New Ways of Working: An Impact Study

10+ years making new ways of working stick. Here's what we've learned, and what we've proven.

A deep case study of August's model in action at Colgate-Palmolive, plus a decade of results across PepsiCo, McCain Foods, Bayer, Genentech, and more. The approach has been published in Harvard Business Review. This is what the evidence shows.

Most organizations invest heavily in leadership development, culture programs, and team trainings. The programs are smart. The frameworks are sound. And almost none of it sticks.

It fails to stick because the daily systems of work (how meetings run, how decisions get made, how handoffs happen) remain unchanged. The say-do gap is a design problem.

August exists to close that gap, by redesigning how teams actually coordinate and coaching them through the transition until the new habits are self-sustaining.

Every company in our portfolio started with strong values and sound leadership principles. What they lacked was the connective tissue between principle and practice: the difference between knowing what good looks like and actually doing it every day.

How August Works

Three movements, every engagement.

01

Diagnose

Surface what's actually happening: how decisions really get made, where trust breaks down, and which coordination points are encoding the wrong behaviors. Qualitative depth layered on whatever data already exists.

02

Embed

A coach joins the team's real work, introducing practices at actual decision points, meetings, and handoffs. Weekly cadence. 12-week sprints tied to real deliverables. The team practices new habits while shipping real work.

03

Hand off

Every practice is co-designed with the team, so the client owns it from day one. August builds internal coaching capability, facilitator networks, and playbooks, then steps back. The goal is independence: a system the client runs on their own.

The unit of change is the team. We coach teams as systems, and the practices are about how people coordinate.

Where It Started · PepsiCo

Born in a turnaround. Published by Harvard.

PepsiCo UK was heading into a third straight year of revenue decline when this model proved itself. Harvard Business School wrote it up.

PepsiCo · Where it started

A team of three grew a movement to every professional employee in 12 months.

August designed "Responsive Working" inside PepsiCo's North America Beverages division in 2014: five pilot teams, sprint-based cadence, safe-to-try decisions, embedded coaching. When PepsiCo UK adopted the model facing three straight years of revenue decline, it reversed the decline within eight weeks of launching its first team: +2.3% year one, +2% year two.

It scaled to 60 markets and 10,000+ employees, with an internal coaching network and global Center of Excellence built and handed off.

Featured in a Harvard Business School case study and the HBR article, "Agility Hacks" (Nov–Dec 2021), by Amy Edmondson, naming August's founders as the designers of the methodology.
60
markets, globally
10,000+
employees reached
+32 pts
voice equity · +35 pts shipping weekly · +28 pts autonomy
The Deep Case · Colgate-Palmolive

A $16.5B company with the right principles and the wrong speed.

Imagine it is the end of 2018. Colgate-Palmolive, founded in 1806, with 34,000+ people serving over 200 countries and territories, has a new operating model focused on growth and innovation. The CHRO and the senior team hand you a mandate: implement agility at Colgate.

The culture is caring, results-oriented, risk-averse, and efficiency-driven. The principles are right and the speed is wrong. They need a different way of working, and a partner who can build it with them.

Step zero, in Colgate's own retelling of the journey: find a partner, and not your usual suspects. That partner was August.

The Playbook · 2019

Four principles. Sixteen behaviors. One way of working.

Colgate and August co-created F.E.E.D.: a clear, concise articulation of the desired working culture, translated into actionable, measurable behaviors for the day-to-day working lives of all Colgate people.

Four principles, each defined by four behaviors, backed by a stack of concrete practices. An operator's manual for the day-to-day.

F.E.E.D. Is How We Work
F
Focused
Organize resources around growth priorities, make choices, and stop non-essential work.
E
Empowered
The people closest to the work get clear accountability and authority to decide.
E
Experimental
Bold actions and rapid hypothesis tests, learning fast and co-creating with real users.
D
Digital
Technology to drive growth, data in decision making, and transparent ways of working.
RoundsEvery voice in the room before decisions are made.
Even/Over statementsPriorities explicit enough to say no with.
Experiment canvasHypotheses tested within weeks.
The Experiment · 2019

Nine teams. Real growth priorities. Every region.

Colgate went broad from the first year: nine agile and sprint teams chartered against real growth priorities, spanning regions, categories, and functions, from oral care innovation and e-commerce to brand relaunches and HR transformation.

Each team ran with a charter, a sponsor, an August coach, and the F.E.E.D. practices. The breadth was the point: prove the way of working across the whole business at once.

The 2019 Cohort
BOLT / Plaqless
Smart-toothbrush work that earned a CES Innovation Award
NA Ulta Beauty
The team that became CO. by Colgate
LATAM Naturals
71 new ideas for the innovation pipeline in eight weeks
Hill's eComm “Table”
Five test-and-learns to outgrow the Amazon pet category
EU Palmolive Relaunch
A new brand story, tested with real users
NA eCommerce “The Hive”
Agile practices in day-to-day e-commerce work
Australia Sensitivity
Cross-functional category growth team
NA Club
Cross-functional channel team
HR Transformation Sprints
Four sprints redefining the HR partnership model
The Double Click · CO. by Colgate

One team's mission became a new brand at retail.

Take one of those nine: the NA Ulta Beauty team, chartered to develop a premium oral beauty offering for the beauty channel. The result was CO. by Colgate: fully conceived, received by Ulta Beauty, and later expanded.

The team shipped a product and inspired North America. The incoming division president made F.E.E.D. enabler #1 of the North America transformation strategy.

<3 months
from chartered team to a market-ready brand

The Scale · 2018 – 2021+

From four principles to a movement

How a mandate became a company-wide capability, carried by internal facilitators and coaches.

