Corporate Management and Strategy Current State

Target group one (the corporate leadership team) had an understanding of the role of corporate management as the purpose that ties brands together by common cul-ture and ways of working. Corporate management creates and facilitates common direction for businesses and creates value by working together. Corporate manage-ment needs to see the bigger picture and where to get synergies between functions.

“One company, one wallet” is the new ideology, and the corporation wants to leverage the integration between SBUs and functions to reduce costs.

SBU and function managers in target group two see the role of corporate manage-ment more as a function that creates long term-focus and vision. The majority of tar-get group two says corporate management sets strategic direction and ambition level

and guides businesses towards that. In addition, it sets priorities and allocates re-sources based on strategy. It should help to facilitate cross functional collaboration, define roles and responsibilities, and develop organization to fit the strategy. Accord-ing to half of target group two, corporate management should also give tools for im-plementing strategy and have a common approach for changes in the environment, for example, sales channel changes. Now people feel stuck in their linear organiza-tion lines, due to cross funcorganiza-tional collaboraorganiza-tion not being facilitated enough. Also, reporting and rewards are not supporting cross functional project work. Some of the target group feels that there is a lack of common vision still.

Therefore, there are some problems understanding the current role of corporate man-agement, due to its changes in recent years. The history of the corporate transfor-mation is seen in the different perceptions of the role of corporate management by the target groups. Target group one focuses more on building a culture than target group two. Target group two expects more support and direction from corporate man-agement than target group one has given. Still, both target groups think that corpo-rations need to facilitate collaboration between different functions and develop syn-ergies. The most important tasks of corporation management, based on the majority of both target groups, are strategy development and guiding businesses in the same direction.

Previously, brands had more power over their own strategy, according to some in target group two. Brands defined the strategic focus and then got an approval from the corporate leadership team. Now corporate management has taken more respon-sibility in defining brand portfolio development. SBU leaders in target group two hope brand portfolio management brings clarity to what corporate managers want from brands and how internal development is facilitated.

Corporate management has had quite a structured strategy process in recent years according to some in target group one. There is a yearly strategy clock that guides strategic planning, decision-making and communication strategy to the board of di-rectors. The old strategy clock starts at the beginning of the year with market and consumer trend analyses and examines the current state of businesses. Based on the analyses, key initiatives and projects are formed and prioritized based on the corporate leadership team’s discussion. At the end of quarter one, the strategic deci-sions should be made and how to implement them assessed. Then corporate strategy is turned into SBUs’ deep dives and function business plans. At the end of the year, budgeting is based on the strategy and targets are set for the next year. Implementing the strategy is mostly SBUs’ responsibility, and the corporate leadership team follows

the progress only at the end of the year. The case company strategy timeline is seen in Appendix E and it done by secondary data and target group one interviews. The corporation leadership team has faced changes in recent years that caused ineffi-ciency in the strategy process when people had different viewpoints.

Overall the case company has developed the corporation into a more integrated con-sumer goods company, not just individual brands in a holding company. The corpo-rate stcorpo-rategy did not change much between 2018 and 2019, but the stcorpo-rategy process was fine-tuned to fit the new internal environment. In the 2019 strategy process, the priorities and their roadmaps were defined in more detail, and decisions about new market entries were made based on some in target group one. 2019’s strategy was more focused on strategic projects and their goals. More senior managers were en-gaged in the 2019 strategy process than in previous years, which received good feed-back from SBU senior managers according to some target group one members. Still, lower-level employees´ mindsets are not changing to fit the new strategy and ways of working according to the majority of target group two.

The case organization is budget-driven. The new strategy is fitted to the yearly budg-ets, but often the budgets stay the same year after year with minor changes, say some of target group one. That has caused problems to develop in businesses quickly. Based on SBU leaders in target group two, sometimes corporate and busi-ness strategies might have mixed targets and objectives. The group focuses on growth, but businesses just have profitability targets in their budgets. Either they break their budget or then growth is flat.

