Change Management in Technology Led Business Transformation

give a very brief introduction about our guest speaker sanya uh she works as a people leader for cancer she is a certified change management practitioner and she has firsthand experience in leading teams to the transformational change she is very passionate about people and she really loves reading books um welcome again sanya so i would like to uh hand over the presentation to you perfect okay excited to be here and talk about change management more of kind of a broad look at change management but let's let's dive in here and uh and hopefully you find the presentation useful today so the way that i've structured the um the uh presentation today is really in three parts so initially we will define change management um and give kind of a structured meaning to it and also answer the question of why why do we care about change management and then following that we'll move into talking about some of the challenges that we frequently face when it comes to big transformational projects be it uh that they're technology-led or not um and then lastly we will talk about um opportunities what are some some of the kind of best practices what are some of the things that you can walk away with that really just increase your chance of success when it comes to implementing changes in your organization so change management before we define change management i feel like uh it's good to mention that covet has obviously had um amplified the the need for change across organizations uh specifically adoption of technology uh more digital fewer paper processes and and so on and so forth but as a result i think the exposure to the practice of change management has certainly uh been more frequent for uh for a lot of folks so um in terms of this group not sure where you are in your change management adoption or usage within your organization some of you may have changed practitioners working within your organization and some of you may just be starting out on your path of understanding change management and how it relates to you and i think regardless of where you are along your path i welcome you today and hope you find what we go through useful but i think as a starting point we should define change management so change management is really it's a systematic approach uh employed by organizations so it's a process we use to increase the successful likelihood of adoption of change be it cultural structural or technological change when it comes to change we often get asked why do we need to change if it's not broken do we really need to fix it how relevant is change management to me and to my organization if we don't have any imminent needs the imminent plans to change and the reality of operating in business today is that there are lots of external factors forcing us to change uh things like market conditions customer demands of course disruptive technology things like input inputs and costs such as fuel for example and then of course competition among some of the common ones and then of course most recently uh one we've all been impacted by which is covet there are other factors to consider of course as well which could be internal so these could be things like an internal desire to change within our organization maybe we want to improve our performance or the quality of our product uh or maybe the satisfaction from our customers or equally it could be leadership changes that result in a change in vision or mission so lots of different factors that could impact a need to change within our organization i'm going to throw up this quote here the price of doing the same old thing is far higher than the price of change and i find it really useful to illustrate this so um in 2017 mckinsey and company published this finding the life expectancy of an s p 500 company in 1935 was approximately 90 years and fast forward to 2016 we see the same life expectancy for the same type of company on s p to 18 years so obviously drastic change in life expectancy of companies today and mckinsey and company quoting fundamental forces like technological revolutions urbanization and aging populations among some of the factors impacting longevity for companies let's take a moment to relate this to our experience of the last two years so my favorite example to quote is working remotely so if we imagine an environment where working from home or working remotely was very reluctantly accepted and there was a real sense of eagerness to return to uh quote the old normal as soon as possible um in order to go back to how we were pre-covered conditions um would this company push for progressive adoption of digital tools and technology in all likelihood no in a lot of ways adoption of digital tools was really just the bare minimum for most companies to continue to operate in the space so what we can deduce about life expectancy as it pertains to organizations that refuse to adopt or refuse to change especially in light of environmental factors is that a company that's not particularly agile or has difficulty changing is just undoubtedly going to have a more difficult time continuing to operate for a long period of time and that a more agile organization is just going to be more flexible and more likely to be successful and adopt adapting to all the different types of changes that we named earlier so i'm going to put a statement out here change is good and and you probably um some of you may not resonate with that statement but i'm going to see if i can turn you around kind of by the end of the presentation so uh change can only be positive change can only be positive let's let that sit for a moment so change of heart change of pace to change one's mind to change one's tune to change the course these are very common phrases that we use day in day out but what do they have in common so change at its heart is in fact progressive it suggests some kind of movement in the moment when we are um forced to change or when we're faced with change it's very difficult to see change as progressive we find that