A leading FMCG company with 5,000+ employees faced challenges of slow decision-making, siloed structures, and bureaucratic inefficiencies. While frontline employees were engaged, leadership struggled with alignment and execution speed, limiting the company’s ability to respond swiftly to market shifts.
To drive agility, we needed to change their mindset that they always “REACT”. We redefined it as re-ACT. Autonomy, Collaboration and Transparency—core agile principles, iterated. Leadership embraced a shift from hierarchical control to adaptive decision-making, allowing teams to own their outcomes. Siloes were dismantled to enable cross-functional collaboration, ensuring faster information flow and joint problem-solving.
Our approach was iterative. On-ground conversations and Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) helped identify key bottlenecks, while co-creation workshops ensured employees shaped the transformation. Agile practices were introduced, including:
- Daily standups to enhance responsiveness and coordination.
- Leadership coaching to embed agility in decision-making.
- Cross-functional value-stream teams to drive customer-centricity.
The impact was immediate. Within a week, a frontline salesperson flagged a competitor’s strategic shift during a standup. Instead of the traditional escalation process—where the field sales team informs their Area Lead, who then escalates to the Sales Head, who brings it up in an HOD monthly meeting, often leading to delayed action—the team acted within a couple of days, staying ahead of the competition.
To sustain momentum, leadership institutionalized regular retrospectives and open forums, reinforcing a culture of continuous learning and adaptation. By embedding agile principles, the company evolved into a fast, collaborative, and proactive organization where teams operate with autonomy, alignment, and shared purpose.
To learn more about how we help organisations become self-managed, resilient and thus future-ready, click here.
Related Posts
From Complacency to Ownership
Story of an organization that dismantled silos and fostered collaboration—without making any structural changes—but with leaders embracing an ownership mindset.
Transforming culture? It starts with you, the leader.
Great leaders don’t just lead cultural change—they embody it. They don’t merely inspire their teams with words; they instil confidence through actions.
From Busyness to Impact: How can your team make the shift?
How a SaaS company reclaimed 10% capacity each iteration and drove real business impact by shifting from activity-focused KPIs to outcome-driven metrics.