Culture Transformation

Results

+£10m

Additional sales and £1m additional profit

due to service levels increasing by 2%.

Factory absences fell to record lows

due to a renewed momentum amongst staff.

Market share and margin increased

despite operating in a declining economy.

THE BUSINESS

After several years of underperformance, and six years into their investment, the private equity owners of United Biscuits, an international food manufacturer, introduced a new CEO with a mission to improve the company’s performance.

Even though the business had good products and operated in a growing market, it struggled with poor performance stemming from past leadership and a dysfunctional culture. But rather than changing the existing leadership team as others had expected, the CEO chose to focus on culture as the main driver for change in the organisation and created a new group leadership team to carry this forward.

THE CHALLENGE

The key challenge was addressing the business’s cultural dysfunction by instilling a shared purpose and unifying the leadership team and company. Poor past results had highlighted the need for stronger collaboration and consistent messaging at all levels. The focus was on using culture for transformation, ensuring leadership behaviours aligned with new goals to build momentum.

This required restructuring to encourage greater teamwork and shared success, while energising the business with a clear, compelling vision for change. Leadership, behaviour and culture were emphasised as essential elements for achieving success.

“The Coode system for aligning behaviours and generating belief made an essential contribution to our success in delivering a step-change in performance at United Biscuits.”

United Biscuits

CEO

THE APPROACH

Coode played a key role in supporting the transformation by:

Aligning top leadership: Establishing a shared set of beliefs and ensuring leaders communicated a consistent message.
Cultivating ownership: There was a consistent level of focus and personal ownership by leadership with the need to model the right behaviours and maintain momentum.
Engaging the wider organisation: Informing and aligning all levels of the company with the new cultural vision.
Aligning institutional practices: Adjusting company processes and practices to reinforce and support the cultural changes.

Throughout the process, the leadership team demonstrated strong personal ownership, modelling the right behaviours and maintaining focus on driving the transformation forward.

More case studies

The Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) recognised that strengthening its executive team would be critical to delivering its strategy. While its leaders brought significant individual expertise, there was an opportunity to create a more integrated, high-performing team that was greater than the sum of its parts, while establishing the ways of working and leadership behaviours needed to support this.

Since 2019, Coode has partnered with Solina to support its transformation into a globally aligned organisation. As the company achieved fivefold revenue growth and expanded across Europe, the Americas and Asia, integrating 18 acquisitions, Coode helped define a unifying strategic narrative and operating model that balanced local agility with global scale. By aligning leadership and embedding shared cultural principles, Solina built one cohesive story that continues to drive its international success.

In 2022, a new CEO took to the helm of Concurrent Technologies Plc, an organisation that was well-established in its niche but had hit a plateau. The business had no formal leadership team, with most key decisions previously made by the former CEO. There had been little emphasis on leadership development, and the company lacked the ambition to grow.

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