in the long term looking at 50 60 100 years in fact we see that change is evolutionary but certainly in the moment we find that change is hard i want to illustrate this idea that changes heart with an example that i think is very relatable to most so the example starts with starting tomorrow i will do something i will do something that i haven't done before i've made a plan so starting tomorrow i'm going to spend less time on my phone i'm going to not check my email after work maybe i'm going to exercise daily starting tomorrow i'm going to eat better drink more water read more and so on and so forth it may not be one of these thoughts but if you've had a starting tomorrow thought you've probably had that thought hundreds if not thousands of times so were you successful were you successful in delivering the change that you set out to if you're thinking no don't worry you're certainly not alone in fact when it comes to our personal lives the overwhelming majority about 80 percent of us will fail in making uh personal change in our lives within one month of starting so let's unpack that when humans think about change uh we conceptually imagine a light switch like we can turn it on and we can turn it off it shouldn't be so hard if we're clear on our intentions uh if we know what needs to happen we know exactly what actions we need to take to make it happen then it's just a matter of like hitting the light switch and starting tomorrow and of course as you already know from your own experience that's that's not the case in fact change but especially organizational change is actually more complex um in fact it's so complex that shockingly 70 of large-scale change initiatives so this is uh deloitte 2016 70 of large-scale change initiatives failed to meet their long-term goals um if you're sitting there thinking this is an incredibly high failure rate for a large-scale multi-million dollar project you are absolutely right it is and so to understand how we improve our chances of these odds being stacked against us we will now unpack some of the challenges that we face that contribute to failure in transformational change cancer so some of the challenges so obviously uh with that kind of statistic lots of pitfalls uh in terms of how we proceed to make um uh change and and how we we are unsuccessful in that change so um here's some of my favorites and when i say favorites i mean some of the ones that really get quoted fairly frequently in terms of why transformational change fails um so we'll kind of go through these one by one so the first one here vision strategy targets being poorly communicated so this is simply we don't understand the vision this is our why why are we changing we don't understand the strategy the how of the change and we're really not sure how we're going to be measured when all is said and done so having a poorly communicated vision strategy target makes it immensely difficult for people to engage or know if they're being successful in the change urgency not being communicated uh this is really key someone earlier in the presentation we talked about um uh the the quote that i put up there we talked about the longevity of companies so there are lots of external factors causing an urgency for us to change covet is a really good example of um of of an urgency situation where we had to change but there's also an um internally driven things like quality that cause an urgency to change for organizations um and so how do we con how do we communicate the urgency and make it something that people need to act on immediately rather than something that we put on the back burner and so failure to to create an urgency to communicate an urgency around change means that the the change is interpreted as something that's okay but something we're going to put on the back burner um and not deal with immediately um the messaging around the change is unclear so um different folks communicating the message across the organization or different messaging altogether different interpretations there's a natural aversion to the confusion that occurs and so folks of course go back to what they've always known and they continue to operate how they did before the change until they're forced otherwise um and then lastly in terms of communication information vacuums persist so this is a situation where we're in the dark there's lots of uncertainty nobody really feels like they know what's going on and so um as a result we we largely ignore the change and we find that we'll just we'll get along without adopting to it for the time being um culture is not addressed so another key reason when why change fails is culture um not being uh not being addressed so culture is generally ignored it's it's uh considered soft it's unintangible and uh as a result it gets sidelined so so we sort of just say we're not going to worry about culture we'll we'll figure that out um if the change is dictated so change being dictated is very key uh in terms of our success because we don't want to dictate change we want to engage people in the change and so if we simply communicate the change if we mandate the change but we don't make the um we don't make it a hands-on process we don't bring in engage we don't engage people in the process of change then there's a lot of folks who will be asking you know why wasn't i asked why did no one inform me uh it you know involve me and and uh and that that makes it again difficult to get the right engagement rates and the change and then lastly change fatigue sets in so this would be just an overwhelming amount of change all occurring at once um and pulling people in lots of directions so uh naturally leaving leading to exhaustion demotivation uh not retaining people and so on and so forth um so these are some of the the uh reasons that change failed so interestingly the first four on this list um actually speak to communication and we're going to address some strategies around um the first four in the third part of our presentation when we talk about opportunity but the last three we're kind of going