Employees: 33,000 (UK)
Manager of transformation capability development: Peter Nelson
The troubled steel company, Corus, was created when British Steel and the Dutch firm, Hoogovens, merged in October 1999. As you would have expected, the coming together of the firms caused severe ripples across the company, with the latest changes seen last December, when the two joint chief executives resigned.
Corus, which has 23 business units, employs 33,000 people in the UK. As well as undergoing widespread restructuring, it has been hit by the strong pound and the low demand for carbon steel. Last July, 1,200 people were made redundant; since the merger, 4,500 UK jobs in total have been earmarked for the chop. But latest speculation points to 10,000 jobs falling under the axe if production is shifted to eastern Europe. This is due to be confirmed imminently.
But despite the disruption and the dire market conditions, Peter Nelson, British Steels manager of transformation capability development, remains steadfastly buoyant.
He says that the changes, past and proposed, make the companys transformation programme, started by British Steel in 1998, all the more important now.
Prior to the merger with Hoogovens, British Steel admitted that, despite having an international reputation as a leader in its field and making more than 1 billion profit it needed to change the way its managers approached the business so that they were more market-focused.
Nelson was approached by Gemini Consulting, with whom British Steel was already working, to provide an insiders perspective. He says: The company felt it had gone as far as it could in terms of cost-cutting. It had an international reputation as a cost-cutter and it was a case of what can we do for an encore?. We have to do business differently. We treated all customers the same and we didnt really know if a customer was profitable, if they were a good customer or we were just scraping by with them. It was a case of getting a grip. Business management process was the big stumbling block.
Nelson worked with Nottingham Business School to produce a postgraduate diploma course in transformation management; around 40 Corus managers are about to graduate from the 18-month programme. He says that the creation of internal consultants was one of the main benefits: The merger has changed direction its not called transformation; now, its called improvement.
Managers have to stop and discuss what they have done during a certain week: They plan, do and review. Its learning through doing, says Nelson. You are being coached and mentored, first by the consultants but later by your own colleagues. Its not like taking a textbook away. You had to demonstrate [what you had learned] on a weekly basis.
Nelson says that, because of the in-house programme, the integration was managed well and profits have been made as a result of the smooth transition.
We were stuck in the past in parts, admits Nelson. Rather than redesign, businesses tended to tweak things. The luxury of the transformation process was that we took managers out of the daily business. The first three months was to see how we would do it if we were starting from scratch. Everybody wanted to do it, they were very positive, there was no negative feedback from anybody.
Its been such a success that these people have been in demand from other companies as change managers. Thats part of the price you pay.