Prioritizing cultural competence enables successful, sustainable change management

Berlitz worked with a highly collaborative team of internal business leaders, executive sponsors and external consultants to provide strategic direction, expertise and learning solutions to help a large food company become a globally inclusive organization.

To keep pace with a fast-changing global business environment, a major international food-and-beverage conglomerate created a company within its corporate structure. The new company included four key business units spanning local, regional and global brands in the snacks, foods and beverages markets.

The key goal in implementing this internal change was to identify and enable synergies and leverage capabilities for a competitive advantage. A year later, formal surveys conducted across the organization pointed to a shared value system for diversity and inclusion on a global managerial level. Yet there was a problem. On a day-to-day basis, individual managers were not demonstrating support for these values. This all-too-familiar gap between beliefs and behavior needed to be closed to enable the organization to accomplish its mission and meet its goals.