Since 1913, the American Cancer Society (ACS) has been dedicated to the mission of providing research, advocacy, and support for cancer patients and their families. The tireless work of the nonprofit’s 3,000 employees and 1.5 million volunteers has contributed to a 32% drop in the overall US cancer death rate over the past three decades.

One of our core pillars is supporting the people and communities our clients serve through social impact. In partnership with Oliver Wyman For Society, we were able to bring a unique conference, held in Atlanta, to 125 ACS senior leaders, led by representatives from 8works, Oliver Wyman’s people-led change capability. The event featured a series of discussions and co-creative exercises aimed at improving the executives’ communication and alignment, as well as helping them to clearly impart what they learned to the wider organization. With a host of new skills and processes, the entire ACS team is now equipped to interact more effectively, setting them up to produce better business results. 

To hear more about the lessons from the conference, watch 8works director Holly Noto’s video interview with ACS Chief People Officer Andre Bokhoor.

Holly

So, Andre, we're focusing on leadership. Why? Why now?

Andre

We set up a new business model where everybody needs to partner together for the best outcomes. And leadership is about everybody coming in, influencing one another, partnering, being more collaborative. So, teaching everybody the best ways to work together and about leadership is going to get us better business results.

Holly

I'm Holly Noto from Oliver Wyman. I lead the 8works team in North America.

Andre

I'm Andre Bokhoor, Chief People Officer for the American Cancer Society, and we're here together to work on leadership and culture and transformation and how that's an enabler for our business strategy to help improve the lives of cancer patients and their families around the world.

Holly

So, Andre, we’ve got 120 people coming in today, they were in yesterday. I guess for me, the question has always been, you know, we started talking about mission, vision, culture, strategy, and these are really big for you right now. So, what's changing in the strategy and the vision for ACS?

Andre

We are focusing on the entire spectrum of how to care for cancer patients and their families, and that goes all the way from screening and prevention, all the way through survivorship. And in that model, we need to be thinking more broadly and our people are our assets. And so, they need to put their best foot forward to really help think about the complete lifecycle for everybody.

Holly

You said thinking more broadly, I'm curious, how would you describe the thinking before today, before we got here? It feels like that's the need to really expand the way you lead.

Andre

Yeah, I would say we were set up in a very insulated, structured team, focused or pillar focused way, so there wasn't a lot of cross collaboration, there wasn't a lot of partnership. And we're trying to get people to think about how we can come together to get the best out of each other across the organization.

Holly

So, a lot of your pillars are very well known to a lot of people in the public. Research – huge. Everybody who's ever had a family member, or themselves, treated for cancer knows how important what you're doing in research is impacting their lives. It's making that care possible. I look at fundraising, teams are developing and bringing in the funds that make the research possible. And then, of course, patient care, like just the support services that you provide for families and patients are incredible. So, I think it makes sense to me that you could operate in those pillars. They are distinct. So, what's the goal there in terms of like connecting those pillars more profoundly?

Andre

You know, you get insights from all those different areas. So, when you have a cancer patient staying at a Hope Lodge, you get to understand their experience. We have the ability to collect demographic information, to do better science, to do better research. And so, the more we can partner, the better we are providing solutions and care for patients today and for tomorrow.

Holly

How are we looking to leaders to manage that plate, manage that, that sort of focus and the strategy and the vision for the organization?

Andre

I think really two ways. First is these are the leaders in the organization. So, if there are plates are overflowing, they have the freedom to think about how to operate differently, reprioritize their work, come together as a team and decide what needs to change. There's no one else in this organization that could do that other than the group that is here right now. The second is when you think about leadership and being more effective as a team, you get more out of people, you get better results, you're more effective with one another. And that naturally is going to create capacity. And our hope is that by getting people to think differently, we will add capacity to organization and get better business results.

Holly

I heard that a lot when we were walking through the groups yesterday. It wasn't just about adding capacity, it was being able to give people the space to do better work. So less of that sense of stress or urgency and more of a sense of focus, prioritization, even just a sense of I can decide where to put that energy and create that capacity to really get the results. Why? OW Why 8works? Why use this co-creation capability?