going to deep dive into them a little bit more um before we move on to part three of the presentation so the last three are really all about action um there's um a lot of these summaries in terms of uh barriers to change barriers to digital transformation and things that impact how successful our projects are there's a lot of lists out there i quite like this one because it works backwards so this is net solutions five barriers the digital transformation and so working backwards number five is agility um agility being our ability to move quickly and adapt and uh be nimble so obviously very key to any kind of change efforts that we're trying to make um digital security being something also very high on the list so especially relevant in in post covet state where or during covert where companies are maybe trying to move to more of an online presence they're trying to get away from uh paper they're trying to move into a digital space so how do we protect um our data our identity our other assets in that digital space and so digital security becomes a really key piece of that um of of those of digital transformation so one of the key barriers to it number three from working backwards lack of budget clarity so i think self-explanatory um and then number two lack or poor management of i.t resources so absolutely all those amazing business analysts out there doing the heavy lifting um but not enough people or people that are poorly managed and it quickly shows on projects so number one uh i think always a surprise so number one reason uh number one barrier to kind of digital transformation projects organizational culture um so here's that stat again that we saw earlier so uh 70 of digital transformations fail most often due to resistance uh from employees and for those who are statistically inclined most in the report is defined as 70 so 70 percent of digital transformations fail and 70 of the time due to resistance from employees so let's unpack culture for a moment here um culture so mckinsey and company have a fantastic definition of culture here culture is how things get done around here it's how we do things here and so culture is really it's the values it's the beliefs it's our practices it's kind of all the things that we do day to day that make us who we are culture is built through modeling um and there was a study done by pricewaterhousecoopers in 2002 where they talk about culture in the context of change and they're quoted as saying that as an enabler of change culture remains stubbornly under leveraged and it's really for all the reasons that we touched on earlier uh it's soft it's intangible it's just difficult to to wrap our heads around it and and move it forward the unfortunate thing is that um to to to reap the benefits of digital transformation uh we really need to take a culture first approach to our business transformation and i want to pause here and kind of reframe what we're saying there so if culture is how we do things around here and things around here are about to change because of some transformation that we're undertaking then it goes to say that if we fail to address culture we fail to address change so put differently our change management efforts uh will be unsuccessful if we don't address culture um moving on uh and kind of speaking to engagement and communication so um when it comes to change management companies tend to take a very rational approach uh to what they call engagement so typically it's a series of communication materials uh and ultimately we we communicate the change we we dictate what we believe needs to be done as part of the change and we just expect the action will follow and unfortunately communication is not engagement um so if you recall the exercise that we did earlier where i asked you to think about a time when you kind of decided that you were going to make a change for yourself you were going to change a habit um you dictated it to yourself you you likely knew what you needed to do you knew when you needed to do it all of these factors were very clear so you'd communicated the the items the timelines and the tasks very clearly to yourself um but just because we're rational or we do a good job of communicating or we even dictate the change doesn't mean that we're going to get the engagement required to make the change successful um in fact we know from the research that's been done that success is heavily reliant on engagement and buy-in and that simply dictating or communicating the changes is unsuccessful and slow um and then the third part of the action items of you know when change is unsuccessful is uh change fatigue so what is change fatigue so change fatigue is essentially many competing initiatives many competing objectives if you think about covid and in the last couple of years what's been going on with people people have been subjected to immense amounts of change at one time everything from remote work to new technologies to um you know changes in business models uh potentially restructuring as a result of those other three things uh uh regulatory restrictions uh cult uh you know cultural initiatives uh digitalization everywhere so all of these things happening at once can be immensely overwhelming for people in that space people who are impacted by the change so um change fatigue leading to some of the um unfortunate things listed there so we get less productive workers there's more time off higher attrition of course morale erodes when we're feeling incredibly stretched and and the business ultimately suffers so moving on from the kind of negatives and and um the challenges would change let's move into the exciting things so the opportunities so um earlier i talked about the four points on that slide and i said these four they're all kind of related to communication and so what we'll do now is we'll kind of we'll we'll unpack some of those and we'll talk about what are some of the successes and some of the some of the things that we can do uh to make ourselves more successful when we undertake change so with respect to the