ABBOTT:
Building the culture where innovation can actually happen
Client
Abbott Established Pharmaceuticals Division (EPD)
Industry
Healthcare
Size
> 30,000 employees in EPD
Strategy doesn't stick when it's broadcast. It sticks when it's discussed. We helped Abbott put that insight to work, turning a new R&D strategy into a shared conversation led by managers and shaped by their teams.
The Challenge
With a new leadership team in place and a new R&D strategy ready to roll out, Abbott faced a familiar dilemma: how to make sure 122,000 employees didn't just hear the strategy, but actually owned it. The temptation was to push it out through the usual playbook of cascading decks, all-hands recordings, and glossy emails. But innovation doesn't work when it's forced on people. You can mandate processes and broadcast strategies, but the spark that drives real innovation only catches in a culture that supports and creates it. Without a way to make the strategy personal, it would stay theoretical.
The Goal
To help the CIO communicate her IT transformation with clarity and credibility. This meant equipping her with sharper language for her strategy, turning her leadership team into confident communicators with the tools to speak with one voice, and creating moments where the function could rally around its direction. Above all, it meant building a customer-centric communications tone, the kind that earns trust with end users over time rather than demanding it through slogans.
The Solution
Lead through managers, not memos:
Employees listen faster to their direct manager than to anyone else in the company. Rather than building another corporate broadcast, we put managers in the driving seat and made them the channel for strategy.
Make strategy interactive:
We designed a Dialogue Map, a digital, interactive board that walks teams through the strategy in 7 easy steps. From how the outside world is shifting, to what that means for Abbott, to where the company wants to go, what'sholding it back, what's helping it forward, and finally what it all means for the team and each individual. Strategy became playful and reflective rather than preachy.
Equip leaders to facilitate, not present:
We trained Abbott's team leaders to lead the Dialogue Map with confidence, giving them the language, the visuals, and the structure to spark a real conversation rather than deliver a presentation. Strategy stopped being something done to people and became something done with them.
The Result
Our human-centred approach delivered a real shift in how Abbott talks about strategy:
Leaders and colleagues talking about strategy more directly and confidently than ever before
Increased employee awareness and engagement with the R&D strategy
Managers equipped to lead strategic conversations independently, without comms support
A repeatable, scalable format that moves teams from big picture to personal contribution in one sitting
A shared language for strategy across teams, geographies, and seniority levels
An intrapreneurial mindset taking hold across the function
The Dialogue Map is still in active use at Abbott, showing how a creative, human-centred approach can turn a top-down strategy into a shared mindset.
