Building a high-performing team: Lessons from IPC EMEA’s (Subway) procurement transformation

Bryan Griffiths: A number of things all coming together at the same time. Subway has been going through a transformation over the last three or four years, looking at every single moving part of the business. The Subway transformation allowed us to say: where should we be focusing our attention? They had a desire, as we did, to make sure that our supply chain operations really are best in class wherever possible — world-class.

The other key thing was our teams had gone from very, very small teams to exponential growth – from 50 stores to over 6,000. There were a lot of processes and systems that were either lacking or very individualistic, and we could never really spend time focusing on: Are these processes right? Have we got our structure right? It wasn’t sustainable in a transformed, broader Subway system. 

And then the final piece was coming out of COVID. We're really proud of our performance through COVID and post-COVID. But there were things that we could absolutely learn in terms of making things better, more efficient. Over that time — over a two or three-year period — about 20% of the team were new and had never met each other in person, or very rarely. So, we had this whole cultural challenge of: how do we take a really good look at our culture and build that into our transformation at the same time? That, for me, was an opportunity not to be missed. It was critical because we'd had a pretty strong culture. We had a bunch of people who were new to the business that we needed to really properly integrate.

Simon Aldridge: We also had a very passionate board of elected franchisees. They were giving us feedback that the world is changing around us. That we have delivered some great stuff over the last 20 years, but let's make sure we’re agile enough to continue delivering because the pace of change is not reducing.

Aldridge: As you would normally do with a large change programme, it’s about resourcing it and having a clear direction. Part of that was bringing on board Efficio. We’ve worked in the past a little bit with Efficio, and we've all had a great experience. We worked closely with Hackett and Efficio in those early stages to sketch out what the scale and scope of the change was, from org design, process development, investment, and systems.

Griffiths: If we're really honest, as a leadership group, we have historically been slightly allergic to processes. So that’s a change we needed to go through quickly – recognising that process enables excellence and doesn't get in the way, as long as you set it up right.

It was also about broader feedback. We went out to the franchise community, got feedback about what's working well, what they want to see done differently.

Aldridge: The feedback from the Subway side was that they wanted to see us as really close, integrated business partners. When you get that message, it really helps you set your stall out appropriately. 

We set up a separate transformation team. One of the leadership team, Abbey, took over as transformation sponsor, and we brought on Mike Tressel  as project manager from day one. They worked daily stand-ups with the team from Efficio, and that really stood us in good stead. Having a dedicated project manager and a highly focused transformation lead — that was new for us. 

Griffiths: It was about right people in the right roles, right organisational structure, processes and systems, and the right environment. We've recognised since day one that the only thing we’ve got in this business is, if you like, people and data. When we bring those two things together, we add value. This was the first time that just a reorganisation of people was not going to work for us. And that was the lightbulb moment for me with the Efficio guys – you just can’t do the org change without the process and systems piece. I don’t want anyone to go away with the sense that we had no processes at all – we absolutely did. But they were nuanced around particular people in particular markets. We needed to address those processes, and that was pretty challenging.

Aldridge: What we have now systematically done, with Efficio’s counsel, is separate out the key functions. Our strategic sourcing group now focuses on longer-range strategic sourcing events and managing the category more strategically. Meanwhile, we’ve set up a new team in the supply chain group, which is really focused on supply performance and distributor performance capability. The key is making sure that when you have multiple people involved in a process, you don’t create accidental silos. 

Griffiths: The stakeholder piece as well – we knew we had to serve a business that was transforming in a very different way. We had to start doing a much better job at capacity planning. We had to say “no” a lot more. We’d built the business on saying “yes”, arguably too many times. 

And bear in mind, we were right in the thick of our transformation post-COVID, post-Ukraine, with all of the supply chain shocks and inflation. You could say, “Well, this is not the time to be doing it with all those things hitting you.” Interestingly, the transformation and some of the pilots we put in place actually allowed us to deal with some of the day-to-day priorities we had. We were in even better shape to deliver on those.

Aldridge: It was all about engagement. In our ambition to do absolutely the right thing, we probably took too long in bringing the high-level org changes. But once we did, they were excited about the change. We started with the business strategy, taking ourselves off-site for three or four days. We had a beacon to focus on, and it allowed all the subsequent planning, strategies, and KPIs we developed to be checked against whether they served the business strategy.

We also had a new vision. We just got it down to: what are we trying to achieve over the next three years? The vision is that we become a best-in-class business by the end of this year. Having a very clear vision that’s measurable and linked to a clear and concise business strategy that people can buy into set the stall out well. After that, the teams were empowered. Every single team now has their own annual plan, three-year strategy, apex KPIs that we measure monthly and broadcast out to the wider business. Having the right people around the table giving confidence to the wider business, empowering the senior team to go off and work with their teams to build it out — that’s been, for me, an unintended but amazing consequence. There’s also been a real focus on strong communication, engagement, stand-ups, lots of newsletters going out, and really trying to take on board where everybody is in that journey and supporting them through the process.

The capacity, frankly, where we needed it, came through just the great will in the business and the teams going, “We want this to be a success. We’re bought into the vision. We’re going to make this happen.”

Griffiths: Our culture, historically, has always been strong. We recognised early on that it can be such a critical part of success. We took the conscious decision that we were going to have a pillar within our transformation looking at our culture and what we needed to do to strengthen it. We asked the whole team: “Tell us what you like. Tell us what your values are. What do you want to see this business be about?”

Then, as a leadership team, we took a very light touch from there. We went out to the business and recruited a group of culture champions who worked across the business to identify our team’s motivators and to redefine and relaunch our values. They have quickly become part of our transformation. We drew a line – which was important – but we’re continuing with a lot of the work we set off two years ago. The culture piece is really, really important.

Aldridge: We’ve spent as much time on culture as on any part of the transformation, if not more so. My advice to anybody going through a similar transformation: if you’re a top leader in the transformation and you’re not fully invested and embedded in the cultural strategy, then you’re not destined to become a world-class business. 

Aldridge: The challenges were, as with any typical transformation, getting that balance between: we’ve got quite a load of new work to do –  the transformation, the thinking, the activity, the process development – as well as delivering for our customers, the franchisees, who, quite rightly, are demanding and have a job to do satisfying the guests. I think we’ve learned from it, and our ongoing continuous improvement and strategy is making sure we’re gearing up the resources from day one to support the broader business with that as well.

Process development – I think we’re on version three of how we go about managing, documenting, and engineering our processes. I’m feeling really good about where we’ve got to. And I’m feeling pretty good about the fact that the team listened. The broader business put their hands up and said, “This doesn’t work for us. Let’s have another go” – and our new centre of excellence got its arms around it, grabbed it, and is trying to make this as easy as possible for the broader business.

Griffiths: The piloting of some of our organisational changes – making sure that worked for us – really helped us get things right. It allowed for engagement from the people involved in the business to say, “You know what? This does work.” 

Aldridge: We’ve set ourselves up to be able to respond better to future external change as well. Our agility to respond, our ability to work through change management – that just gets better and better all the time.

Griffiths: We will still be a people-centric business. Without the people and the team and the passion that the team has got, then we haven’t got a business. But we have organised ourselves, and we’re going to get the processes, systems, and data so that those people are working on the right things. 

We’ve got the ability to say, “Let’s look at the data. We shouldn’t be working on this,” or, “The answer is different to the one that instinctively we might have said.” So, I think we will be ready to cope with more change. That means we can spend our time delivering for the customer, fixing problems, delivering on our KPIs, delivering our vision.