NDA Corporate Strategy
Context
In 2016 I pitched to the UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for a programme to review the NDA's Corporate Strategy and embed the changes with an ambitious programme. The NDA manages around £3 billion of annual spend for the UK government, and is charged with decommissioning the UK's toxic legacy of Cold War era nuclear power generation and processing facilities. The approach was designed to focus on the value-adding role of the NDA, renewing the role of the centre as a strong strategic leader of individual functions (called 'critical enablers' in NDA-speak).
Sellafield, seen in the 1990s
The NDA’s most complex site, and one of the most dangerous industrial facilities in western Europe
Looking back over the original pitch, although I would write differently now, the essentials are all there:
Massive opportunity
'One NDA' construct
The need to align functional strategies and capabilities across the nuclear estate in order to drive step-change improvement
Emphasis as much on culture and capabilities as on business processes and programme management
I even managed to get the proposed role of the NDA pretty much down-pat - an area that had been rather vague and ambiguous for some time.
Once I’d landed the NDA job, lots of churn took place - a new CEO, organisational upheaval, parliamentary inquiry into the Magnox procurement debacle (another story…look it up!). It took some time to convince the organisation to embark on the sort of transformation it needed, but eventually we did, and I was very pleased most of this early thinking went on to shape our transformation effort over the following three years.
Action
What we did:
Procured top tier consulting support (a McKinsey & Co team)
Conducted a comprehensive diagnostic survey of organisational health, establishing key priority areas for action
Stood up a 10-person transformation programme office
Conducted a rapid, high-involvement programme to redefine the purpose, role and values of the NDA
Create the guiding blueprint for the redesign of the organisation’s key functions, and their relationships with their counterparts within the NDA Group’s subsidiaries
Engaged employees, regulators, subsidiaries and government stakeholders to ensure full alignment with the new vision and plan
Chief Executive David Peattie talking about the transformation of the NDA
Impact
The jury has to be out on the ultimate impact of the NDA’s transformation. We certainly achieved all our programme goals - creating a stronger, more coherent group, led by a more intelligent, activist owner (the NDA), driving increased collaboration across the NDA’s estate.
However, the transformation we delivered was not the transformation I sought - which would have been one driven by very clear impact goals in terms of liability reduction (the so called ‘nuclear provision’), through a value driver framework of KPIs that would have made success (or otherwise) absolutely transparent. At the end of the day, this kind of value-driven NDA would have been far too ‘changey’ for many stakeholders, and I get that, but the organisation’s performance still remains far off where it could be at full potential.