Andre

I would say really there are two major reasons. Obviously, your team's skills and capabilities and the way you've challenged us to think differently, create better outcomes, better product, a better experience for everybody. Certainly, that was one thing that was really critical to us. But really the other part was your interest and desire to partner with an organization trying to do good in the world and with your own internal culture and values that really aligned to ours, and wanting to be a good partner, really made you guys stand out compared to all of the different organizations we were talking to.

Holly

I think for us we were really excited to partner with ACS. As you said, it's a huge piece of our values. We've also been going through a values transformation and trying to think about the way that we make impact in the world. And this was probably one of the best opportunities we had to do a couple of things. One, live our values, we believe in making a social impact. But two, we believe that if you can empower leaders and you can energize them and you can give them the right equipment to lead that you will see huge results, huge changes in the results you can get. So, you've given us a little bit of a gift to be able to exercise this with you in the team.

Andre

I'm curious, we've done a lot of work in preparing for this meeting together, but obviously our heavy lift is really coming after this meeting and how we activate everything. So from your point of view, what's the what's the toolkit that we should have when we walk away from this that we bring back to ACS?

Holly

 I think it's being able to take what we start with in these first three days together and actualize it. We heard a lot of the great guest speakers yesterday. Every one of them over and over said you have to be able to translate this. Translate in terms of the message translate it into the actions, translate it in terms of outcomes, and if people can't relate to it, then it won't happen. So to me, your toolkit really is equipping everyone in the room with the ability to communicate very clearly what happened here today, to find for themselves as an individual leader those commitments that they can make to do something differently tomorrow as they walk out the door, but also the bigger, longer commitments to solve some of those tricky problems. So, we really believe in our job at Oliver Wyman is to help you have the breakthrough. So, was there a moment so far in the experience where you said to yourself, this is what we wanted, this is what we needed to see?

Andre

Honestly, there was a few. Two that I would call out. We did learn as much as you can, trying to get everybody to really understand the competencies and what it means for them and then have some table discussion. And when you just listen to the little group dialog, it was the same conversation at every table being replicated about how important and how critical it was for us. So that was one area that really jumped out to me. And then the other was sort of an impromptu conversation that we sparked yesterday at the end of the day. And you know, what resonated with people? What concerned them? What do we need to do differently? And it was the first time that I've really felt this group of 125 people have a group dialog with one another about what needs to be done, what they agreed with. It felt like they were building a team and camaraderie with one another and that they were coming together to solve the organization's problems. And so, for me, it wasn't all just about the content of the dialog, but how they were partnering with one another was actually right there evidencing what we were trying to accomplish overall with this, which is to think more cross-organization and in a matrix way of thinking. So big win.

Holly

For you, what do you think or what do you hope to see leaders doing differently?

Andre

I'm pretty confident that we have a pretty inspired group right now.  There's a lot of people that have made comments ‘this is the first time in years at ACS that they have felt positive, invested in, that we can actually accomplish the change’. So my hope is that that level of inspiration that took place yesterday and is going to continue for these few days together that we can bring it back to the office that we build upon it, and that people translate that to their teams, that the rest of the 3,000 people that work in this organization start to see and feel that level of energy and that level of authenticity and inspiration. And we get the entire workforce motivated.

Holly

All right, last question is a harder question. Third piece of the formula. You have to inspire. You have to build commitment. But the last one is people have to have the confidence that what they do is going to make an impact or it will be received. The organization can actually sort of absorb the newness, the things that they're doing and the confidence that it's going to happen, that they'll be supported. You work a lot as a member of the ET (executive team). I'm thinking about how does the executive team really build that confidence or do the right things to remove barriers or make it possible? What do you want to see from the ET in terms of building that confidence so people know that they can do differently?

Andre

I want to hear from the voices of the team about what the barriers are and what needs to change. Get it to us, and then we start making some decisions really quickly. And there's one thing I know about Karen, our CEO, and our executive team. When we get a good idea, we will move mountains to make it happen. And it's all in service of patients and their families. And so, when those ideas come forward and they have a good business case to them, we will make those decisions quickly. So for us, it's really about, as you said, keeping the connection with the team, having the right dialog and then just taking action very quickly,

Holly

If there's one thing you would like to see you guys doing differently, just as a new habit, something that becomes a new tradition or a ritual at ACS, is there anything you have in mind?

