“To grow and survive was hard enough”
“The organisation had grown dramatically since we launched in 1996, it became very clear that everyone from staff to investors were looking my way to make things happen!” said Scott Martin, CEO and founder at Coffee Nation. “To grow and survive was hard enough; we had to start doing thing differently if we wanted to become industry leaders. Leading organisational change is not something I had ever been called upon to do before, I knew we would need help if we were to see the company through tough times and set us up in a strong position for the future.”
Macadam consulting was asked to work with the leadership team to create an environment where people are committed to, take responsibility for, and are accountable for the decisions they make, enabling wise decisions to be made at the right level.
"Fast pace growth causes change”
“Scott and his management team needed to take full control of the strategic direction and to articulate a strong unified message as a story that sets out the compnay’s purpose, its intentions and values of the organisation that would encourage all colleagues to see where they could contribute to the company and theirown success.” said Ruth Smith, Macadam principal consultant.
The leadership team involved everyone across the organisation. At the peak of the recession Coffee Nation made the brave decision to focus on a communications process to re-align the company values and guiding principles back to a point more akin to when it was a brave, naive start-up back in 1996.
“Fast pace growth often causes the original dynamism and behaviours of its employees to change but the Coffee Nation management remained committed that it had been most successful when the culture and the value of the organisation were clearly understood and were part of daily life. All colleagues now have the ability to confidently refer to this operational framework to make local wise decisions.” explained Ruth Smith.
“More simple and robust communications processes”
For a consistent message to be heard, Scott and his leadership team worked with Macadam Consulting on implementing organisational processes that would support and encourage the desired way of working. Through a six month period the company introduced a more simple communications process, working on total company briefings and one-to ones rather than departmental silo management. All communication refers to, and reinforces, the core values and guiding principles. “The results have been excellent” said Scott Martin. “We have seen increased staff attendance, lower staff turnover and watched the organisation become more vibrant and driven in a way we experienced when we started off all those years ago.”
Coffee Nation now engages with its teams, (business development, account management, sales, brand guardian, technical, customer support, engineers and installation teams, as well as its external communications agency), through regular companywide monthly business update meetings, with weekly line management meetings pushing out relevant information to be disseminated to teams . This is supported by regular internal email communications and companywide newsletters. Coffee Nation has also introduced an annual companywide conference which engages all levels of Coffee Nation employees and concentrates organisational achievements, key business focuses and results.
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“Training and communication is core to success”
“Any organisation looking to drive their strategic goals needs a strong training structure developed to deal with the workforces skill needs and fully supported with an effective companywide communications process – training and communication is core to success” explained Ruth Smith.
Coffee Nation now has robust, consistent training and development processes. Technical teams and engineers benefit from ongoing training on new development technology, before holding training sessions for the wider company. In addition new operational developments including supply chain are communicated to staff.
Coffee Nation has a comprehensive structured induction and training programme for everyone who joins the company. The basis of this programme is the ‘Job Ladder’. The Job Ladder identifies the skills and knowledge required to deliver the job role and is split into five stages. Completion of each stage is on a knowledge and competence validation, completed by the line manager. The ongoing development of colleagues is discussed at one to ones. Appropriate development opportunities are agreed between the line manager and colleague. These could be individual training initiatives, NVQs, projects, internal development programmes.
“We have reenergising our teams”
“In a relatively short time, over a period of significant financial uncertainty, we here at Coffee Nation, have not only invested heavily in R&D to drive growth in our new products, but we have also invested in developing the organisation and our people to bring our company values to life. We have reenergised our teams and expanded and improved our product range. Here at Coffee Nation we have seen our sales increase by 10% and our profitability improve by 15%. These changes have been crucial to our overall success for the past year and we now have an extremely healthy platform to support our accelerated growth over the next 24 months.” said Scott Martin.
Who are Coffee Nation?
Coffee Nation uniquely design, manufacture, finance, supply and support self-service stand-alone concessions, which deliver gourmet quality self-serve coffee. Coffee Nation provides an unmanned turn-key solution to motorway, forecourt, travel, education and business & industry partners wanting to sell quality coffee. With over 800 sites across the UK, Coffee Nation’s innovation has bridged the gap between high street coffee bars and traditional vending, to participate in the coffee on-the-go boom and sell quality coffee from an unmanned coffee bar. http://www.coffeenation.com/
PDF of Coffee Nation Case Study
Coffee Nation National Business Awards 2010
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