Petrochemical 1

The Question:

How to ensure that a globally negotiated contract would be implemented effectively with local resources.

The Client:

A global organization in the oil industry.

The Challenge:

To ensure that a globally negotiated contract for a new POS/BOS system in a retail environment would be accepted by geographically dispersed subsidiaries and implemented uniformly across the world without local amendments.

GLA's Role:

We designed and ran workshops in each country as the project rolled out. The participants were the global project teams from the company and the supplier together with their local counterparts. We coached leaders as needed to ensure uniform implementation.

Typical issues to resolve were:

• Different objectives for engaging with the contract
• Different decision making processes in each company
• Local subsidiaries coming to grips with being required to deliver to a global specification and with a contractor they might not have chosen in their market
• Different ways of managing escalation
• Cultural differences both between companies and also countries

We created an environment in which these issues and others could be explored at the outset so teams could create mutually agreed upon ways to move forward, to ensure swift and effective implementation of a complex project.

Results:

Each process produced a charter for managing the project in that country. The charter included such things as early warning understandings, shared understanding of decision making to smooth implementation, conflict resolution protocol and agreed reporting between country and global partners.