We spoke to Steve Featherstone (Program Director at Network Rail) about his key findings from the collaboration with Bolster. Steve made the following points.
- The importance of alignment
Good performance in large companies depends on complex environments in which groups of stakeholders collaborate. This can become even more challenging when stakeholders, seemingly, have conflicting needs and goals. Crucial in this program was to align the different stakeholders towards a common goal.“Bolster specializes in guiding large companies with different functions that need to collaborate to achieve business goals. What Bolster helped us with was that if we wanted to succeed, we needed many different functions to realize that they were part of this supply chain and that they were part of something bigger.
By working with Steve and his team to understand the various functional dependencies within the company, we were able to quickly develop a tailored plan to align with a common ambition. We call this ‘The North Star’ at Bolster.
“We realized that it came down to eight teams that would enable us to succeed.”
- Dutch directness
We often hear from customers that having an external facilitator helps to gain clarity and perspective. Our ambition at Bolster is to always be a trusted partner who can help by challenging and asking the tough questions. Important within this is that the customer takes responsibility at all times and commits to direction and decision-making.
Steve remembers; “The directness of the Bolster team provided openness in terms of addressing issues in a pleasant way. They can really highlight uncomfortable issues in a way that people still feel comfortable.”
- Ambitious goals and making them happen.
When working on a performance program, there must be a concrete end result. Together with Steve, we set an ambitious goal: “At the time we called on Bolster’s help, we were losing about 50% of our volume. There is always a percentage of volume that you lose due to external circumstances that you cannot influence. Success would therefore be halving that percentage, and a volume loss of only 25%. In Scotland, we did significantly better than that, and it was the best campaign we had ever run. Bolster had so much confidence in their ability to help us that they offered to put their entire fee at stake for performance improvement milestones.
Steve notes: “In the part I led, we went from a loss of £90 million to a profit of £40 million. Many of the things we did with Bolster made a significant contribution to that. A few years later, we delivered 103% of our volume commitments.”
- Legacy of best practices
Achieving results is one thing, but to make a program successful, you need to be able to deliver those results time and time again. This means figuring out what works well and seeing if you can copy and share those best practices.
“In Scotland, we did significantly better than the goals set, and it was the best campaign we have ever run. We have taken the lessons we learned from that to other parts of the country. Simple things we introduced are still there, and they make a big difference.”
