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CASE STUDYshape

Building Managerial Effectiveness In VUCA 
Times

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Industry

Telecom

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Challenge

A leading telecom company faced significant threat from an aggressive competitor in the space of customer acquisition. The leadership team was convinced that they required a mindset shift in favour of innovative products lines, differential service delivery and enhanced team effectiveness.

The client, a global telecommunications leader renowned for exceptional customer service, had built a strong reputation in the market for its commitment to customer centricity and reliability. The company was headquartered out of India, a country experiencing a telecom revolution driven by aggressive price competition. The market was rapidly shifting, leading to significant customer attrition that impacted even their loyal customer base; a serious concern for the organization. Recognizing that a price war was unsustainable, the client realized there was a need to pivot strategically to stay relevant. While their legacy and international footprint provided a competitive edge, adapting to this new environment required a swift response. This called for enhanced agility, innovative approaches, empowerment at all organizational levels, and a re-engineering of their service delivery framework.

Our Diagnosis:

Internal analysis:

  • Engagement with the Group CEO, the founding Chairman and the circle CEOs to reframe the vision, mission and values of the organization in context of shifting market realties

  • Evaluation of current strategic pillars in line with the reframed vision, mission and values

  • Employee perspective through focus group sessions

  • Use of psychometric tools to evaluate internal and external agility, cultural nuances, collaborative ways of working, leadership adaptability, and working styles

External analysis:

  • Market-led customer FGDs to gain insights on customer expectations and pain points

  • Immersive study of competition best practices beyond pricing

  • Study of global industry best practices, regarding innovation and customer centricity

  • Analysis of the sentiment of the distribution and partner channels

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Key Findings

  • Insufficient scalability in the current product and service framework to meet evolving market demands

  • Limited managerial empowerment to make swift, market-responsive decisions

  • Lack of team collaboration to drive the required ‘moments of truth’ for external customers

  • Presence of a product mindset instead of a customer-oriented focus; contribution to low innovation and lack of agility

  • Lack of a strategic managerial development plan that could enable empowerment, team agility, leadership adaptability and organizational productivity

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The Solution

  • Managing culture shifts across different businesses, starting with the most critical ones

  • Development of a holistic leadership development plan addressing key leadership gaps in the context of the stated challenge

  • Creating ownership, accountability and adaptability at all leadership levels, starting with the C-suite

  • Executive coaching for all circle CEOs and their top teams

  • Alignment across all telecom circles and business groups to evolve a ‘One company’ mindset

  • Establishing an innovation lab, focused on driving innovation, agility, adaptability and customer-centricity

  • Institutionalizing a mentoring framework, following the completion of coaching interventions

  • Capstone projects involving cross functional teams

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The Impact

Tangible

  • Increased CSAT: 38%

  • Reduction in talent attrition in the mid managerial level: 56%

  • Improvement in NPS: 56%

  • Increased internal promotions: 88%

  • Increasing trend in customer acquisition in the first quarter by 25%

Intangible

  • Improvement in innovation across business lines

  • Improvement in the morale of external and internal stakeholders