← All casesAMGEN · NEXTGEN WORKPLACE, THROUGH LENDLEASE
Leaving a workplace behind
Fifteen sites changing how they work, in a long-established culture.
Lead change management consultant, setting the approach for a three-person change team · Embedded nearly four years · Oct 2015 – Jun 2019 · 15 sites · 200+ workshops · ~$500M program
Challenge
Amgen's NextGen Workplace program moved its sites from offices and cubicles to activity-based working, in a long-established biotech culture. The change reached well beyond where people sat. It touched daily routines, who people saw in a working day, and a sense of identity tied to the old workplace.
Three questions
Looking back, three questions capture the transition work:
01What needs to end? Name the routines that stop, and agree the handovers and timing.
02What is worth carrying forward? Keep the knowledge, relationships and practices that still serve the work.
03What could become possible next? Make room for new ways of working, with support to grow into them.
What I did
01One approach across 15 sites. I set the people-side change approach and reviewed the design of everything the change team produced, so each site's work held to one plan.
02More than 200 workshops, for groups of 5 to 100, where teams worked out how they wanted to work together in the new space.
03Data and experience together. Space-utilization studies, focus groups and post-occupancy feedback shaped the approach at each successive site.
04Local capability. I coached leaders and built networks of change champions at each site.
05A way to leave the old workplace. With each team, we came up with practices, rituals and recognitions for the move. Some ideas came from us. Others, like goodbye rituals, came from the teams themselves.
What people did
Some kept objects from their old desks. Others left farewell messages on the walls before demolition.
Results
82%Satisfaction across 200+ workshops
15 of 15Sites moved on schedule
Workshop satisfaction comes from participant feedback. The schedule is a result for the whole program.
Where this applies
Any change that moves people out of something familiar: a new site, a merger, a new operating model or a new platform.
In their words
“Samuel brings a great change-management and organizational effectiveness orientation to the partnership. He is bright, articulate and thinks about how to improve the broader context when providing solutions/recommendations.”— Blake L., Global Head of Talent, Amgen · client
The perspective behind this case
New possibilities often require an ending.
People could make the new workplace their own once they had a way to leave the old one.