Transform while you run

It's all about bringing out the best in you, your teams and your organisation. How Roche Diagnostics NL strengthened alignment, rhythm and customer focus while the business kept moving.

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Download the Roche Diagnostics NL case study and explore the approach, changes and results in more detail.

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About the client

Roche Diagnostics NL is part of the innovative global healthcare company Roche, which consists of three divisions: Roche Pharma, Roche Diabetes Care and Roche Diagnostics. The latter is a world leader in ‘In Vitro Diagnostics’ and develops and brings a wide range of diagnostics platforms, tests and digital solutions to market.

The situation

With the fast pace of change in the Dutch diagnostics landscape, Roche Diagnostics NL realised that its way of operating was holding the organisation back. They wanted to move faster and become more flexible, while keeping a stronger focus on patients and customers.

To do that, they needed to rethink their strategic direction, operating model and way of collaborating. This became the start of their people-led change journey: STAR 2023, Strategy, Transformation, Agility, Results.

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Why the client selected Twinxter

After liaising with several parties, we chose to partner with Twinxter because we knew without a doubt we would gain unrivalled support from Twinxter and Alize in our Journey.

This sense of confidence came about from the overall quality of Twinxter’s inspiring pitch, their pragmatic approach, personal purpose, extensive knowledge and experience with Agile Transformation, creative energy and hands-on attitude.

And we felt assured, safe in the knowledge that Twinxter understood the need for a customised approach and the specific support we needed for our Transformation Journey. 

Download the full case

Interested in reading more details on our approach, implemented changes and results? Download the full Roche case study here and expand your horizon.

Our approach

Together, we first decided to take an iterative approach and build change and adaptive capabilities within the teams that would work on the strategic initiatives. Then, we defined the WHY of the change and how that would contribute to the higher Roche purpose.

We identified the internal need for visual management techniques and introduced the teams to the Obeya. In addition, we also developed a meeting rhythm to align with each other, have dialogues about new work coming in, prioritisation, planning, problem solving, goal setting, improving and so on.

During this exploration phase we organised design sprints to test hypotheses and principles for the new way of working. All with the aim of gaining a common understanding and to find out what value this would bring to the Roche Diagnostics NL organisation.

Collaboration was also a big topic on the agenda, as a result of requests coming in from employees. We addressed what way of working and organising would help to improve collaboration between the teams, clients and other stakeholders.

Almost 70% (!) of leaders and employees signed up to be involved in the design sprints. They began to explore customer journeys and patient pathways, adaptive operating models, what other affiliates were working on and what helped them in their transformation, and they contacted external companies to get an outside perspective on what was going on in the market.

Through an iterative approach, immediate experimentation and visual management through Obeya, they collectively started to design their future organisation.

The results

  • New Operating Model in place with two platforms: one focusing on the short- to mid-term (current business); the other one on the mid- to long-term (future business). Both platforms will be supported by four enabling teams.
  • Teams: squads, chapters, expertise teams and enabling teams are up & running with a clear purpose, team agreements & a rhythm.
  • Introduction and continuous evolution of Obeya: the online ‘war room’ where the company’s strategy, goals and performance are accessible for all. All the teams meet here, and align on the work that needs to be done in a fully transparent way.
  • Introduction and evolution of Objectives and Key Results (OKR), as our new goal-setting approach.
  • Embedded company rhythm, in which goal-setting, retros and reviews take place every trimester. Progress, performance, resource planning and risks are managed by means of a bi-weekly Market Place.
  • In-house Transformation Programme Office (TPO) team in place with change and agile skills and capabilities.
  • An all-time high customer satisfaction score of 85%, showing that customers also benefited from the change efforts.
  • Development and roll-out of tailor-made decision-making guardrails and framework: to empower the organisation to make the decisions where the knowledge is.
  • Ultimately 100% of the colleagues were, and still are, involved in the Transformation Journey.
  • Found a sound balance of how Agile could work for us: Stick to the original intent / philosophy while at the same time acknowledging (and therefore adapting) how it could work for us in the best possible way.

For more details on our approach, implemented changes and results, please feel free to download the full case study.

Esther de Rooij

Esther de Rooij

General Manager, Roche Diagnostics NL

You can read all the books about transforming an organisation, you can do lots of workshops and have long discussions about how to get it right. But it all starts by doing. Twinxter and Alize understood the challenge we faced very well (transform while running a business). They supported the Leadership Team, the Transformation Office and all the people in the organisation with the essential ingredients for success. Alize and Twinxter had a pragmatic approach, delivered candid and useful feedback, offered a lot of knowledge we could tap into and was a lighthouse that kept us going.