BACKGROUND

Portobello is a Brazilian company with open capital and today is considered one of the largest companies for ceramic flooring in Latin America. It
has maintained average annual growth of 20% in the last five years, and in 2013, Portobello achieved sales of more than $1 billion reales, which
represents about $6 billion Mexican pesos. Its production is about 30 million square meters, and it serves countries in two of the five continents,
also reaching the internal market through resale, Portobello Shops and the engineering sales channel. The success and the response to growing
demand are due to it having the most innovative products, with differentiated designs and solutions.

 

INTRODUCTION

“A successful project” is the mandate to be achieved for each of the initiatives or projects within the organization; however, what is the (magic) formula that follows the great succes stories we’ve heard of? Regardless of the nature and organizational level at which a project is implemented, the globalization seen today makes follow the practice of seeking to replicate a methodology that operates successfully for a certain industry or in a certain geographic region (within or outside the country), or even within the same company but in different locations, expecting to obtain the same standard of results; nevertheless, the process fails. They had the raw materials at low cost, successful resources and technology… so…what failed?

And so we return to the original question: is there a formula for success? The answer is yes, perhaps it is not magical, but in the majority of cases the error was forgetting the main resource: the human resource, with which its specific qualities and cultural variations caused the expected success to not be achieved at the planned time or in the planned form.

It is important to identify that all adjustments imply an organizational change, and on occasions the strategies focus so much on the technological resources that we forget the human factor in this type of processes. We think that people are going to respond automatically to the business strategy, without taking into account their drivers or motivators, and we blindly replicate methodologies and strategies, without a clear idea of what is going to make things happen. It is here that we find the breaking point, and the processes delayed.

The organization suffers due to having groups that don’t get aboard, and they become what we have decided to call the “human barrier” – when the strategy goes in one direction and people in another.

 

HUMAN BARRIERS IN PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION

Just as business models are adjusted to one region or another due to the variations that the execution presents, the same occurs with human management strategies, which must be adjusted according to cultural factors, incentives, change history, leadership style and especially the cultural goal (or organizational aptitude or competency) that the project is seeking to develop. For example, a Lean Enterprise project will have the goal of generating a competence of operational efficiency, with high performance teams focused on results. A project of improvement on the level of service through an alignment of commercial and supply processes seeks to generate a competence of collaboration, communication and alignment of objectives between both teams.

Given the above, we can infer that all projects or processes of organizational improvement are a change process that implies an adjustment and an alignment between the business strategies, the specific objectives of the project and the organizational culture.

How large or difficult to overcome is a human barrier? To a large extent, the level of disruption caused by a change process depends how much the
culture is shaken up and the organizational values under which the people act. With greater cultural change, the level of disruption is greater and so is the self-imposed barrier of refusal to move to a new status quo.

 

SINTEC METHODOLOGY

Under the premise that all projects should be adjusted and aligned, at Sintec, we have a focus that allows us to develop a Change Management strategy that considers 5 major dimensions, which at the same time are aligned to a methodology for adoption to change that allows us to identify the specific cultural attributes of the group involved and which should be considered at the time of building the strategy with the goal of softening the lines of cultural disruption.

Change methodology*:

1. Identify the need for change
2. Generate the desire for change
3. Generate and provide the knowledge for executing the change
4. Generate the abilities to support the change
5. Reinforce the new status quo

The dimensions of the Change Management strategyconsist of:

 

• Alignment of leadership: Identification of formal and informal leaders that support and deploy the objectives of the project and desired aptitudes.
• Communication: Always seeking to respond to the 5Ws of the information (What, When, Why, Where, Who): What changes, When it changes, Who is impacted by the change, Why change as an organization and Why change as an individual, and How the deployment of the change will take place.
• Training: What technical knowledge should the group have to develop new tasks, and which abilities are required for achieving excellent performance.
• Follow up: How is the change curve acting? Identify if there is still a high degree of resistance.
• Change measurement: Definition of indicators and routines that allow for measuring the level of adoption and progress of change.

In practical words and steps, how do the methodology and the dimensions of our Change Management Strategy converge?

 

1. Diagnose the willingness to change upon implementing what each of the stakeholders has: awareness of the need for change, change history, leadership, communication, training and skills, level of change acceptance,
2. Identify specific cultural features (poll / focus group / 1-on-1 interviews)
3. Design the change management strategy according to the opportunities found in the diagnosis
4. Define competencies to develop (training)
5. Define a communication plan aligned to strategy, objectives of the project and specific characteristics of the audience
6. Define a management method (polling and measurement)

PROBLEM

Given the progress and the sales increase that Portobello has had during the last five years, the new context of the company demanded new forms of management to optimize the operation. Therefore, it was sought to design a new integrated distribution model that would allow the company to support growth in an organized and structured from, serving the various sales channels and allowing the final customer to receive the products faster and cutting costs through storage of products with logistics providers in different cities in the country.

The challenge for Sintec? To be the strategic partner that Portobello needed to implement this new business model and make it successful. Was it a simple task? On the contrary, it was necessary to make simulations and negotiate with Brazilian suppliers so that Portobello would get the best price in the distribution of its products, so that the new commercial providers and-partners would have sufficient storage capacity to have an inventory according the demand per city, and it was necessary to reduce delivery time of the products by 80%.

 

METHODOLOGY

Portobello understood that the new challenge would represent radical changes in operations, as well as in the work culture that the company had up to that time. From the beginning, they understood that to achieve successful implementation, it would be necessary to create a Change
Management system, giving it the same value as any other operational or logistical aspect of the project. The directors of Portobello knew that they had to do an exceptional job with the staff and make that change as swift/ effective as possible.
Departing from the Change Management methodology of Sintec, and through understanding of Brazilian culture, where they are more emotional and place a special focus on people within the work environment, it was necessary to make some adjustments to combine Sintec’s change strategy and Portobello’s culture and arrive at a perfect synergy that would facilitate the processes that the new form of operations and logistics would bring to the company.