Morrison Bowmore
Morrison Bowmore Distillers
Client Background
Founded in 1951, Morrison Bowmore Distillers Limited is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the Japanese drinks company Suntory Limited.
With three Malt Whisky Distilleries situated in the major production areas of Islay, the Highlands and the Lowlands and significant blending, bottling and warehousing facilities, employing over 170 staff, the company has established a leading role and expertise in Single Malt Whisky.
The company produces Bowmore, Auchentoshan, and Glen Garioch whiskies, all aged to perfection, and are distributed throughout the world. The success of Morrison Bowmore Distillers Limited is based upon maintenance of traditional values, product quality and innovation in the marketplace.
Client Brief
Following a period of strategic restructuring, during which the organisation moved form a loss making position into a strong profit position, MBD was redesigned around its premium single malt brands and withdrew from commodity blended whiskey markets. The MBD Executive team appointed TCP to support them in the development of a more ambitious growth strategy and the creation of an operating culture and organisation design that would embrace significant change. They envisioned significant growth potential through both acquisitive and organic means and wanted to invest in growing the talent capable of supporting this growth.
The established Executive team recognized that they had unfulfilled potential within their management ranks and that a more empowering and energising style of leadership was required to engage a loyal workforce in delivering their ambitious growth agenda in this traditional market sector.
MBD were evolving from being a production/sales lead operation to becoming a more market/brand led company in which the Executive team would be required to play a more strategic, higher impact leadership role, inspiring teams to work more collaboratively in delivering the organisations growth vision and “live” a clear set of values and associated behaviours
They saw the opportunity to develop a more stretching and collective sense of purpose beyond pure financial performance to raise the bar and step up a gear by working more collaboratively ….and saw themselves’ as needing to role model the change they were looking for from others.
Programme Objectives
The following objectives were agreed to steer a wide range of linked interventions -
- Develop a collective and energizing sense of purpose, urgency and motivation within the MBD leadership teams to create a high level of change readiness
- Increase change leadership capability and capacity at all levels by creating a critical mass of confident, empowered, self aware, capable leaders empowered to deliver the MBD change plans.
- Secure management buy-in to, and full involvement in steering the change agenda at all levels.
- Embed the MBD values and associated behaviours to deliver Passion, Pride and Performance.
- Embed a consistent approach to leading and managing change in the MBD culture, supported by common values, thinking, process, techniques and tool kit.
- Build a culture which values and builds high performing, collaborative, externally focused teams.
TCP Involvement
The jointly developed strategy employed in achieving these objectives was through an integrated programme of –
- Quarterly facilitated Executive strategy, change management, creativity and team development workshops.
- Practical change implementation teambuilding events designed around live change projects and issues for functional and cross functional team groupings.
- Employee leadership, management development and engagement events for middle managers.
- Personal Executive coaching for the Executive team.
- Bespoke HR consultancy support around change communication, KPI development, Activity monitoring, MBD Values embedding, role profiling and general HR strategy/process development.
Impact
During this 2 year programme which is continuing to evolve, the company achieved IIP accreditation, restructured it’s sales and marketing organisation, secured a major new blending and bottling contract, formed a major new North American distribution partnership and is embarking on a major modernization of its main Springburn site. They have also re-launched their 3 leading single malt brands and their financial performance is significantly out performing the sector, A recent employee opinion survey also indicated improvements in the companies culture and growing confidence in the companies management and growth potential.
