Manned Aircraft Design Campus, Northrop Grumman

The senior leader of international aerospace and defense contractor, Northrop Grumman, engaged IDEAS to help his Florida-based campus to define and become a Manned Aircraft Design Center of Excellence from perspectives of identity, operations, and culture.  After decades of an operation divided between Beth Page Long Island, and other centers, Northrop Grumman consolidated the Manned Aircraft Design unit of its Aerospace Systems company at its Melbourne, FL. Campus. Realizing that this was an opportunity to create a new way of wporking, Northrop Grumman asked IDEAS to assist in developing an inspired, collaborative campus and cultural integration plan.

After meeting with leadership and thought leaders from all units during multiple Culture Mapping sessions, IDEAS held a 2-day StoryJam workshop on site to develop the overarching story, campus design, and practice framework for this new Center of Excellence (CoE). The subsequent Experience Design Plan included detailed narratives along with visual examples, illustrations, space relationship diagrams, motion graphic depictions, and suggested technology and support systems for the campus.  The design provided a complete articulation and action plan for the programmatic elements necessary along the entire staff and customer pathway to provide a consistently branded Northrop Grumman Center of Excellence Innovation Campus for Manned Aircraft Design.

The engagement began with an in-depth Discovery session with senior leadership to understand the long-term vision, from their perspective.  The organization was undergoing rapid growth and restructuring, with both new and seasoned employees from different divisions, U.S. locations, and cultural mind-sets being relocated to this new central campus.  The next step was to gather staff at all levels and from multiple locations into ten different small group “Culture Mapping” sessions.  The intent was to understand staff needs from a performance and cultural perspectives and their definitions of “excellence.”

Once the team was grounded, stakeholders and leadership from many disciplines came together, along with some of their most respected customer representatives, in a ywo-day StoryJam™ workshop to help distill the future story for the Center of Excellence.  The intentionally designed activities helped to define what it meant to be a Center of Excellence – across brand, mission, facility, operations, culture, and profitability parameters.

IDEAS collaborated with opur partner EXlibe Design and Architecture top deliver an Experience Design Plan defining every aspect of the Campus work experience including a Security hospitality/welcome center, sense of arrival, connectivity of buildings, work groups and spaces, Collaborative/Creative work spaces, on-campus “life-convenience” services, free/open spaces for healthy lifestyle, outdoor work and refreshing, food services, etc.

A senior Northrop Grumman leader noted that “The new culture is a perpetual state of mind built on passion and common purpose, and designed to foster collaboration, free-thinking, and the open exchange of best practices and ideas across the entire talent base of the organization.  Customers see huge benefits through innovative efficiencies, cost reductions, and superior products delivered ahead of schedule. In their words, the Center of Excellence is not just a great place to work, but a great place to be.“