We are committed to the global Energy Transition, but we are conflicted: the US and the developing world rely on diesel; modern sectors like events and data centres want clean energy.
Investors demand reliable returns, so we are engaged in a permanent struggle to maintain diesel-fuelled income streams while driving investment in new technologies to service cleaner first-world sectors. We must also meet developing world requirements which are more prosaic: keep the lights on, the hospitals running, and the schools open.
Help us unite a disparate engineer population behind a strategy that makes sense to them regardless of sector or location so that together we lead our clients on their energy transition journey at whatever pace is right for them.
Aggreko is the global leader in distributed energy. The company recognises that although human needs for energy are broadly the same across the world, the availability of reliable power varies wildly. In addressing this disparity, Aggreko plays a critical role in developing the world economy – something that inspires and challenges them every day.
Aggreko had already begun developing a strategy that embraced the Paris Accord and set clear targets for emissions. We helped to solidify these targets in the company’s strategy and take them to the City. Once publicly stated, the strategy became a target in itself.
We then helped define an energy transition narrative, beginning by creating a powerful purpose
statement: we power progress by delivering energy anywhere.
This spoke to the complexity of the challenges faced by engineers while placing them into a context – ‘progress’ which united all markets and sectors. From there, we constructed a narrative that plots Aggreko’s journey towards a greener – still profitable – world.
Our story provided a natural context for all sectors and markets, building on the purpose statement and including Aggreko’s values.
We built the narrative into a virtual coaching programme to inspire leaders and middle managers to fully engage with the narrative and acquire the skills and confidence to pass it on internally and outside the organisation.
We developed a version to be shared with the City, timed to coincide with investor consideration of an offer from a VC group to buy the company at a 40% premium..
Our research strongly indicated that the strategy, purpose, and narrative landed well and played a crucial role in uniting engineers and operatives across the globe. ‘Powering Progress’ might mean something different in a community hospital in Mozambique to the environmentalist organisers of the 2022 Glastonbury Festival. Still, the Aggreko engineers working on both are powering progress in a way that is relevant to them.
The power of a purpose-related narrative is enormous. Today, people want to come to work believing that what they are about to spend their day doing is beneficial to the world.
We helped Aggreko connect its people with its purpose through a narrative uniting all the various factions and beliefs within and outside the company. The board, employees, clients, and the investment community all understand where this company is headed and how it will get there.
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