Colas Danmark

Background and need

Colas Danmark is one of the country's leading contractors within civil engineering and asphalt, built on nearly a hundred years of experience, deep craft and strong delivery. With a solid market position and a proud history as its foundation, the company wanted to keep developing its organisation and leadership so it can continue to stand strong in a reality marked by rising complexity, new expectations and a need for even closer collaboration with customers and partners.

The executive team saw clearly that continued development isn't only about strategy and business priorities, but also about how leadership is exercised day to day. The ambition was therefore to strengthen the leadership chain's shared direction, interplay and ability to turn strategic ambition into behaviour, decisions and collaboration close to operations.

The starting point was to build on the company's strong foundation while at the same time strengthening the leadership and organisational moves. The task therefore became to support a development in which leadership could lead the way to an even greater extent in creating shared direction, strengthening customer orientation and developing an organisation in which learning, collaboration and psychological safety play an ever larger role in everyday practice.

Solution

The transformation programme was set up as an integrated process with work running in parallel along two tracks: one for the leadership group and one focused on implementing the strategy in everyday practice. Two phases framed the effort.

Stocktaking and mobilisation

The transformation process started with a series of interviews with directors, managers, line leaders and selected employees, to map the perceived strengths and barriers in the culture at the outset. The content from the interviews gave a valuable data foundation to shape the subsequent efforts. At the same time the interviews functioned as a shared frame of understanding for the further work.

Framing, structure and ongoing execution

The final solution was then set up as a single development programme running over a number of months. The programme was organised in two parallel tracks that together would strengthen both leadership capacity and organisational sustainability. The two tracks were designed to play closely together: one focused on the leadership group's strategic capacity, prioritisation and psychological foundation - and one focused on culture, communication and capability development in the organisation. Along the way the work was iterative, with ongoing adjustments, follow-up and sparring to secure progress and relevance.

Track 1: Stronger strategic leadership

The first track focused on strengthening the leadership group as a strategic and unifying force. The track opened with workshops that built a shared starting point for strategy, direction and the leadership contribution. Here the leaders worked on their shared understanding of the organisation's strategic anchors and on how the individual leader concretely contributes to both execution and coherence.

After that, the work turned to performance in the leadership group, including the prioritisation of few but decisive areas of effort. The leaders sharpened their attention to value-creating work processes and to how time, energy and decision-making power are used most appropriately.

A central part of the track was developing psychological safety within the leadership group. Through targeted workshops, group dynamics, feedback culture and ways of collaborating were put into play, so the leadership group could function more as a learning and trusting community. The track closed with follow-up on progress, adjustment of direction and the concretisation of an overall action plan.

Track 2: Organisational culture, communication and capabilities

The second track focused on the wider organisation and on the cultural and communicative preconditions for succeeding with the strategy in practice. Here the work centred on the understanding of why culture is decisive for creating results, and how leadership - both formal and informal - shapes behaviour in everyday practice.

Through workshops and training programmes, the focus was on communicating in change, including how to make room for different perspectives, experiences and reactions. Participants worked with concrete moves to strengthen dialogue, reduce misunderstandings and create better interplay across functions.

The track also contained ongoing sparring, where participants had the opportunity to reflect on what was working - and what required adjustment. In closing, follow-up was made on effect, learning and embedding, to ensure that insights and new ways of working were translated into lasting practice.

Taken together, the two tracks created a programme where leadership, culture and structure were developed in connection. Not as a one-off project, but as a gradual movement in which the organisation was continuously better equipped to navigate complexity and change.

Results

Colas is well underway with the transformation, and clear signs of movement can already be felt in the organisation. The strategy is being executed, and employees are increasingly able to make sense of it. The work has also sparked new conversations across the leadership chain and built a stronger shared language for leadership, collaboration and development. Leaders at multiple levels are working more consciously with their role in translating strategy into action and creating direction in everyday practice.

At the same time, results are showing up as greater curiosity across the organisation, more reflection in the leadership space and a clearer focus on how collaboration, communication and leadership behaviour affect the company's overall development. There are also signs of a strengthened awareness of the value of psychological safety and learning as important elements in an organisation that wants to develop continuously.