Important Pillars of setting up new site/office for the established company

Imagine the situation when all employees in the office are new external hires and there is pressure to start running operations quickly as well there are challenging KPIs.

WHERE DO YOU START?

More than 6 years ago I was blessed to get an enriching experience as one of few senior leaders to be deeply involved into the setup of the new Shared Service Center for a large international company. My boss and myself were the only people at that time with prior company experience and the rest of the team were new hires. The site has grown up from 10 to 200 people in about 3 years.

Reflecting back, here I’m putting my “current I” considerations on how to approach a setup of a new site for an established company with HQ being geographically far away.

All elements listed below are equally important and are very much dependent on each other. I believe that the importance of each element and strength of the links between different elements are subject to the site evolution cycle phase.

So coming back to Day 1 or rather to first 1–2 years of the new site existence

1. Corporate Culture, Values, Symbols

For me, corporate culture is about shared values that result in the prevailing behaviors. The situation with opening the new office is different from bringing new hires into an established office where critical mass of employees have a good understanding of corporate culture and actually live it.

o Investment into local leadership team

In spite of how good corporate values can be, it can be difficult for external people to grasp them quickly.

Bringing loyal people from the existing sites with corporate experience to the new site is always an option. However, I would invest significant time into ensuring that the newly hired local leadership team is extremely clear about corporate values and that they live the values that they pray to. All external managers come with their biases and previous experience of dealing with possible different corporate values and accepted behaviors. Regardless of how time-consuming it can be, it really pays back to provide guidance and to coach future company leaders.

o Locally developed vision

Shaping a new organization is complex but messaging has to be simple and clear. Although not an immediate day 1 activity, one can consider the creation of a local vision for the first few years of the new office existence. That local vision would be a full reflection of the corporate values, but more tactical for the situation and probably more simplified. Involving team members from different layers of the organization to work on the local vision will help to secure the team engagement, understanding of the direction, and good execution.

It can be just a temporary tool that would allow new people to understand and to adapt to corporate value quicker while letting the team see that they can have an impact.

o Candidates’ profiles

It goes without saying that assessing new candidates’ ability to fit into the corporate culture is equally as important as assessing candidates’ other skills. Despite how scarce the local labour market can be, one should be careful about hiring people who may be difficult to embrace the corporate values in the medium to long run. Compromises are always possible but management should be aware of the pros and cons of the average profile being hired. They are the people who will create a critical mass at the end.

I found it beneficial not to focus on hiring excellent functional profiles but rather focus on a variety of experiences on the condition that new hires are a good fit for organizational culture.

2. Engagement

o Inclusive environment and relation of trust

An inclusive environment and the relations of trust across all layers of the organization are very important. They can be achieved if management takes a genuine interest in his\her team members and peers, coaches and helps team members to progress on their development and career journey as well enables his\her own and his\her team members internal and external networking.

o Senior leaders visits and sessions

Site visits of high ranking senior leaders, who spend time to engage with practicality everyone in the different formats, can be really inspiring and engaging for the team. The earlier the organization is in the evolution cycle, the more important are such visits. Informal chat sessions or chats near the coffee machine have proven to work the best.

o “Roll up the sleeves” experience.

I also believe that in the situation when everyone is a new hire , it is important for management to possess great functional expertise and be prepared and able to roll up the sleeves and help to do the job. An alternative to this can be a creation of temporary “subject matter expert” position. Team is still new and inexperienced, processes may not be stable yet, new operational situations do still occur frequently. There should be someone whom the team can reach for functional advice more often than they would need it even in just 6 months. The feeling of support and the knowledge that your manager knows what is going on and he\she is in it with you, helps to secure the engagement and trust.

3. Governance Structure

o Communication plans and flow

The first feature of the governance structure that should be leveraged is really to ensure appropriate structured communication on important matters across all layers in the organization. All team members have to receive the same information, there should be no broken phones or unspoken messages. It is very important to maintain open communication channels to ensure that everyone gets to know the vision and strategy as well as how site is progressing. Robust governance structure is an enabler here. Clear and honest communication contributes to building of trustful and engaging relations.

4. Process excellence

o Start simple and in small steps

If processes can’t be adopted from other company functions and have to be developed from scratch, start from small steps: simple scope, simple steps. It helps to build a good base for the new team to gain confidence and strive for quicker stabilization and further job content enrichment.

o Benchmark and exploit the existing company expertise from other offices

Even if the process is completely new, there are always smart knowledgeable people in the company who can provide an advice or independent review. Do the most to exploit the company internal expertise and don’t reinvent the wheel. Even new processes may often have elements that are present in the existing processes — think wider and go to others to get the best practices. (e.g. my financial reporting function benefited from the best practice used by the medical department).

As early as you can, start building the external network and try to bring external knowledge and know-how into the organization. I am confident that in addition to the other benefits, attempt to integrate the external innovation internally can trigger growth of internal innovation capabilities.

o Listen to new hires

Team members who have been just recently hired can bring a high value into the process improvement and internal innovation. After few months with the company, they can understand and get to know existing processes good enough but since they are not yet in their comfort zone, they are curious, willing to question and to challenge status quo.

All 4 elements above (corporate culture, engagement, governance structure, process excellence) have interconnected relations:

· Shared corporate values and behaviors contribute to engagement and process excellence

· Poor process excellence and weak working standards negatively impacts morale and can result in low engagement

· Good governance structure can help mitigate operational or other issues and to ensure clarity of the values. On the other side, poor communication leads to demotivation and distracted operations.

All 4 elements are very important but the degree of importance of each specific element may vary subject to the new organization evolution cycle. Leaders need to understand clearly the interrelations and impact of each element at any given point in time and to prioritize their focus accordingly.