Building a Collaboration Toolkit at Cadbury
Schweppes
Where it began
With the acquisition of Adams in 2003, Cadbury Schweppes became
the world’s largest confectionery company, and a global
leader in soft drinks. It found itself operating on an increasingly
global and cross-functional scale, and felt the competitive pressure
to innovate and deliver to consumers quicker and better than
ever before. Globally and locally, teams needed the skills and
tools to collaborate in this new world. But an overload of new
initiatives meant a global training programme was not an option;
instead, team leaders needed to build high-performing teams quickly
and to collaborate more efficiently in the new structure.
Where we came in
Future Considerations was asked to create a Collaboration
Toolkit that would help team leaders and OD professionals to
build partnership and teams quickly and to manage complex collaborative
networks well.
We worked closely with the global organisational development
team, and with leaders around the organisation, to design a model
for collaboration within the company which fitted the Cadbury
culture, language, structure and core processes. What emerged
was ‘Working Better Together’; a kit of 50 step-by-step,
easy-to-use tools grouped under the headings of purpose, relationships,
processes and capabilities. A team leader could pick up any of
the tools – whether they needed to align a team around
a shared purpose, build working relationships with team members
and external partners, make tough team decisions or build their
facilitation skills – and apply it almost instantly.
Part of the project was to get teams collaborating around
Cadbury Schweppes’ Corporate Social Responsibility agenda.
For this purpose, we developed a board game where teams could
compete with one another, addressing ethical dilemmas and learning
about the principles and policies, and the appropriate form of
stakeholder engagement.
Finally, to build global understanding and commitment to the
toolkit, we designed and co-delivered a four-day case study,
using a fictitious company, for the company’s global HR
conference. HR managers from all countries had a fun but realistic
experience of using key tools from the toolkit.
How it ended… and what next
The toolkit is now on the Cadbury Schweppes intranet site
and is available to 60,000 employees globally. The project ‘Working
Better Together’ is now an established and sustainable
pillar in Cadbury Schweppes culture. The toolkit has taken root
and is in constant use.
