The client
Who is Deerns, the engineering consultancy of 750+ people in 10 countries that redefined its leadership with Wibo?
Deerns is an independent engineering consultancy, founded in 1928, specialising in technical advice and engineering solutions for high-performance buildings. It has more than 750 people in 17 offices across 10 countries.
Deerns offers services ranging from strategic advice and systems design to specialist engineering, sustainability consulting and digital roadmaps. Its 750-plus experts in mechanical and electrical design, building physics, energy efficiency, digitalisation and sustainability work in airports, healthcare facilities, data centres, laboratories, cleanrooms and commercial property.
The story is told by two HR people at Deerns: Lenny Hageman, Group Human Resources Manager, and Dominique Pos, Sr People & Culture Advisor.
The challenge
Why did Deerns have to rethink leadership when a new CEO moved it from country units to a single international brand?
Deerns had to rethink what it means to be a leader because a new CEO set a different direction: from a structure built around individual countries to a more integrated international organisation.
For decades Deerns had lived with a strong family culture and deep local roots. Leaders who had run national operations successfully, often in their own language and within their own market, now had to think and operate across borders, while the business moved towards a market-based model.
The new generation of Deerns leaders had to hold performance and a global view together, manage diverse teams across borders and represent Deerns as one brand of 750 engineers in 10 countries rather than as fragmented regional entities. It took new reporting lines and, before that, a rethink of what leadership itself means at Deerns.
The programme
How did Wibo co-create three leadership principles with Deerns leaders, each backed by five behaviours?
Wibo built the Deerns programme on co-creation. It brought together a selected group of ambassadors, key leaders from across the organisation, to design what the Deerns Ideal Manager should look like. The result is three leadership principles, each backed by five behaviours, so 15 behaviours in total.
The starting point looked unmanageable. Questionnaires run by the participants had produced a large number of possible leadership behaviours. Through structured facilitation and a staged approach, Wibo guided Deerns in turning that volume of input into a focused, shared framework, narrowing dozens of behaviours down to the three final principles. The Wibo team acted as facilitator and put Deerns leaders in a position to find their own answers.
Stage 1 defined the leadership principles. It combined a wide survey on behaviours with a prioritisation and ideation workshop with the Deerns leadership team.
Stage 2 put the principles into action through Pitstop sessions. Each Pitstop combined a live Q&A with an executive from a different sector and coaching prompts for applying what had been learned.
The programme reached its high point at the Deerns Leadership Forum (DLF), the annual management meeting at Deerns. There Wibo presented the principles through case studies and interactive sessions led by Barbara and Marco, turning behaviours written on paper into leadership commitments people can apply. Wibo’s trainers used storytelling and experiential learning to engage a critical audience of engineering managers.
The impact
What has changed at Deerns since the new leadership principles, and what is still being built?
The leadership principles at Deerns already show clear momentum, but implementation is still under way, and Lenny Hageman and Dominique Pos say it is too early to call it a full success.
The Deerns CEO has personally taken responsibility for the principles, which sends a strong signal. The principles are being built into performance review cycles, selection processes and the ongoing Deerns Ideal Manager programme, which trains the next generations of leaders. The programme keeps evolving across several cohorts.
Dominique Pos says that in her conversations with directors and managers at Deerns the principles are already present. Leaders increasingly use the framework to give feedback, tackle work challenges and turn strategy into execution.
top of mind
Since 2021 Deerns has been in a wider transformation, from regional thinking to a global mindset, from siloed ways of working to collaboration across functions, and from implicit expectations to explicit, shared leadership standards. The IDM programme does not drive that change, but it is an important accelerator, giving Deerns leaders the skills and a common language.
