Pharmaceutical industry

Post-Acquisition Cultural Transformation: Horizon 2030

Duchesnay Pharmaceutical Group is a Canadian-based international organization made up of 6 entities helping patients around the world.

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Challenge

Embracing change across borders

The context at Duchesnay Pharmaceutical Group is shaped by three major events:

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the post-pandemic transformation
the acquisition of the company with the arrival of a new leadership team
the organisation's hypergrowth

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In the face of these changes, the need to rapidly establish a culture of flexibility, results-based management, and accountability across all levels of the organisation became imperative.

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‍The real challenge: ensuring that this transformation is embraced at every level while maintaining the engagement of teams in Canada and the United States.

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In response, we designed a programme that skilfully combines collective and individual approaches, ensuring that every employee – from leader to individual contributor – feels like an active player in the change.

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Three-phase plan:

Year 1: Equip managers to lay the foundation and build trust.
Year 2: Embed a culture of flexibility and results-based management.
Year 3: Strengthen the foundation and sustain momentum with targeted support for hypergrowth.

This program has laid a crucial foundation of trust and flexibility for our rapid growth. Engagement, team alignment, shared language, and performance have all strengthened, empowering us to navigate hypergrowth with confidence.

Caroline Guerru

Vice-president, Human Resources and Communications

Coherence of the culture at every level of the employee journey

The programme we developed for DPG spanned three years, with a tailored progression for each target audience, from executives to individual contributors. Delivered in both English and French, it covered teams in Quebec and the United States. Here’s how we structured our intervention:

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Year 1: Empowering front-line leaders with new ways of working
Target audience: All non-executive leaders
A hybrid, tailor-made journey was co-designed, combining collective workshops and individual coaching sessions. The goal was to enable these leaders to embrace the new principles of flexibility (a post-Covid challenge) while engaging and holding their teams accountable during this transition.

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Collective Pathway: Three intensive in-person workshops (Canada and the US) around trust, flexibility, and accountability. These workshops were designed to encourage experience-sharing among participants and promote a culture of cross-functional collaboration.

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Pathway for front-line leaders: This included personalised coaching over 4 months to internalise the pillars of the transformation.

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Pathway for individual contributors: This focused solely on collective sessions (led by the HR team).

Solution

Prioritisation, results, and growth: a roadmap to consolidation and success

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Year 2: Prioritisation and results-based management
Target audience: Executives and leaders
In collaboration with the leadership team, we co-designed a bespoke programme that illustrated the concept of results-based management at every level, ensuring alignment of efforts and effective prioritisation in a high-growth environment.

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Executive Journey: A hybrid programme combining “action” workshops and individual support for the executive team. This allowed for full alignment of the team around the strategic plan and reinforced the dynamic driving results-based management throughout the company. The “action” workshops included, notably, the implementation of a team charter that remains a foundational tool for the team today.

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Impact journey for leaders: Building on the successful foundations laid in Year 1, this journey guided each leader in understanding and applying results-based management. Leaders participated in powerful collective sessions (including role-play) and received tailored individual coaching to help their teams direct efforts effectively and avoid burnout, creating space for company growth. A shared language was introduced (via a self-awareness tool using colours) to help each leader enhance their impact. Numerous themes were covered with an impact-driven approach (e.g. prioritisation, collaboration, decision-making, well-being…).

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Co-development for individual contributors: In parallel, thematic co-development sessions helped mobilise individual contributors around results-based management as well. This format, highly appreciated, put into practice development themes across the entire organisation.

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Year 3: Building a strong foundation in a context of hypergrowth
Target audience: Voluntary participation to consolidate progress and offer support where needed.

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Consolidating foundations amidst rapid growth : As needs evolve quickly, this program provides targeted support to solidify achievements, address challenges where they’re most pressing, and prioritise results-driven management. It’s an open invitation for everyone to raise their hand when new needs arise.

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Tailored support for sustained growth : A flexible, adaptable support process has been put in place to meet the challenges posed by accelerated growth. This initiative is designed for leaders who recognise the need for support - whether stepping into a new role, integrating a new team member, or establishing a new position. These are all situations where timely assistance is essential to maintain DPG’s agility. Role expectations are clearly outlined, and on-the-job coaching empowers leaders to quickly adapt to the demands of their evolving roles.

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Strengthening support for individual contributors : Co-development efforts continue, extending the use of the colour preferences tool introduced in Year 2 for leaders. This shared language, now well established, serves as a key resource to enhance cohesion and effectiveness as the organisation navigates this growth dynamic.

Long term Solution

Sustained impact and empowered teams

This approach enabled Duchesnay to achieve a successful transformation on multiple levels:

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Increased engagement: The programme generated widespread engagement at all levels of the organisation, with a 100% participant satisfaction rate (NPS). Both leaders and contributors not only embraced the new culture but also became drivers of change.

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Optimised performance: Results-based management facilitated clear prioritisation of initiatives, thereby increasing team efficiency. Strategic objectives were achieved on time, with rigorous cost control.

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Empowered teams: Leaders and contributors are now fully autonomous in managing their responsibilities, and the company has observed a significant improvement in their ability to lead change internally.

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In conclusion, this transformation has not only delivered measurable outcomes but has also established a resilient foundation for hypergrowth, centred on flexibility, results-driven management, and accountability.

Results