The winning team: Elizabeth Eyre investigates an award-winning people strategy that is bringing two famous British brands closer together

Training Journal, April, 2007 by Elizabeth Eyre

Think of great British cars, and the names Jaguar and Land Rover are likely to be on the list, along with the Hillman Minx, the Austin Mini, the Morris Minor, the Triumph Stag, the Rover 1000 and the Rolls Royce Silver Shadow (to name but a few).

Back in their glory days, Jaguar was one of the world's top luxury marques (the XJS still regularly gets voted people's ultimate sports car), while Land Rover dominated the utility vehicle market.

They were owned by British Leyland in the Seventies and Eighties but went their separate ways when BL followed the rest of British manufacturing into oblivion. They are now part of Ford's Premier Automotive Group (Jaguar was bought a decade ago, Land Rover more recently) and are undergoing something of a renaissance, although the current Jaguar saloons bear a depressing resemblance to the Rover 75, and are popular company car fodder for middle managers, while Land Rovers are now as likely to be seen on Kensington High Street as they are down on the farm.

They were run as totally separate businesses when Ford first acquired them, but brought together under the same line-management team in 2001. But Ford soon realised that, despite the two businesses' shared history, the same problems were arising as with any acquisition and merger.

Jaguar and Land Rover (J&LR) had been under-performing in several key business performance indicators, forcing its management to re-examine its strategic direction and structure with the ultimate aim of transforming a significant loss in 2003/04 into a 4-5 per cent profit by the end of the decade.

This re-appraisal of J&LR's position led to the identification of six critical priorities:

* deliver outstanding quality/ customer service;

* build the brands/grow revenue;

* develop great products that deliver the brand promise;

* achieve a competitive cost base;

* 'create the winning team', and

* build a sustainable business.

"Theory was different between the two companies, policy was different, procedures were different, cultures were different," says Peter Wall, Land Rover's education, training and development manager. "One of the key things we needed to do to make the business successful was get the people side right.

"'Create the winning team' (CTWT) is an enabler for the other five priorities. It's key to creating a performance-orientated culture, increasing personal accountability and enhancing team-working. It was our solution to the people issues within the business.

"There were three main strands: clarity, capability, commitment. Clarity is about setting objectives, values, behaviours, what the organisation is about, how to deliver those objectives, what people's roles are in that. Capability is about whether we have the skills and competencies necessary to deliver, and commitment is about hearts and minds--are we getting discretionary effort out of people?"

One of CTWT's main objectives was to improve the overall effectiveness of leadership at the manufacturer. Leadership effectiveness is measured within J&LR with the employee satisfaction index score from the PULSE attitude survey, which fell year-on-year from 57 in 2001 to 32 in 2004.

"Reversing this trend will be an excellent indicator of progress towards longer-term success," says Wall.

A group was formed in 2000 that spent about a year scoping out the three strands. "We looked at everything, right from different policies and procedures to style and culture within the organisation," says Wall. "What we needed to do was try to define some common base behaviours, no matter what level you are or what job you do, that we expected everyone to work towards--that was fairly key in moving the process forward.

"I think there was a lot of confusion around 'why have we done this', 'what is the business about', 'is it one business or two'? We had to try to help people understand what the business is about and identify what is similar within Jaguar and Land Rover, rather than focusing on the differences. There had been a lot of confusion and some resentment about the merger to begin with: some teams found that they were former Land Rover people with a Jaguar boss, for example. We had all that stuff going on."

One of the fundamental principles was developing management leadership potential. The organisation decided that its senior leaders had to change their behaviour, in order to stimulate change in others, so the J&LR Top 150--the most senior leaders in each department--were identified as the priority for development.

The leaders were mainly functional or technical specialists, who hadn't received regular formal leadership training. They were passionate about their work but were struggling with leading the new dual-brand organisation within a difficult business environment.

The aspects of leadership effectiveness identified as needing priority attention were:

* increased accountability/self-starting behaviour;

* strengthened interpersonal relationships/networking and team-working, locally and inter-departmental, and

* better communication and ability to motivate/inspire others.