Drax
CASE STUDY | Change and TransformationDrax transformed its ability to make complex decisions autonomously across the business using our Q-Suito model.
Context
Sector: Energy & Utilities
Scale: 200 leaders developed across 18 cohorts, spanning every level of the power station.
Drax found Quirk through their recently appointed CEO, who had previously worked with us and knew the scale of support required. As government subsidies came to an end and the organisation committed fully to renewable energy, Drax needed to transform both its operating model and its deeply embedded culture.
This shift demanded more empowered teams, devolved decision-making and stronger cross-functional collaboration – a significant challenge for a traditionally hierarchical, process-driven environment. Long-standing working practices had to be re-examined, mindsets reset, and buy-in secured from every layer of the business.
This work formed a crucial part of aligning Drax’s strategy, culture and leadership during a period of major organisational change.
What Quirk did to address the challenge
Delivered an 18-month leadership development programme tailored across senior leaders, middle managers and frontline supervisors.
Used experiential, discussion-led and peer-learning approaches to build real capability, not classroom theory.
Facilitated transformation workshops using decision-gaming and behavioural tools to embed empowerment, accountability and cross-functional collaboration.
The programme kicked off with the leadership team strategy sessions. These help to find where they want to go and how to get there.
A series of gaming sessions helped outline what was needed to deliver the strategy, what might go wrong, and which areas of the business needed to
be addressed.
Internal teams, feeding into the senior leadership team, each tackled specific problems/issues and created plans to address them.
Training was then put in place to help accelerate transformation, helping with human behaviour and culture change in particular.
A single plan was co-created to deliver transformation over 18 months. There was then a game to pressure test the plan, looking for and helping to solve gaps, problems and weaknesses.
Key outcomes of Quirk’s work
Over the following 18 months, the plant successfully implemented its co-created plan, thanks to the buy-in and training the teams had received throughout our Q-Suito process.
Drax can now make complex decisions autonomously at all levels of the business due to the thinking, structures and processes that were put in place through our Q-Suito model. This has been enabled through enhanced leadership skills. The full programme of work has enabled Drax to become a fresher, more forward-facing organisation, driven by the culture change work by Q-Suito.
Drax leadership viewed this not only as a transformation programme but as an investment in their people and allowed employees to engage with the business and gave them the tools to take control of their work areas. After 3 years of operating with the new approach built through our Q-Suito process Bruce Heppenstall, plant director, reported superb results across their key metrics of safety, production, finance and the look & feel of the plant.
Through Quirks unique style and approach to leadership learning and development we were able to unlock a significant culture change within our business, crucially providing a positive change in behaviours which have now become an embedded part of our business, improving cross functional collaboration and drive true empowerment to improve accountability and decision making at the right layer within the business.
Craig Whiteley
Head of Operations, Drax
Impact
Impact in the First 90 Days
Leaders rapidly built greater self-awareness and trust through cohort-based development, creating stronger foundations for collaboration.
Early behavioural shifts were observed as leaders began taking ownership, delegating more effectively and making decisions with greater confidence.
Teams developed a unified view of what good leadership looked like at Drax, enabling quicker agreement on priorities and reducing day-to-day friction.
12-Month Business Impact
Directional: Improved cross-functional collaboration, with clearer accountability and more consistent decision-making across operational teams.
Directional: Greater leadership capability at scale, with measurable increases in confidence and alignment reported across all cohorts.
Directional: Stronger operational momentum, with leaders proactively driving improvements rather than relying on top-down instruction.
Sustained Long-Term Results
Three years after the programme began, Drax’s plant director reported superb improvements across the organisation’s key performance metrics, including safety, production, finance and overall site environment — clear evidence that the cultural and leadership shifts had translated into sustained operational performance gains.
Our leadership programme with Drax has received consistently positive feedback with an astonishing 100% delegates stating they would recommend the training to a colleague. Additionally, 95% of delegates rated the training as either above average or excellent. This is thanks to our incredible trainers who were rated above 4 out of 5 in all measured areas speed of delivery, content knowledge, organisation and enthusiasm.
Our favourite takeaway is about getting people involved as early as possible and assembling small teams to work on business-specific problems when they arise. It is all about keeping momentum, and we did this by providing leadership training to those new to the business. You get unexpected but great results.
Bruce Heppenstall
Plant Director, Drax
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Quirk Solutions have a reputation for working with large and medium sized businesses across the world to maximise the internal team and empower positive change.