Driving Economic Development as an Exponential Organisation

CONTEXT

JLand Group Sdn Bhd (JLG), a subsidiary of conglomerate Johor Corporation (JCorp), is one of Malaysia’s largest land developers with land banks of over 10,000 acres. Over the past five decades, it has developed a strong reputation building community-based townships and industrial estates, including its latest flagships, Bandar Dato Onn and Ibrahim Technopolis (IBTEC) in Johor, Malaysia.

JCorp’s restructuring led to a consolidation of real estate businesses under JLG. With JLG’s portfolio companies now aggregated into three newly-defined business pillars, JLG management sought to refocus and scale its business with exponential business models, by leveraging new technologies and embracing novel approaches to overcome existing constraints. To realise its aggressive growth ambitions, JLG also needed to effect a transformation of the organisation’s working culture, empowering employees to break silos and to look beyond incremental, business-as-usual improvements. JLG commissioned Eden to ignite this Exponential Organisation (ExO) transformation starting with its Board of Directors, introduce breakthrough models for sustainable growth, and align both external and internal perspectives around this transformation.

APPROACH

For genuine transformation to take root, Eden needed each business pillar to articulate their own aspirations. This required us to build a deep understanding of the challenges experienced by each team, equip them with requisite planning tools and rigour, and coordinate the approaches across teams. As part of our efforts to support JLG’s ExO transformation, Eden:

  • Conducted management discovery sessions with JLG’s chairman and senior leadership to uncover the management’s aspirations, business concerns, degrees of freedom, and ideate new growth levers.
  • Prepared market insights to expose JLG officers to long-term, exponential opportunities, while addressing mid-term business drivers that unlock closer cross-border economic and energy integration with Singapore.
  • Provided business plan preparation support for six Business Pillar and Key Enabler teams. Eden acted as a thought partner to challenge the teams with fresh perspectives and models, while coaching their thought processes and workplans in preparation for the Board of Directors’ retreat. We conducted three pre-retreat sessions and one post-retreat session per team, iteratively working with the teams to refine their strategic plans.
  • Delivered keynote presentation and facilitated the Board of Directors strategic retreat. Eden coordinated presentations in line with the overarching ExO transformation theme. This included curating pre-read materials, ghostwriting senior management presentations, coordinating with external parties, preparing retreat templates and collaterals for JLG working teams, and facilitating workshop discussions.
IMPACT

As a result of the two-month engagement, JLG’s Business Pillar and Key Enabler teams were able to obtain greater clarity on potential initiatives to unlock exponential growth in each area of focus. By emphasizing cross-functional ideation and implementation, the teams could break through operational silos to imagine how the organisation could succeed as ‘One JLG’. Teams incorporated feedback from the Boad of Directors, and finalised their presentations for JLG’s three-year business plan within a fortnight following the retreat.

Created with Sketch. We selected Eden as our partner for this pivotal engagement as we navigated the complex challenges of integrating into a newly formed real estate group. Eden's approach that focuses on social innovation, expertise within their Smart Cities practice, as well as demonstrated success in leading projects involving ecosystems thinking were amongst the factors we chose to work with them to challenge our thinking and redefine the values we provide to our communities and customers, moving beyond traditional real estate products and solutions.

 

Transitioning to a partner unfamiliar with the diverse aspects of our real estate value chain presented inherent challenges. Yet, Eden quickly demonstrated a deep understanding of our business segments and market dynamics. This proficiency fostered a collaborative environment where our teams felt comfortable brainstorming and co-developing innovative solutions.

 

Throughout the engagement, which was constrained by tight deadlines, Calvin and the entire Eden team consistently exhibited professionalism and strong insights. They engaged stakeholders at various levels multiple times, even beyond the agreed scope, showing a steadfast commitment to our collaboration.

 

One highlight of this project was Eden’s keynote presentation at our Strategic Retreat, which not only met but exceeded the Board of Directors’ expectations. It was not just informative but truly inspiring, setting a transformative tone for our future endeavours.”

 

Mr. Muaz Bin Abdul Shukor
Chief Strategy Officer
Johor Land Group Sdn Bhd

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