Andre

Yeah, you know, we set up this OneACS group about a year ago and we meet regularly. We meet once a month. But I would say that the content of that conversation is often very focused on presentation or share out of information that people need to have. There's not as much of a leadership discussion as I'd love to see us. We've had a lot of leadership discussion this time, and I would say I'd love for that habit to be that when we get together monthly, it's a lot less presentation and report out a lot more leadership conversation on strategy, what we need to do organizationally to adjust and be agile.

Holly

So Andre, you've done this type of work before with members of our team when you were at your last company and now you've brought us back. I'm curious, being in the room for this type of experience, what's that like? How would you describe just the experience of working co-creatively and working with this many people all at once with bringing leaders together?

Andre

I think, you know, first of all, it's high energy the entire time. One thing I heard from everybody is like, they can't believe how much we accomplished. And I think it really has to do with the way in which we run things. A lot of parallel thinking, a lot of share out. I would say that, you know, the one thing that we want to start to get people to understand the organization is one person can learn something, share it out and inspire somebody else and teach. And that's what I think the Oliver Wyman group has brought to us is this ability to teach and interact with one another differently. And I think the fact that we now have 125 senior leaders in this organization that have seen a completely different way to learn information and have a dialog, I'm hoping that that translates into their teams and how they even run their own meetings.

Holly

I would love to see that. It's one of those things that I think you're well set up for by having the people team in the room. There's so many talented people on your team that we got to collaborate with just in designing this experience for 125 leaders. Are you going to create a toolkit for leaders to extend this into the way they work?

Andre

We definitely have a lot of plans to share this out again, but I would say would love to also continue the partnership with Oliver Wyman. One thing that this entire group has shared in their time together is they never thought that we could get a partner of your caliber to come in and work with a nonprofit like us. Obviously, we have much more limited resources, many more challenges, and everybody was just surprised that a group of your caliber would be willing to partner on us. And I think it really again speaks to your culture and your values and how aligned they are to ACS and our mission.

Holly

Thank you so much for doing this. And thank you for actually giving us the opportunity to work with ACS.

Andre

Well, listen, likewise. Thank you to you and your team. It's been just a tremendous experience. Everybody in the room up to our CEO and our chairman of the board have commented on what an incredible experience this has been.

Since 1913, the American Cancer Society (ACS) has been dedicated to the mission of providing research, advocacy, and support for cancer patients and their families. The tireless work of the nonprofit’s 3,000 employees and 1.5 million volunteers has contributed to a 32% drop in the overall US cancer death rate over the past three decades.

One of our core pillars is supporting the people and communities our clients serve through social impact. In partnership with Oliver Wyman For Society, we were able to bring a unique conference, held in Atlanta, to 125 ACS senior leaders, led by representatives from 8works, Oliver Wyman’s people-led change capability. The event featured a series of discussions and co-creative exercises aimed at improving the executives’ communication and alignment, as well as helping them to clearly impart what they learned to the wider organization. With a host of new skills and processes, the entire ACS team is now equipped to interact more effectively, setting them up to produce better business results. 

To hear more about the lessons from the conference, watch 8works director Holly Noto’s video interview with ACS Chief People Officer Andre Bokhoor.

Holly

So, Andre, we're focusing on leadership. Why? Why now?

Andre

We set up a new business model where everybody needs to partner together for the best outcomes. And leadership is about everybody coming in, influencing one another, partnering, being more collaborative. So, teaching everybody the best ways to work together and about leadership is going to get us better business results.

Holly

I'm Holly Noto from Oliver Wyman. I lead the 8works team in North America.

Andre

I'm Andre Bokhoor, Chief People Officer for the American Cancer Society, and we're here together to work on leadership and culture and transformation and how that's an enabler for our business strategy to help improve the lives of cancer patients and their families around the world.

Holly

So, Andre, we’ve got 120 people coming in today, they were in yesterday. I guess for me, the question has always been, you know, we started talking about mission, vision, culture, strategy, and these are really big for you right now. So, what's changing in the strategy and the vision for ACS?

Andre

We are focusing on the entire spectrum of how to care for cancer patients and their families, and that goes all the way from screening and prevention, all the way through survivorship. And in that model, we need to be thinking more broadly and our people are our assets. And so, they need to put their best foot forward to really help think about the complete lifecycle for everybody.

Holly

You said thinking more broadly, I'm curious, how would you describe the thinking before today, before we got here? It feels like that's the need to really expand the way you lead.

