Moving 445 people forward: taking ownership and getting 1% better every day.

High performance isn't just about ambition on paper. It's about what people do every day. Van Lanschot Kempen IMC wanted to become more agile, collaborate more effectively and continuously improve. The challenge? Turning these ambitions into everyday actions. How do you encourage employees at every level to take ownership, reflect on their actions and challenge each other to keep improving? And how do you make sure these principles don't fade away after a one-off initiative, but become embedded in the way people work?  

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‍To drive lasting behavioural change, we developed and implemented a train-the-trainer programme. We translated the core principles of ‘Radical Ownership’ and ‘Reflect in Action’ into concrete behaviours and practical tools that help employees work together towards becoming a high-performing organisation..

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The Challenge

Following an earlier leadership programme focused on ownership, reflection and feedback, the next step was to bring these principles to the rest of the organisation. The ambition: one shared language, greater ownership of individual actions, and more opportunities to learn from experience.

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Our Approach

We focused on bringing two core principles to life, putting them into practice and embedding them sustainably across the organisation. To do this, we developed a train-the-trainer approach based on three steps: engage, educate and empower.

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Phase 1: Programme development

We developed the full training programme and captured its content, exercises and instructions in a practical playbook, which was shared across the organisation. We trained 13 ambassadors to champion the principles and deliver the training to their colleagues using the playbook.

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Phase 2: Train the trainer

The ambassadors were prepared step by step for their role as trainers. ‍

• Engage – We introduced the ambassadors to the training and its core principles, giving them the tools to facilitate sessions independently. ‍

• Educate – Working in pairs, the ambassadors trained fellow team managers while we observed, provided feedback and helped refine the approach. ‍

• Empower– Together with a team manager, the ambassadors delivered training to employees, with ongoing support from us.

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‍Phase 3: Embedding the principles

To prevent the core principles from fading into the background after the training, we developed a range of interventions and introduced nudges to keep them top of mind. The ambassadors facilitated a retrospective session in which teams revisited the principles and reflected together on how they were working in practice. They shared insights, refined existing team agreements and identified concrete improvement actions to help their teams get 1% better every day.

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Outcomes

• A scalable training programme, including a practical playbook.

• An internal group of ambassadors able to deliver the training independently.

• 445 employees working with the same core principles, language and ways of working.

• Practical tools for applying the core principles in everyday situations.

• A structured approach to repetition, reflection and the long-term embedding of new behaviours.

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