BBH Executive Meeting at ESSITY Consumer Goods

The practical, cross-sectoral and open exchange on the current topic of the human-focused business development was once more the focus point during another BBH Executive Meeting. This time, Volker Zöller, president Consumer Goods ESSITY, hosted us in Ismaning, February, 2019.

People Change as Focal Point of Discussions

Based on a concrete change example at ESSITY, which was vividly conveyed by Volker Zöller, the meeting covered the following topics:

• Which role plays a deliberately designed change management for the organizational reorientation of companies or for large IT transformations?
• How can leaders be better supported in their role as drivers of change?
• How do you ideally involve your team and find a good balance between bottom-up participation and stringent execution?
• Which modern applications exist to measure factors like mood, experienced progress or the current mindset towards change and therefore allow a targeted influence?

The high relevance of this topic became quickly clear during the active discussion of the participants. The tangible success stories as well as the negative examples directly from practice showed the relevance and necessity to always take the people-perspective into account during technical, procedural and organizational changes, and to support the ‚People Change‘ deliberately and professionally. At BBH, we call it CO/MM/A – the Corporate Mood & Mind Approach.

CO/MM/A – Our Approach to Successfully Realize Changes and Support People Change

It became especially fascinating when we were able to give a live demonstration together with Volker Zöller of how ESSITY realized the BBH CO/MM/A approach: A smart, cloud-based tool for monthly pulse measurements with approximately 450 employees. It is mood and progress monitoring in real-time used to recognize development in different regions and at different management levels: Communication directly back to the sender, not only to gather feedback, but also to return targeted information. On top, an online dashboard works as a smart management instrument, e.g. for the regional heads.

Sincere thanks to the participants for coming and the engaging discussion. And, of course, special thanks to Voller Zöller and ESSITY for the invitation to Ismaning.