Wesfarmers Group Cyber Security:

In order to harness the collective advantage of the Wesfarmers Group against cyber threats, it requires trusted relationships with 'collective' mindset.

The Opportunity

To create a powerful way for the WES Group Cyber Security team to supercharge engagement, collaboration and outcomes with the leaders and teams in cyber security and information security across the 12 Divisions.  

Wesfarmers businesses are continuing to accelerate investment in data and digital capabilities. Expectations regarding the collection, use and protection of data continue to evolve at pace. Therefore it’s never been a more important time to harness the collective knowledge, experience and expertise across the WES group to manage risks and uplift cyber security capabilities.

As a recently created team within WES Corporate Office, Group Cyber Security (GCS) plays an integral role providing offensive and defensive cyber security and risk management capabilities.  Daniella Traino (Group Cyber Information Security Officer) has built a team of technically astute cyber and risk specialists who are proficient at innovation and operational delivery. Whilst being the only team in Wesfarmers corporate office needing to influence (without a mandate), the GCS team needed to uplift their capability and approach for engaging.  By moving their working relationships from competitive to working in allyship, they were able to understand what was required to deliver mutually beneficial outcomes.  The shift required a fit for purpose engagement model, that  facilitated connecting the right people at the right time for a clear purpose and expected outcome in order to deliver value quickly. 

THE SOLUTION

We focussed efforts across 3 main areas;

1.

Simplify the complexity to enable the focus on biggest impact for effort when it came to engaging the Divisions.  This resulted in defining and building a new engagement model which elevated understanding each teams needs. It was specifically designed to facilitate more efficient ways of delivering maturity of both strategic partnerships and operational delivery that resulted in creating value together. We supported the GCS to roll out the Integrated planning workshops (the first of the touchpoints). These created opportunities to learn about each team, build depth in understanding and create a shared roadmap for delivery.   

2.

Create the definition and language for Allyship (leadership's strategic direction) and Fellowship (operational delivery level) as the foundations for how to create alignment and build trusted relationships. These terms and definitions were supported by expectations of practical actions and behaviours.  Firstly shared with GCS to co-create Ways the Working then owned by the GCS. Proposed to each Division in the Integrated Planning workshops and adopted.  It created the shared understanding for delivering on enterprise wide approach to delivering value for WES Group collectively through alignment of ‘how we work together to deliver. 

3.

Work with Daniella to create a high performing team by supercharge the GCS.  Alongside the Ways of Working (WoW) we completed a Governance Diagnostic and uplift. This  supported delivery of the engagement model and included processes, tools and templates for change leadership, ideation, decision making and escalation processes. These were all targeted to support the GCS team to deliver quality and consistency as the pathway for building trusted relationships with the Divisions.  

The governance review included a roadmap for uplift over 12 mths to support building sustainable habits.    

The Impact

Daniella has reported seeing a positive impact of Allyship at the leadership level with the Divisions. Daniella also shared the Allyship and Fellowship concept and materials with Anthony Gianotti (Chief Financial Officer Wesfarmers Group) who was supportive and continues to sponsor this approach with all the Divisions.

The GCS team more broadly have shared that when the notion of Fellowship was introduced, they saw an immediate positive impact on interactions.

Daniella and the team have also reported that the new approach to the Division Engagement Model has enabled the opportunity to create alignment, shared understanding, clarity of strategic and operation goals and mechanisms to maintain momentum.

The process of optimisation has begun and now the foundations are in place with the inclusive language to describe the relationships and agreed ways of working to support the behaviours required for success. The governance uplift, playbooks, frameworks and tools are with the team who are continuing to iterate and refine as their experience grows and the overall change maturity evolves.

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