A pan-African group built through acquisitions
Sunu is an insurance and financial services group with a 28-year presence in Africa. Its growth was built through successive acquisitions: companies that each already had a strong identity, some operating under brands like AXA, Alliance or BNP before being acquired. Today, the group has 35 subsidiaries in 17 African countries, including several English-speaking subsidiaries, for a total of 5,000 employees.
This growth through acquisitions was first addressed through branding: every company adopted the Sunu name. A shared mission, vision and values were then defined and rolled out across all subsidiaries.
But a collection of companies doesn't become an aligned collective simply by sharing a name and stated values. One step remained: moving beyond a declaration of intent to concretely define what it means to "be at Sunu" → which behaviors drive the performance the group is aiming for, collectively.
« In the midst of transformation and expansion across Africa, the Sunu Group — a major pan-African player in banking and insurance — relies on TheDots to align our teams around a shared narrative and effectively identify our performance levers, thanks to a deep understanding of African market dynamics. »
Evelyne Tokpanou · Group HR Director, Sunu
Going beyond stated values
Sunu's values were already known and shared across subsidiaries. But staying at that level was no longer enough: the group needed to understand what its employees genuinely aspired to, subsidiary by subsidiary, including in the English-speaking subsidiaries, which carry their own existing culture. And to check that this aspiration matched the vision held by leadership.
This is the challenge that led Sunu to bring in TheDots and launch a group-wide Leadership Scan.
The methodology: from qualitative interviews to a large-scale Leadership Scan
TheDots' engagement unfolds in two phases:
A series of qualitative interviews with executives, senior managers and employees across different subsidiaries, including the group's English-speaking subsidiaries.
A quantitative Leadership Scan rolled out to all employees, across every subsidiary.
« We were fortunate to get close to 90% participation from all employees, across every subsidiary. We felt that would really give us the true picture of how employees experience things. »
Evelyne Tokpanou · Group HR Director, Sunu
This participation rate delivers a detailed, representative picture of the culture actually experienced, subsidiary by subsidiary — not just an overall snapshot of the group.
Interim results that lay a concrete foundation for action
The Leadership Scan surfaces two types of findings:
Strengths (levers) the group can build on to boost performance, with sometimes marked variation from one subsidiary to another (including subsidiaries where, on the surface, everything seemed to be going well).
Barriers currently limiting performance, with a clear correlation between the subsidiaries identified as culturally the most challenged and their operational results.
These results, available subsidiary by subsidiary, allow Sunu to build two levels of action plan: group-wide actions to capitalize on shared strengths, and targeted actions per subsidiary to address context-specific barriers — prioritizing, rather than opening every front at once.
Another key finding: what employees say they hope to see in terms of behaviors for success matches the vision leadership already holds for the target culture. An alignment that gives the group a solid shared foundation going forward.
« Leadership's involvement is really what made this strong participation possible. Every action we take going forward will be carried out with the subsidiaries' managing directors — not treated as a purely HR matter. »
Evelyne Tokpanou · Group HR Director, Sunu
What's next: from formalization to embodiment
The work underway with TheDots is now moving into finalizing the formalization of expected behaviors: a starting point that now needs to be known, understood, adopted and embodied by all employees. Ownership workshops are being designed and rolled out across subsidiaries to bring this work to life day to day.
Concretely, this embodiment relies on manager training and on the rollout of concrete actions and rituals at several levels: the executive committee, HR, and managers themselves.
Sunu plans to run another Leadership Scan in a year's time, to measure the real adoption of these behaviors and adjust the action plan accordingly.
« I hope that in a year, I'll be able to tell you: we've done it, we're aligned, with behaviors consistent with our history and with the culture we've defined. »
Evelyne Tokpanou · Group HR Director, Sunu
TheDots, in Sunu's words
Why did Sunu choose TheDots over a generalist HR firm? A niche positioning, a method built to deliver concrete results, and a working relationship that held up over the course of the project.
In Evelyne Tokpanou's own words, Group HR Director, here are a few key moments from this collaboration:
"We chose TheDots because it's a firm that specializes in culture. The other firms we approached were more HR consulting, with organizational audits, HR strategy... TheDots was really about culture. It's not that common to find firms so focused on this topic, and for us, being deep into a culture project, that was already a very convincing argument."
"TheDots offered us a very structured, practical, impact-driven approach. We weren't dealing in theory: we felt like we were moving toward action, to produce impact and reach a goal."
"We're the client, so normally we'd be the ones chasing them. Here it's the opposite: they're the ones chasing us, because they're ready before we've even done our part. You can feel the firm is fully committed and really follows through on what it needs to do."
"She told us from the start that she'd be involved until the end, both of them. Whether it's one or the other, there's never a break in communication or follow-up: they stay involved the whole way through."
"They're never contradictory, dismissive or closed off — always open-minded. That's what lets us feel free to say what we want, so we can reach the results we've set for ourselves."