Andre

Yeah, I would say we were set up in a very insulated, structured team, focused or pillar focused way, so there wasn't a lot of cross collaboration, there wasn't a lot of partnership. And we're trying to get people to think about how we can come together to get the best out of each other across the organization.

Holly

So, a lot of your pillars are very well known to a lot of people in the public. Research – huge. Everybody who's ever had a family member, or themselves, treated for cancer knows how important what you're doing in research is impacting their lives. It's making that care possible. I look at fundraising, teams are developing and bringing in the funds that make the research possible. And then, of course, patient care, like just the support services that you provide for families and patients are incredible. So, I think it makes sense to me that you could operate in those pillars. They are distinct. So, what's the goal there in terms of like connecting those pillars more profoundly?

Andre

You know, you get insights from all those different areas. So, when you have a cancer patient staying at a Hope Lodge, you get to understand their experience. We have the ability to collect demographic information, to do better science, to do better research. And so, the more we can partner, the better we are providing solutions and care for patients today and for tomorrow.

Holly

How are we looking to leaders to manage that plate, manage that, that sort of focus and the strategy and the vision for the organization?

Andre

I think really two ways. First is these are the leaders in the organization. So, if there are plates are overflowing, they have the freedom to think about how to operate differently, reprioritize their work, come together as a team and decide what needs to change. There's no one else in this organization that could do that other than the group that is here right now. The second is when you think about leadership and being more effective as a team, you get more out of people, you get better results, you're more effective with one another. And that naturally is going to create capacity. And our hope is that by getting people to think differently, we will add capacity to organization and get better business results.

Holly

I heard that a lot when we were walking through the groups yesterday. It wasn't just about adding capacity, it was being able to give people the space to do better work. So less of that sense of stress or urgency and more of a sense of focus, prioritization, even just a sense of I can decide where to put that energy and create that capacity to really get the results. Why? OW Why 8works? Why use this co-creation capability?

Andre

I would say really there are two major reasons. Obviously, your team's skills and capabilities and the way you've challenged us to think differently, create better outcomes, better product, a better experience for everybody. Certainly, that was one thing that was really critical to us. But really the other part was your interest and desire to partner with an organization trying to do good in the world and with your own internal culture and values that really aligned to ours, and wanting to be a good partner, really made you guys stand out compared to all of the different organizations we were talking to.

Holly

I think for us we were really excited to partner with ACS. As you said, it's a huge piece of our values. We've also been going through a values transformation and trying to think about the way that we make impact in the world. And this was probably one of the best opportunities we had to do a couple of things. One, live our values, we believe in making a social impact. But two, we believe that if you can empower leaders and you can energize them and you can give them the right equipment to lead that you will see huge results, huge changes in the results you can get. So, you've given us a little bit of a gift to be able to exercise this with you in the team.

Andre

I'm curious, we've done a lot of work in preparing for this meeting together, but obviously our heavy lift is really coming after this meeting and how we activate everything. So from your point of view, what's the what's the toolkit that we should have when we walk away from this that we bring back to ACS?

Holly

 I think it's being able to take what we start with in these first three days together and actualize it. We heard a lot of the great guest speakers yesterday. Every one of them over and over said you have to be able to translate this. Translate in terms of the message translate it into the actions, translate it in terms of outcomes, and if people can't relate to it, then it won't happen. So to me, your toolkit really is equipping everyone in the room with the ability to communicate very clearly what happened here today, to find for themselves as an individual leader those commitments that they can make to do something differently tomorrow as they walk out the door, but also the bigger, longer commitments to solve some of those tricky problems. So, we really believe in our job at Oliver Wyman is to help you have the breakthrough. So, was there a moment so far in the experience where you said to yourself, this is what we wanted, this is what we needed to see?

Andre

Honestly, there was a few. Two that I would call out. We did learn as much as you can, trying to get everybody to really understand the competencies and what it means for them and then have some table discussion. And when you just listen to the little group dialog, it was the same conversation at every table being replicated about how important and how critical it was for us. So that was one area that really jumped out to me. And then the other was sort of an impromptu conversation that we sparked yesterday at the end of the day. And you know, what resonated with people? What concerned them? What do we need to do differently? And it was the first time that I've really felt this group of 125 people have a group dialog with one another about what needs to be done, what they agreed with. It felt like they were building a team and camaraderie with one another and that they were coming together to solve the organization's problems. And so, for me, it wasn't all just about the content of the dialog, but how they were partnering with one another was actually right there evidencing what we were trying to accomplish overall with this, which is to think more cross-organization and in a matrix way of thinking. So big win.

