Case Study 2: Creating a Consumer-Focused Culture in a Managed Care Company

The Challenge

The company's long-term objective was to become the "health plan of choice" for its targeted population. Developing and sustaining a culture that was consumer-focused and that supported collaboration, accountability and ownership, was seen as critical to the company's success in achieving its goal. The company established a Program Management Office (PMO) to launch and manage a large-scale change initiative to implement this strategy.
E&W was engaged as a member of the PMO's Change Leadership team, whose charter was to increase competitive advantage by realizing the full potential of people engaged in the design and implementation of the strategy.

E&W's Contribution

• Provided strategic guidance to the executive team and Program Management Office on needs, opportunities and strategies for change to optimize the initiatives' performance.
• Designed and facilitated a stakeholder engagement strategy to ensure successful change implementation.
• Developed and implemented a strategy to incorporate the company's desired cultural values of consumer-focus, collaboration, accountability and ownership within the initiative teams to serve as a role model for the larger organization in implementation.
• Provided leadership coaching and team effectiveness consulting to initiative teams to define their charter, enhance team effectiveness, apply project management tools, and seed the teams with change management capabilities.
• Created a measurement approach to track the initiative's progress.
• Designed and implemented change management processes, tools and decision-making procedures.
• Managed the interface between the initiative teams and the rest of the organization to prepare for implementation.

Results

• Initiative teams successfully developed 30 business cases for consumer-focused innovations.
• Executive team selected top 10 initiatives for implementation within the company's operational business units.
• A culture emphasizing consumer-focus, collaboration and accountability was infused into the larger organization as the change initiative was rolled out.