Communicating the strategy to the whole organization is quite minimal based on the majority of target group two. During summer, corporate strategy is communicated to the whole organization with town hall events and intranet posts. SBU and function managers that have been part of strategy formulation have the responsibility of trans-lating the corporate strategic message to fit their line organization. Therefore, differ-ent functions have differdiffer-ent amounts of information and styles of communication about the strategy and how it relates to employees’ work. The top 100 senior manag-ers have around two to four calls yearly to discuss corporate strategy. Senior man-agers then have the responsibility to communicate the strategy to their teams and functions. Middle managers should try to link the corporate strategy to their own and their employees’ work. Often the information does not flow to lower-level organization as planned, based on half of target group two. Also, based on the EES results, 68%

of employees believe in the corporate strategy and 72% understand the strategy.

Both results decreased from 2017 by 4–5%. Therefore, it can be said that communi-cation about the strategy and reasons behind strategic decisions should be commu-nicated better to the whole organization.

“Still a bit unclear who is responsible for what, what are the group level processes and what are the relevant meetings.” (B11)

Overall strategy-related work and discussion is kept in very high levels of the organ-ization according to the majority of target group two. Little strategy-related discussion and target-setting is done in the lower levels of the organization. Therefore, in the lower levels of the organization, people do not understand the strategy and cannot link it to their everyday work. There are difficulties in changing mindsets, focus or ways of working in lower levels based on the strategy. That leads to the point where no changes are happening in the more operational levels of the organization. People keep doing the same work, if they are not informed properly about how the strategy relates to their work and how they need to change. Therefore, more change leader-ship and strategy-related discussion needs to go to every level of the organization systematically, based on the majority of target group two.

Both target groups have seen problems in corporate management and strategy. Ta-ble 12 summarizes the proTa-blems mentioned by both target groups with literature clas-sification.

Table 12 Problems in corporate management and strategy based on both tar-get groups

Literature

clas-sification Problems mentioned by target group one

(times mentioned/ # interviews)

Problems mentioned by target group two

(times mentioned/ # interviews) Mechanisms,

processes Targets unclear (6/7) No clear balance between group related tasks and day-to-day re-sponsibilities (4/12)

Constant and open communica-tion and communicating what is in it for me (12/12)

Distribution rights & re-sponsibilities

No defined roles and responsibilities

(5/7) Lack of resources and capabilities

to deliver targets (6/12)

Decision-mak-ing procedures Lack of leadership and mindset

change (5/7) No concrete actions for strategy.

Lack of prioritization and slow exe-cution when everything is done at the same time (9/12)

Literature clas-sification

Problems mentioned by target group one

(times mentioned/ # interviews)

Problems mentioned by target group two

(times mentioned/ # interviews) Parenting

ad-vantage No overall picture of strategy,

am-bition and actions needed (8/12)

Value creation Losing brand identity if everything

is forced into one culture (2/12) Not understanding the customer in the group strategy (3/12)

Supporting

businesses Lack of communication to right peo-ple (7/7)

Lack of cross business/functional alignment (6/7)

No clear roles for support functions (5/12)

Collaboration is difficult with differ-ent functions due to culture (5/12)

Target group two sees communication and transparency as a bigger issue than target group one. Communication is not facilitated well enough between SBUs, corporate management and functions. With the lack of open communication, a lot of projects overlap and actions are done in parallel in functions. On the top level, strategy is clear, but the difficult part is to transmit it to lower layers. When the strategy and its priorities are not clear, functions cannot plan their operations and things are done ad hoc.

The corporate strategy process has moved slightly into a more concrete level with a few more senior managers’ engagement in the process. However, there are too many strategic projects planned based on target group one. Target group two also sees the resource allocation problem. There are no tools to prioritize strategic projects. Previ-ously, management was done more on gut feeling, based on target group one. There-fore, overall systematic ways of developing corporate strategy are missing. Target group two members feel that roles and responsibilities are not defined, and cross functional collaboration is not facilitated well enough.

4.1.3 Improvement Needs in Corporate Management and