As businesses grow, it’s easy to lose sight of the customer, warns Janine Pajot, Vice President of HR at the Canadian arm of global life sciences company Bayer. Top-down management hierarchies have moved decision-making ever farther away from the front line of the business. The problem is that the front line is where the people with the closest relationships to the customer work.
But at Bayer Canada, this is not the situation. In 2024, the company shifted to a completely new type of operating model called dynamic shared ownership (DSO). “We’ve reduced hierarchies and enabled frontline staff in our organization to make many more decisions on the basis that those closest to the customer have the greatest insight into what will drive results,” Pajot explains.
In this new ecosystem, we’ve been able to simplify our approach and strip out what was unnecessary while still ensuring compliance and good governance in keeping with the industry.
The move to DSO has proven radical and includes a new approach to leadership. Pajot says the process of “delayering” – removing levels of management and moving to a flatter, more agile structure – has resulted in a significant shift of decision-making to employees closest to the customers.
DSO has also enabled Bayer Canada to cut out a lot of red tape. While many business activities are regulated and therefore require careful governance, the unmanaged proliferation of policies and processes had allowed bureaucracy to escalate. “In this new ecosystem, we’ve been able to simplify our approach and strip out what was unnecessary while still ensuring compliance and good governance in keeping with the industry,” Pajot explains.
She illustrates the point further by describing the process of budget utilization. In a conventional operating model, each functional head is responsible for their own budget, while accounting to finance for their spending decisions. This is a siloed approach and doesn’t consider where the business needs the resources most. Under DSO, by contrast, resources are allocated collectively with teams making collaborative choices about the highest priorities and which opportunities deserve funding.
It’s early days, but the initial results are encouraging. In particular, the number of customer-facing roles at Bayer Canada has increased by 18%. In other words, resources have shifted to enable a much closer connection with the market and those it serves – and, hopefully therefore, a stronger understanding of how to support customers and move the business forward.
Understandably, some Bayer Canada managers have felt anxious about delegating decision-making to frontline teams. And employees in those teams have had to get comfortable with additional responsibility. “The biggest shift has been a change in our mindset,” says Pajot. “We’ve had to think about how to thrive in this new world – and how to upskill our leaders to lead in a different way.”
Managers who might have previously conducted weekly one-to-one catch-ups with, say, 10 direct reports, are now responsible for 20 or 30 team members. While in-person contact remains important, managers now fulfill more of a coaching role, requiring Pajot’s team to help leaders adjust. “Their role now is more akin to the conductor in an orchestra,” she says. “They bring the sound together through group coaching and support for teams that are self-managed.”
The implementation of DSO has also required a willingness to let go of the familiar hierarchical management structures in favor of a more fluid environment.
“This model is not for everyone,” Pajot concedes. “Your opportunities will be different, both personally and professionally, with more potential to learn new skills from the experience of taking projects all the way through. Some people prefer tradition.”
“Everyone in this organization has to feel free to be their authentic self – to feel they are safe and that they belong.”
Critically, therefore, people must be encouraged to speak up – to know that they can voice their anxieties without fear of the consequences. “Everyone in this organization has to feel free to be their authentic self – to feel they are safe and that they belong,” Pajot says. “When people respect each other, they can lift each other.”
For Pajot, such sentiments are much more than a politically correct nod to the inclusion agenda. She speaks from personal experience. As someone who has lived with depression, Pajot recently chose to share this experience with colleagues at Bayer Canada as part of the company’s launch of a new employee resources initiative that includes mental health support.
“It felt like a big and difficult decision,” she recalls. “A handful of colleagues knew about my history, but suddenly I was sharing the story with everyone. I thought it would be worth it if it helped just one person, but I also wondered whether it would be career annihilation.”
To her relief, the response was overwhelmingly positive. “When I got back to my desk, my email inbox had exploded,” Pajot says. “It was full of messages from people thanking me for talking about something they had been going through, and for normalizing the conversation about mental health and medication.”
I’m on a mission to teach leaders to understand the power of a culture – and an organization – when everyone shows up as they truly are.
One lesson Pajot has taken from the experience is that speaking out about difficult issues brings people together. “It shows that individuals are not alone, but also that struggle and success go together,” she says. “Also, when you show your vulnerability, especially as a leader, you unlock that possibility for everyone else in the workplace. You encourage conversation.”
In the context of Bayer Canada’s shift to DSO, this is a critical point. The move to a collective approach to decision-making requires people to collaborate, even when that involves difficult conversations and frank exchanges.
It’s about harnessing the strengths of every employee, says Pajot. Members of high-performing teams trust each other and have each other’s backs, she maintains. In an organization focused on community, shared ownership, and decentralization, this is vital.
“I’m on a mission to teach leaders to understand the power of a culture – and an organization – when everyone shows up as they truly are,” she says. “Is there a long way to go? For sure. But do I have hope? Absolutely.”
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