Dealing effectively with change is the greatest strategic challenge faced by business leaders today. Integrative thinking is essential and requires cross-functional collaboration.

Traditional thinking is siloed thinking

Collaboration is key to success. Strategy, culture and brand should be thought together.

When leaders align them, their businesses become more effective, authentic and impactful.

This is the GW+Co Business Propeller, an approach to change projects that drives businesses forward.

The Business Propeller

Strategy, culture and brand can propel your business forward. If you want to fly, you need to move all three.

Peter Drucker famously quipped that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. To be effective, strategy needs to build on culture, not ignore it.

To attract talent, you can't pretend you’re something you’re not – aligning brand and culture leads to authenticity. When your brand brings your strategy to life, you get impact.

Involve your people and they will own the change

There’s science behind it, it’s called the IKEA effect. Ownership makes rollouts easier and adoption faster. 'Jams' are fast interactive session that open to everyone and allow you to tap into the veins of your business fast.*

*At one client, an engineer wrote a poem during a Jam that has become the company’s brand promise.

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Approach change as an expedition

Change is not linear, and it’s not represented by a Gantt chart. To achieve your goals, you must address not just operational challenges, but psychological, cultural, and even political issues. In Collaborative Design, the process itself becomes part of the change.

"[Having gone through this process,] my advice ever since has been: Don't start a global team and spend too much time talking around how this global team should work. You can get together, solve x number of problems, and then you build the relationships. You make it happen whilst you get to know each other, building the trust and the strong relationships that you need. When you're done, you're going to continue to work."

Global Brand Director

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Top-down-bottom-up

By involving all levels early, we uncover problems sooner – important, as the cost of re-work rises over time. Early involvement also helps you access hidden knowledge, improves your people’s motivation, and can foster better innovation.

We created a WFH policy for an investment bank in two weeks, with 100 people from all areas of the business. Their proposal included 13 specific policies and four general principles. The Board adopted it. But what was astounding, was not the policy but the enormous amount of engagement and buy-in it created.

"People understood the different needs of departments. It’s been a game changer."

HR Manager

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Design from the inside out

There’s enormous creative potential within your people – Collaborative Design is a platform to bring it out. Getting internal teams directly involved the creation and shaping of design concepts creates momentum and increases motivation. When people actively participate, they stop questioning the value of design and begin seeing the benefits of your initiative, because it becomes relevant to them. Thus your outside and inside become aligned, and that’s how the biggest impact is achieved.

"I have learned so much during this process. I have a completly different understanding of what branding can do for us and I now understand how important it is.”"

Business Development Director

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Done with you, not to you

Collaborative Design is a "done with, not done to" approach that ensures genuine understanding and buy-in. We have practised and honed our methodology for over 15 years, with businesses from 300 to 11,000 people, all over the world.

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Start collaborating

If you want more information on what we do and case studies to show the impact that we’ve had then get in touch. We’re happy to invest time with you demonstrating how Collaborative Design can make sure you’re in the 30% group.