Holly

For you, what do you think or what do you hope to see leaders doing differently?

Andre

I'm pretty confident that we have a pretty inspired group right now.  There's a lot of people that have made comments ‘this is the first time in years at ACS that they have felt positive, invested in, that we can actually accomplish the change’. So my hope is that that level of inspiration that took place yesterday and is going to continue for these few days together that we can bring it back to the office that we build upon it, and that people translate that to their teams, that the rest of the 3,000 people that work in this organization start to see and feel that level of energy and that level of authenticity and inspiration. And we get the entire workforce motivated.

Holly

All right, last question is a harder question. Third piece of the formula. You have to inspire. You have to build commitment. But the last one is people have to have the confidence that what they do is going to make an impact or it will be received. The organization can actually sort of absorb the newness, the things that they're doing and the confidence that it's going to happen, that they'll be supported. You work a lot as a member of the ET (executive team). I'm thinking about how does the executive team really build that confidence or do the right things to remove barriers or make it possible? What do you want to see from the ET in terms of building that confidence so people know that they can do differently?

Andre

I want to hear from the voices of the team about what the barriers are and what needs to change. Get it to us, and then we start making some decisions really quickly. And there's one thing I know about Karen, our CEO, and our executive team. When we get a good idea, we will move mountains to make it happen. And it's all in service of patients and their families. And so, when those ideas come forward and they have a good business case to them, we will make those decisions quickly. So for us, it's really about, as you said, keeping the connection with the team, having the right dialog and then just taking action very quickly,

Holly

If there's one thing you would like to see you guys doing differently, just as a new habit, something that becomes a new tradition or a ritual at ACS, is there anything you have in mind?

Andre

Yeah, you know, we set up this OneACS group about a year ago and we meet regularly. We meet once a month. But I would say that the content of that conversation is often very focused on presentation or share out of information that people need to have. There's not as much of a leadership discussion as I'd love to see us. We've had a lot of leadership discussion this time, and I would say I'd love for that habit to be that when we get together monthly, it's a lot less presentation and report out a lot more leadership conversation on strategy, what we need to do organizationally to adjust and be agile.

Holly

So Andre, you've done this type of work before with members of our team when you were at your last company and now you've brought us back. I'm curious, being in the room for this type of experience, what's that like? How would you describe just the experience of working co-creatively and working with this many people all at once with bringing leaders together?

Andre

I think, you know, first of all, it's high energy the entire time. One thing I heard from everybody is like, they can't believe how much we accomplished. And I think it really has to do with the way in which we run things. A lot of parallel thinking, a lot of share out. I would say that, you know, the one thing that we want to start to get people to understand the organization is one person can learn something, share it out and inspire somebody else and teach. And that's what I think the Oliver Wyman group has brought to us is this ability to teach and interact with one another differently. And I think the fact that we now have 125 senior leaders in this organization that have seen a completely different way to learn information and have a dialog, I'm hoping that that translates into their teams and how they even run their own meetings.

Holly

I would love to see that. It's one of those things that I think you're well set up for by having the people team in the room. There's so many talented people on your team that we got to collaborate with just in designing this experience for 125 leaders. Are you going to create a toolkit for leaders to extend this into the way they work?

Andre

We definitely have a lot of plans to share this out again, but I would say would love to also continue the partnership with Oliver Wyman. One thing that this entire group has shared in their time together is they never thought that we could get a partner of your caliber to come in and work with a nonprofit like us. Obviously, we have much more limited resources, many more challenges, and everybody was just surprised that a group of your caliber would be willing to partner on us. And I think it really again speaks to your culture and your values and how aligned they are to ACS and our mission.

Holly

Thank you so much for doing this. And thank you for actually giving us the opportunity to work with ACS.

Andre

Well, listen, likewise. Thank you to you and your team. It's been just a tremendous experience. Everybody in the room up to our CEO and our chairman of the board have commented on what an incredible experience this has been.