Scroll to watch it grow

End of 2018

The mandate

The CHRO and senior team commit to implementing agility across Colgate, in service of a new growth strategy. Step zero: find a partner, and not the usual suspects.

2019 · Experiment

Nine teams, chartered for growth

Nine agile and sprint teams launch against real growth priorities across regions, categories, and functions. Practices are co-created and behaviors defined together with Colgate leaders.

9

agile and sprint teams in the first cohort

2019 – 2020 · Enroll

Making the case for change

Roadshows and leadership sessions enroll leaders across divisions and regions in the case for change, ahead of scaling. [TK roadshows · TK leaders touched: confirm with Erica]

2020 · Empower

The network takes shape

A second wave of teams charters across North America, Mexico, and the supply chain. Champions are enlisted and equipped, learning content built, local leadership teams brought in.

Mar – Dec 2020

Certifying the carriers

140 global F.E.E.D. facilitators are certified through a seven-week cohort experience, with an NPS of 77%. An internal network starts to carry the movement.

140

facilitators certified in 2020

Jan – Apr 2021

The network compounds

160 more global facilitators are certified in the first four months of 2021 alone, bringing the internal network to roughly 300, spanning every region Colgate operates in.

300

facilitators certified globally

2021 · Embed

Wired into the system

F.E.E.D. becomes the "how" in performance evaluation: every performance objective includes F.E.E.D. principles, innovation outcomes enter incentive plans, and the behaviors anchor leadership development. The way of working outlasts any single leader.

100%

of performance objectives include F.E.E.D. behaviors

The Impact · What Changed

People saw the change, and the numbers held.

84%
company-wide F.E.E.D. Index, measuring the four principles in daily behavior.
75→81
pulse-survey scores from 2018 to 2020: people were seeing the change.
77%
NPS for the facilitator certification experience, delivered fully virtually.
<3 mo
from chartered agile team to a market-ready brand with CO. by Colgate.
84%
F.E.E.D. Index across the company. Its top predictors: a demonstrated commitment to continuous improvement, and employees practicing open, direct communication.
DRAFT · Revised per Erica's June 11 feedback. Figures sourced from Colgate's Conference Board and Scaling F.E.E.D. decks. Roadshow and leaders-touched numbers are TK with Erica, pending her final accuracy check before sharing.
The Strongest Signal · Business Impact

Real products, real pipelines, real handoff.

Business impact
An award, a pipeline, and a brand at retail.

The BOLT Plaqless team's work earned a CES Innovation Award. LATAM Naturals generated 71 new product ideas in an eight-week sprint. Hill's launched five e-commerce test-and-learns. And CO. by Colgate reached Ulta Beauty.

Proof of handoff
An internal Center of Excellence that runs without us.

A 15-person internal CoE for Change and Org Design now carries the work: 120+ teams through the program, 150+ internal coaches and experts trained, 50+ corporate priorities supported. Colgate owns the capability. That's the point.

What Colgate Learned

Lessons from their own retrospective.

Three things Colgate highlights when they tell the story themselves.

1Lead from the top. Let the business own it.

The work was led by the senior team and championed by an incoming division president, but what made it stick was empowering business units to make F.E.E.D. their own. Adoption came from ownership.

"Find a partner. Not your usual suspects."

2Co-create, iterate, and bank early wins.

An iterative approach beat a big-bang rollout. Practices were co-created with the people who would use them, and early wins like CO. by Colgate built the pull that mandates never do. Ongoing coaching mattered too: in crunch times, teams slide back into old behaviors unless a coach keeps the practices alive.

3Wire it into the system, or watch it fade.

Where they got stuck: measurement, fully dedicated team models, and legacy processes designed for efficiency at scale. The answer was embedding F.E.E.D. in performance objectives, incentives, and leadership development. The system sustains what enthusiasm alone cannot.

This is the same move a set of leadership behaviors needs anywhere: translation into day-to-day practices, an internal network to carry them, and systems wired to reinforce them until the new way of working is simply how work gets done.

The Pattern at Scale

The same model, proven across industries.

The Colgate story is the deepest documented arc. But the model (embed with teams, coach in the flow of real work, build internal capability, hand off ownership) has been validated across industries, scales, and cultures over more than a decade.

McCain Foods · The most recent proof

From four pilot teams to 556+ practitioners in 20 months.

A $12B global food company with the right principles and a 2030 strategy demanding cross-functional speed. Four PACE pilot teams in fall 2024 grew to 22 teams and 170+ people by January 2026, with 556+ McCainers practicing the new way of working across five regions. August's core team throughout: three people.

A Global Engineering team identified $20M+ in CAPEX savings in a single 14-week sprint. Average improvement across team effectiveness measures: 23.5%. And 94.7% of participants agree the way of working is necessary to deliver the 2030 strategy.

22
teams across NA, Europe, and APMEA
556+
people practicing the new way of working
$20M+
CAPEX savings identified in one 14-week sprint
The Through-Line
Start smallProve it with a pilot.
Embed in real workCoach in the flow of the work itself.
Build capabilityInternal coaches and facilitators.
Hand offA system the client owns.
Watch it spreadPractitioners carry it forward.
By the Numbers

A decade of teams that practice their way to change.

10+
years practicing and refining this model, since 2014.
10,000+
practitioners reached across client engagements.
200+
internal coaches and facilitators built inside client organizations.
60+
markets and geographies, from a single PepsiCo division outward.
23.5%
average team effectiveness improvement at McCain.
Harvard
an HBS teaching case and an HBR article validate the methodology.

August embeds with your teams, coaches them through the transition, builds the internal capability to sustain it, and leaves you with a system you own.

The model works because it changes what people do on Monday morning.

If you're evaluating partners for team effectiveness work, we'd welcome the chance to show you what this looks like in practice.

New ways of working that stick