Ørsted: giving the power plants a place in a green strategy
- Client
- Ørsted (formerly DONG Energy)
- Unit
- Bioenergy and Thermal Power, later Asset Operations
- Sector
- Energy, Denmark
- Offer
- Strategy implementation
- Approach
- Leadership training and a co-created core story
Delivered by Rhetorica, the Napica group's company for communication and rhetorical training. Read the case on rhetorica.com →
The challenge
Ørsted's vision is clear: to run the world on green energy. But what does that mean for the unit running the company's combined heat and power plants, much of it historically fuelled by coal? The plants were being converted to biomass, work processes were changing, and with wind power taking off the plants increasingly supplied energy when the wind didn't blow. Leaders across plants and maintenance communicated the strategy in very different ways, and the organisation needed a new answer to a basic question: who are we now, and why are we here?
What we did
Napica advised the leadership on rolling out the strategy in the unit, and trained its leaders to carry it.
- Leadership and change communication: tailored programs for the leadership teams, with real cases from their own plants, individual training sessions and a workshop where every leader presented to the team and received feedback.
- Strategy day: a session with the senior leadership team on how to roll out the group strategy in the unit's own words.
- Tactical change communication: involving key employees and change ambassadors, setting milestones, closing processes and celebrating results, and protecting periods without new change so productivity and satisfaction stayed high.
- A co-created core story: instead of developing the strategy at the top and presenting it in a few minutes, managers and employees answered three questions together: who are we, what do we do, and why do we do it? The words were refined many times.
- Dialogue at every plant: teams discussed what each statement in the core story meant for their own work, so the strategy became specific behaviour at each site.
The result
“We previously tried a more traditional approach, spending seven months developing a strategy at the top and then seven minutes presenting it to the rest of the organisation.”
“As a result, we have achieved better implementation of our strategy through this process than through any methods we have used before.”
Niels Christian Kjær, Director of Asset Operations, Ørsted
Managers and employees could explain who they are, what they do and why, in their own words, and the strategy came alive in what people did at each plant. Read the full interview →
Strategy implementation
The offer behind this case.
Explore Strategy implementation →Napica ApS is the parent company of Rhetorica, communication and rhetorical training.