I worked in Novo Nordisk Algeria as Head of HR from 2019 to 2022 and besides from experiencing a fantastic adventure and meeting so many nice people, it was a massive learning in organisational development.

This was the situation when I joined:

• Business performance was behind budget, and we were losing market share
• Performance culture was missing
• The organisational structure needed to be optimised
• Transparency was not living up to Novo Nordisk standards
• … and a bit more

The solutions we implemented were:

• Change of leadership and building a team that was built on trust and feedback. It required a few visits to the desert to get this established!
• Involve and empower all leaders. We built a community of leaders that met monthly and twice a year we had off-sites to develop strategies, discuss business, upskill capabilities, etc.
• The organisation was restructured. It was tough. Some people had to leave, and new capabilities were brought onboard
• We did a deep dive of all HR policies and procedures to achieve transparency and fairness. And we did it the old school way: We printed an employee handbook, and it became the “Bible of Transparency” 🙂

A lot of people worked hard to get the affiliate back on track and we succeeded with many things. We regained market share and brought the affiliate back to good performance.

My reflection

In my eyes the most important thing we did was to build the community of leaders and gained their trust. This was the key driver for change.  Empowerment played a big role, and we worked with a concept that a manager was the “GM of their area” and should run it as such. Involving and getting all leaders on board has always been goal in organisational development.