With its headquarters in France, Nexans is a designer and manufacturer of cable systems and services for electrification, operating in 42 countries and employing about 26,000 people around the world.
We worked alongside the internal OD and HR team to help them embed the organisation’s strategy and translate this into meaningful new behaviours across their diverse workforce.
Challenge
With over 100 years of history, Nexans was keen to make a strategic shift from being a generalist cable manufacturer to being a focused solutions provider in the electrification market, playing a key role in energy transition.
To support this shift, Nexans needed its employees to understand and embrace the new ways of working to support the strategy.
In particular, they needed more integrated working behaviours across business units to allow the organisation to think in terms of solutions rather than just delivering high-quality products in an unintegrated way.
To do this well, the internal OD and HR team needed an external thinking partner to help shape a range of approaches and interventions to embed these changes. That’s where we came in.
Approach
Two of our consultants here at Metalogue partnered with the OD and HR Director, contracting in a way that would allow for a creative form of ‘working live’.
Over two and a half years, our client was able to access our two-person consulting team flexibly on a number of interventions.
At times the work involved being a sounding board to Nexans’ internal team, helping them make sense of the change work they were doing while exploring alternative interventions.
Sometimes we worked alongside the internal team and Nexans’ top 150 leaders on translating strategy into meaningful action in their business areas and regions.
And at other times, we were there to hold up a cultural mirror to the organisation as it tried to change its ingrained patterns of working and ways of doing things.
And at other times, we were there to hold up a cultural mirror to the organisation as it tried to change its ingrained patterns of working and ways of doing things.
Outcome
Since our partnership began, the internal team at Nexans has been well supported with a trusted consulting team which they know can respond nimbly to their needs.
The business units across the group also have a clear story, which showcases what the group strategy means for them and their people in their day-to-day roles.
And the organisational system is continuing to learn and be curious about itself as it shifts and changes its ways of working to support the integration and sharing needed to deliver the strategy.
As a result of our relationship, Nexans’ overall sense of purpose has expanded. Now they don’t just have pride in the quality of their products; they also have pride in the role their organisation plays in the global energy transition that’s vital to us all.
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