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Change management
Ermenegildo Zegna is an Italian based luxury menswear company. It is a family owned business that employs 7,500 people, almost half of whom are based in Italy. In 2006 it turned over [euro]779.4 million.
When Zegna's senior management team decided to transform the organization into a performance-orientated culture, the decision was made to start with the HR function. Lynda Tyler-Cagni, group executive vice president, was brought in to head up the change and working with transformation specialist Jan Hills used the HR function as a model and agent for change.
Zegna has strong family-based values that have contributed to its success. They include quality, authenticity, vision, accountability, passion and belonging. While it wanted to make sure that it held on to those values, in 2000 it made the decision to move the business towards a performance-oriented culture with a more disciplined execution focus.
Since it has always held a strong commitment to employing quality people and to making best use of their skills and input, Zegna understood that the HR team would play a vital part in this change and that it would need to transform itself if it was to help the company through the wider business transformation. Because of this, Zegna made the decision to implement the changes within the HR team first. This was quite an unusual decision at the time, as the role of HR was still very much seen as that of a transactional function, particularly in Italy.
Gildo Zegna, the chief executive of Zegna, started the change process by looking for a HR director with global experience to bring into the business. And so, the transition to a more business-focused HR team began with the hiring of Lynda Tyler-Cagni in 2000 as global head of HR.
Open to change
After taking on the new role, Tyler-Cagni found that the senior team at Zegna was very keen for the HR function to be a...