Oh yeh, and then we moved some people

If you have read through the previous posts and got this far, then well done. I described how we had to move offices. We defined our outcomes, had our strategy, and then worked on improving the user experience through changing our phone system, changing the desk environment, rebuilding the audio-visual experience, and changing the printers.

You’ve been on a journey just reading this. Which is how we felt before we had even moved anyone in. We had found new suppliers, signed new contracts, closed old contracts, ripped up a rule-book and tried new things. We had a vision, we got creative, and drove towards it. But then we needed to get on with getting out of our old building and into our new one; Bracken House. We had to move an entire organisation, that needed to continue to run. I’ll leave others to tell this part of the story, but I’ll leave you with one last point.

Along with being set the challenge of enabling agility, we were also set the challenge of getting everyone up and running within 30 minutes. Yes, that’s right. They would leave on the Friday, come to work on the following Monday, and would have to be up and running in 30 minutes or less. 97% of 1500 staff said they were up and running in that timeframe. We transformed an organisation, and got them up and running without issue.

Finally, all of the above work was focused on our UK office, but the implications were global. Hong Kong is shortly moving offices and will adapt the same technologies, along with Manila, already an agile office, and New York. We now have a template for an agile global organisation.