The Challenge:
How to support the IT team in becoming more self-organized, purpose-driven and ambassadors for positive change within the company?
The Impact:
The department’s purpose alignment became an inspiration for the wider company as relationships were strengthened, team members showed higher commitment and an increased openness to innovation and open collaboration.
Setting up a department for innovation and success
With e-commerce consistently on the rise, retail companies are under increasing pressure to keep up. With 85% of Bonprix’s revenue coming from online sales, its IT department was under tremendous pressure to become more agile, innovative and at the same time really come together as a strong team with a shared vision.
The IT division manages several strategic projects and develops digital solutions that overlap divisions and departments, setting them up as great evangelists for new ways of working that could inspire other divisions.
In their transformation journey, it became clear that the team needed a mission and purpose that bridged the IT division’s daily work with a bigger picture of where the company was headed and how their work could contribute to company-wide success.
We started our work with the team with our first and core building block for transformation: aligning and activating their purpose. At bonprix, that meant the IT department first had to find out what their purpose was before a small group of ambassadors would be ready to take it into smaller teams and really bring it to life there.
How we approached it
The DO Group and Bonprix developed a co-creation team, which combines a diverse group of Bonprix team members, DO Group facilitators, and external experts. This team focused on a result-oriented approach to new ways of thinking, combining internal know-how with external expertise. The team focused on shifting mindsets, peer feedback mechanisms, team-building, and risk/opportunities assessment.
In a few workshop days, they created their purpose based on input from the wider team and co-created an actionable strategy to roll it out across the division.
Immediate Results
By the end of the workshop days, team members developed a division purpose statement and ideas for actions to take in order to activate the purpose within their own work and teams. In the end, the group defined their purpose as “to develop IT solutions that help improve the lives of team members”. Champions left aligned with the division’s purpose and excited to mobilize other employees.
Longterm impact
With the co-creation process, Relationships between team members were strengthened, leading to higher commitment, increased innovation and open collaboration – all necessary components of resilience in the face of change and growth. Furthermore, the department’s purpose alignment has also served as inspiration for the wider company.
