In 2018, Magnus Ahlqvist became CEO of Securitas AB, facing challenges in the security industry. Partnering with IMD Business School, they formulated a five-year strategy to transform Securitas from a security services provider to an intelligent protective solutions partner. Despite COVID-19, strategic initiatives were implemented, including a Group-level Executive Development Programme. By 2023, a significant impact was observed, and the partnership continues with future leadership programmes.

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When Magnus Ahlqvist became President and CEO of Securitas in 2018, the security industry was characterised by low margins, price wars, intense competition, and ongoing consolidation. Securitas had already invested in innovative security technology, but it needed to take a greater leap to remain at the forefront of the industry for years to come. Ahlqvist and the leadership team knew they had a unique window to refocus the company’s strategic direction to address these challenges head-on.

Their ambition? To transform Securitas from a traditional security services provider to an intelligent protective solutions partner for clients. This new strategy would require tremendous organisational development efforts to improve people capabilities, infrastructure, innovation models, operating systems, and management processes.

“At the Group level, we needed to review the strategy. We also needed to understand our ‘hidden’ challenges so that we knew what we had to fix in order to connect more closely with clients, improve how we work across the organisation, and move up the value chain. We had to get out of our comfort zone,” Ahlqvist says.

Together with IMD (International Institute for Management Development), which served as a partner throughout this process, Securitas embarked on a journey to formulate a new five-year strategy and an underpinning organisational transformation.

Pedagogical principles

IMD’s pedagogical approach rests on four key principles:

1. Bottom-up engagement: Recognising the limits of a heavy top-down approach, IMD reached out to hundreds of people across the organisation – based on geography, function, hierarchy, and talent – to capture their insights, which served as rich inputs for the top management team discussions.
2. Listen and learn: As opposed to a classic teaching methodology with standard models and frameworks, IMD’s approach focused on listening to the organisation’s needs and expectations. This informed the leaders’ thinking about what strategic transformation should mean for the company, its clients, and society at large.
3. Outside-in, future-back view: The top management team and next-level senior executives were pushed to recognise how the world is changing today and in the future and grasp the opportunity for Securitas to not only reshape the company but also profoundly impact on the security industry overall.
4. Dual role of IMD as provocateur and advisor: Throughout the journey, IMD advised the leadership team to sharpen their thinking and challenged them along different dimensions to define a bold, comprehensive, and aspirational path forward.

Transforming the business: Six key goals

In setting the company’s five-year strategy (2018-2023), the Securitas leadership developed six clear goals:

1. Lead in the existing businesses: Securitas needed to evolve its core guarding services, strengthen specialisation in electronic security, and systematically combine its various protective services to accelerate the solutions business.
2. Create new businesses: The company aimed to become more predictive and data-driven, leading the industry in innovation and intelligent security services.
3. Enhance client engagement: To become a high-value-adding trusted partner, Securitas would need to rewire it approach to clients, creating more personalised, bespoke value propositions based on clients’ unique and evolving needs.
4. Develop people and evolve mindset: Steering the company in a new direction would require a cultural shift, and that started with scaling great leadership across the organisation.
5. Modernise operations: The fast-changing technology landscape drove the need to modernise existing systems and build common processes so that all parts of the global organisation spoke the same language, worked collaboratively, and represented themselves externally as one brand.
6. Reposition the brand: Industry-wide brand messaging was – and still is – largely product-centric, alluding to risk and danger. Securitas wanted to highlight positivity and potential instead, reflecting a human-centric, progressive, and innovative approach to security.

In the five years following the establishment of these six goals, Securitas diligently executed strategy and organisational development initiatives. In 2021, the top management team convened for a midway review and workshop alongside IMD. The result was a sharpening and acceleration of the key drivers of Securitas’ strategic and organisational transformation.

The leaders agreed that speed was imperative since the company was halfway through the strategy cycle. Securitas ramped up its efforts in multiple areas – operations, infrastructure, people, brand, client engagement – to scale the organisational transformation in tandem with accelerating strategy execution.

People as the building blocks

People development was key to enable strategy execution. Securitas decided to launch an Executive Development Programme for the company’s top talent. A 16-person cohort from across the organisation participated in a first-of-its-kind leadership and strategy programme. The programme was co-created and co-delivered by IMD faculty, Ahlqvist, and CFO Andreas Lindback.

Ahlqvist shared his vision for reorienting the company, explained the rationale for the massive organisational change, and articulated his ‘asks’. Candid discussions ensured a unified understanding of the organisation-wide priorities along with renewed enthusiasm to attain the goals. Back at their respective units, the cohort shared their learnings with their teams and clarified the unique role that each colleague could play in transforming Securitas.

This helped to engage colleagues in meaningful work and unite them under a common goal, fostering a collaborative environment where everyone felt connected to the overarching mission and motivated to contribute their best efforts.

 Uniting with a shared purpose

Another element of the transformation journey that brought colleagues together was the development of Securitas’ purpose. As part of the strategy development, a workstream led by Ahlqvist sought to capture the essence of the organisation. Hundreds of colleagues were engaged in over 45 global workshops to define a common purpose.

After several iterations, and with board approval, Securitas articulated the company’s core purpose – we help make your world a safer place. The announcement was made to investors during Capital Markets Day in December 2019. With a newly defined corporate purpose, Securitas could build a unified global identity – internally and externally.

“Irrespective of where they are in the organisation, our people feel that they are a part of something bigger and are making a positive contribution,” says Helena Andreas, Securitas’ CHRO and CMO.

Enduring impact: A best practice for transformation

The past five years have seen tremendous transformation at Securitas, driven by the ambitious strategy and comprehensive organisational development initiatives. The company’s journey to become an intelligent protective solutions partner has been marked by significant achievements.

The strategic acquisition of STANLEY Security, launch of the Securitas Digital business unit, introduction of a Global Clients Group, and establishment of several common platforms across the highly decentralised group are just a few examples of the milestones reached.

This period of intense focus and rapid execution has resulted in the development of technology-enabled security solutions to better serve client needs, higher collaboration among business units, and increased operational efficiency, leading to increased business margins. It has also elevated the brand value, pushing Securitas to become recognised as a top10 Swedish brand globally.

Overall, sustained investments in people capabilities, infrastructure modernisation, and innovative business models have paid off, positioning Securitas as a global leader in the industry.

See other articles from Excellence in Practice 2024.