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

The Opportunity

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

Working closely with the Cyber Security team, we uplifted their capability in change leadership, while also building clarity around their service model. processes and tools for governance and engagement across the business. This was achieved via:

Simplify

The starting point for this work was focused on simplifying the complex work that the team undertook, to enable them to focus on what would have the biggest impact when engaging the Divisions.

This included defining and building a new engagement model for the team, which elevated understanding each Division's needs and profile. It was specifically designed to facilitate more efficient ways of delivering maturity in their strategic partnerships and operational delivery, resulting in creating value together.

The roll out of the new engagement model included Integrated planning workshops between the Cyber team and the Division team (this was the first touchpoint in the model). These created opportunities to learn about each team, build depth in understanding and create a shared roadmap for delivery.

Build Allyship

The team established a shared 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, that were used to co-create "Ways of Working".

These were 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 the Wesfarmers Group, collectively, through alignment of "how we work together to deliver".

Build the Scaffolding

Alongside the new engagement model and "Ways of Working (WoW)", there was a need to set-up the team with more effective supporting processes and systems that would enable them to perform at their best.

A demand/capacity assessment was conducted for the Chief Security and Information Officer - to find opportunities to alleviate operational activities from her schedule and increase empowerment of her team.

This was further supported by clear processes and tools for decision-making and escalation of issues.

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

Uplift in influence

To facilitate stronger engagement with the Divisions and support greater decision-making empowerment within the cyber security team, we built awareness and capability in the psychology of influence.

This included an understanding of what influences each of us - whether we are aware of it or not, and what each of the team could use (leveraging their individual strengths) to have a greater influence on their work and across the business.

The Impact

The Chief Cyber Security and Information Officer saw a positive impact of Allyship at the leadership level with the Divisions. She 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 team also reported that the new Division Engagement Model enabled them 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 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.

Daniella Traino, Group Cyber Information Security Officer, Wesfarmers

“It's actually about stakeholder value in the long term. So we can't be making short-term decisions that affect our long-term sustainability. But if we're going to direct our businesses in a certain way, there needs to be a pragmatic approach to that. Its not what we do, its the how - which is why we did the work with AI Adaptive".