CASE STUDY: Becoming a seamless organisation – Genesis Communications

By Jeremy Hill

A story from real life at board level in Genesis Communications.

Genesis Communications was founded in 1995 and is now the largest independent business mobile service provider in the UK. Genesis has over 170,000 subscribers with over 35,000 business customers. The business, which employs over 500 people in 12 locations nationwide, was acquired by the Dixons Group, Europe’s leading electrical and IT retailing group, in May 2002.

The business context

Genesis Communications has undergone massive change and enormous growth in its nine-year history. Along with its acquisition by the Dixons Group, the company recently welcomed a new managing director and has also witnessed significant changes in board-level responsibilities.

Aligned with the changes in the leadership and direction of the company, Genesis is in the midst of significant internal structural change and evolution. A programme to update the company’s entire business systems suite – that represents a multi million pound investment – is underway to design and introduce new prospecting, sales, fulfilment, billing and customer relationship management systems and processes.

Establishing a coherent leadership team

The business needed to establish a coherent leadership team to drive the company’s future success. Genesis worked with leadership development experts, Mannaz, to develop a Board Development Programme, incorporating team workshops and individual feedback sessions. The Programme was designed to support:

• The production of a new vision and goals for the company;
• Taking the ‘temperature’ of each board member’s team against the company ‘Being the Best’ corporate values;
• Building self-awareness of board member’s personal strengths and weaknesses, whilst identifying the strengths and key competencies of each individual within the team to support and enable cross-functional team working;
• The development of a deep understanding of customers’ requirements and loyalty;
• Analysing how Genesis can build on its unique cultural capabilities, whilst also promoting and growing with the Dixon’s Group values.

“Genesis is a hungry organisation with a strong ‘can do’ culture,” explains its HR Director, Andrew Dyos. “We’re lucky not to have a ‘corporatised’ culture – that’s why Genesis has been one of the UK’s fastest growing companies. Although this works well within Genesis it is a challenge to establish how we can successfully grow as part of the Dixons Group family and corporate culture without eliminating our individuality – at Genesis people have been proud to be different, and been different to be proud!”

“In my experience, boards can often be low in self awareness because of the pressurised environment they work in. In senior executive teams it’s important to build openness and mutual respect, appreciation of functional and leadership talent, as well as to understand the key differentiators of the business. In Genesis’ case, this comes down to customer service and how to extend customer loyalty,” says Dyos.

“The Board Development Programme is designed to maintain the attributes that helped Genesis get where we are now. Despite the huge growth of our business in recent years, the mobile communications market is saturated and margins are now being squeezed. This Programme gave us the opportunity to reflect our competences and our challenges, and identify the areas we need to improve to sustain our leading market position.”

The leadership solution

Genesis is something quite unique within the larger Dixons Group organisation. To draw parallels with another organisation, the Genesis board spent a night with the Christiana community in Copenhagen. This ‘free city’ within Copenhagen, which was squatted since the early 1970s, gave the Genesis leadership team the opportunity to understand precisely what it’s like to be proud to be part of a culture within a culture.

“The Christiana experience really summed up what we’re trying to do as an organisation. Genesis has had to adapt and grow in the last nine years, whilst at the same time stay grounded and fight off the competition. To be as successful as we have been, we’ve had to have an independent-thinking and hungry culture, with a ‘can do’ attitude – something that other businesses don’t necessarily have,” explains Dyos.

In January 2005, Genesis also took the opportunity to have an open and honest conversation with their customers about their experiences of the organisation. “We wanted to learn the good and the bad about the way we’d treated our customers. We’re fortunate to have strong enough relationships with our clients to enable us to do this,” says Dyos. These customer discussions have now become a permanent part of the way Genesis does business.

In addition to the customer conversations, the Genesis board underwent a series of individual and personal analyses to develop a real understanding of team dynamics and strengths. “This was an essential part of defining the working relationship between individuals and teams within the board structure and it’s enabled us to open up communications and work much more effectively together,” he continues. This comprised of in depth psychometric analyses as well as very frank feedback sessions between Board members.

The organisation’s vision and development strategy was presented to the businesses’ management team in April 2005. “Our focus in the next few months will be on this strategy – breaking it down into initiatives and engaging with the management team to ensure its success,” predicts Dyos. One key output of the programme is the commitment by Genesis and each of its Board members to achieve industry accreditation for best in class customer service.

Making internal changes

“Genesis has traditionally been a silo organisation from the board down, and each director has run their own part of the company as an almost separate organisation,” explains Dyos. “Existing and potential customers are demanding that we become more seamless and integrated and we are responding to this by offering a more simple ‘joined-up’ experience. We have invested heavily in getting this right every time from an infrastructure point of view, but the hard work starts when you start work on joining up the people!”

Genesis has introduced a series of development initiatives, including the deployment of managers from various backgrounds on key business issues (such as shrinkage and new business market opportunities). A cross-company mentoring scheme has also linked up directors and managers across different departments. Genesis also runs theme days that incorporate fun, team-based activities such as treasure hunts, where employees get the opportunity to learn and understand how other departments and the organisation as a whole works for the benefit of the customer.

“We also hold scheduled meetings between all employees and the MD every 6 months. These ‘Tell it how it is’ sessions give every employee the opportunity to share what they like about the business and identify the projects, activities and procedures that the business should stop, start or continue doing. This encourages us all to work together to build a better organisation – the outputs from each session are fed into board meetings, and tactical, as well as strategic, plans are put in place to move the company forward,” explains Dyos.

Positive business impact

“The business has changed significantly in the last 6 months,” reflects Dyos. “The board and management team now leads and operates under a shared vision, and when we compare where we are now to this time last year, we’ve significantly improved our profit under more demanding trading conditions. Genesis Managing Director, Richard Millman believes that the fact that the leadership and executive team of the business are united in our aspirations and visions, and can work together as a team, has been a significant factor in this achievement.”

“We will run our employee and customer satisfaction survey again in June and we anticipate that employee satisfaction will have increased over the year, and that customer satisfaction will also consequently grow in line with this, demonstrating the success of the changes we’ve made and adapted to as a business,” says Millman. An indication of the progress made lies in employee attrition rates which have significantly improved since the Board Development Programme. “The number of staff leaving head office has dropped by 66% in the last six months. It’s clear to see that we’ve been able to retain our skilled people who are hungry to win and serve and put funds previously spent on recruitment and induction training to better sustainable use. There’s no doubt that this journey has made a big contribution to our quest to be the best for our customers,” says Dyos.

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If you have any questions or comments to the case story, please send a mail.

• For more information on Genesis and their work with Mannaz, please contact Inger Buus by email or tel. +44 (0) 207 845 9940.
• For more information on organisational and leadership development as well as board development programmes please contact Jørgen Thorsell, Executive Vice President at Mannaz
• For background information on the Christiana community that the Genesis leadership team visited, please go to: http://travel.guardian.co.uk/countries/story/0,7451,1210066,00.html.