-hands’ regional launches to share, inspire and involve each region with its own Crazy Goal plan.
- Targeted, ongoing working sessions involving different combinations of LTs, ambassadors (individually and collectively) alongside further all hands sessions to support execution of the plans.
Wrapping around these interventions, the regions implemented a reconfigured and consistent approach to track and communicate progress against their respective regional priorities (involving simplified tracking & reporting, re-working meeting cycles to coordinate progress across project teams and creating improvements across various communication channels and approaches).
The Results
Henkel have truly embraced the ethos of the Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? philosophy and achieved an organisational wide alignment around their ‘Crazy Goal’. Since working with Will It?, the team now work more cross functionally due to a shared goal and have improved their ways of working as a direct result of focusing on their performance to drive results.
Henkel organisational measures
- Henkel saw a +5% GP growth in 2023.
- 82% of the UK Henkel team are ‘proud to be a part of Henkel’.
- 82% of the UK Henkel team agree they are ‘presented with the opportunity to learn and grow while embracing ownerships of their tasks and responsibility’.
- 71% of the UK Henkel team agree they have an inclusive culture that fosters diversity.
Internal measures
- 17% increase in the team being excited and motivated by the future direction of the organisation (UK).
- 21% increase in the leadership team being able to prioritise what’s most important (UK).
Next steps in the Henkel & Will It? Partnership
Henkel wanted to achieve extraordinary performance. They achieved fantastic company, market and revenue growth in 2023, resulting in the organisation wanting to further develop the performance ingredients that are supporting these results. Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? will continue to partner with Henkel to support, challenge and respect their progress and processes to help them achieve their three-year ambition.
Over the next 12-months, Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? will:
- Continue to collaborate with Henkel’s leadership teams, supporting the execution of organisational goals through our layered goal’s structure.
- Provide targeted skill development support using Will It?’s performance ingredients content to individual leaders and their respective projects to help them become world class in executing their day-to-day responsibilities.
"Without the input from Will it? I believe we’d still be evolving as business, but I don’t think we would have the level of direction or even inspiration to outperform and win a gold medal like we do working now.”
The trust we have with the Will It? team and the way they also connect and trust us is incredible. It is all about how they are helping us on this journey and of course how we together can be successful and that is something you don’t find with many partners in business today.