first one um vision strategy and targets so vision first so um mckinsey and company tells us that if you get this part wrong so if you do a poor job of communicating vision strategy and targets you only have a 12 chance of being successful in the transformational change so this means that communicating the change and communicating that vision becomes really paramount so a vision defined here serves as a bridge so it's a link between where we are and where we want to be post change and it's really answering that question of why why are we changing um the why speaks to motivation and so in communicating our vision and communicating the why we're also going to touch on either intrinsic or extrinsic motivators for people impacted by the change so intrinsic of course being things like meaning and mastery and curiosity um and then extrinsic being uh rewards like it could be um could be money could be simply being number one um different humans of course are wired differently and so where one person could be motivated by being number one another person may be motivated by uh mastering a particular topic and um a well-communicated vision um executed by leadership should really inspire excite resonate with everyone perhaps not everyone like 100 but certainly with most people walking away being able to relate to the why of that vision the second part of that 12 percent the strategy so this one really simply if the vision takes us from a to b how do we get there how do we move between a and b what are the different steps we need to take in order to achieve our vision and then of course target so targets it seems like such an obvious thing to define your targets at the outset but unfortunately frequently forgotten um or something that we kind of try to figure out as we're progressing through our change which becomes um even more complex um defining our targets at the outset is really beneficial uh we'll talk about this a little bit later but not only does it allow us to know where we're ultimately heading and and to measure against um that that statistic for the future but it also helps us to see how we're progressing and helps us celebrate those small progresses along the way in our journey of transformation so moving away from uh vision and strategy and target and on to the consistent messaging which was point two that we struggle with when it comes to change so um messaging around change really needs to be consistent across different groups across different seniority uh seniority across the organization whether it's senior managers or middle managers or front line folks everybody needs to be getting the same messaging in terms of the change and ultimately we want each human walking away thinking i know what i need to do with respect to this change i understand my part in this change otherwise again confusion aversion and we go back to the way we've always done things point three in terms of the things we're trying to overcome in terms of the challenges of project and communication uh sense of urgency so we talked about this at the very beginning um this is a quote here from jack welch and he says if the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside then the end is near um and you know linking that to um the statistic that we saw earlier on longevity of organizations today so the thing is organizations are actually very good at adapting to urgency um if for example we see a system failure we likely have processes in place to deal with that we know exactly what we need to do who we need to contact who needs to get involved to resolve it uh if you're in an operations environment saints very much the same we know which hands need to get on deck so that we can resolve this situation day to day our sense of urgency changes and there is less of a sense of urgency in what we do so um really critical to motivating people to change especially at the rate that you require so in terms of the roi of your project in terms of the the length of your project and everything you want to achieve um it's really important that that urgency is clearly communicated and the folks do feel like they really need to be working through the different aspects of the change at a rapid pace um and we'll touch on this later as well but it actually positively um influences change fatigue so it works against change fatigue to have a good sense of urgency in terms of tasks relating to the change and then the last piece on communicating the change so information vacuum so when it comes to change especially large large-scale transformational change a lack of communication or just a general lack of transparency can be really troublesome there's a concept in neuroscience called apophenia which is defined as finding meaning or patterns where none exists and what this means is that when human beings are presented with a lack of information so when we feel like we're in the dark when there's lots of uncertainty especially in the context of big transformational change the apophenia starts to set in and we start to construct our own stories um and generally start to make assumptions um around the change typically for the worse um which can obviously derail our change efforts so to minimize uncertainty in times of change and prevent information vacuums formal leaders need to lead with transparency there needs to be they need to do their best to communicate what they know and uh what they learn with others in the organization and to be honest when we can't be transparent in light of the change so moving away from the communication piece and into culture so obviously we touched on culture and we said in the earlier part of the presentation that if culture is how we do things around here and we're about to change how we do things then of course we have to address culture to address the change so let's talk about some of the things we can do to make the change uh stick and if you if you take away one part of today's presentation let it be the importance of role modeling um so culture culture like we said it's created through behavior it's consistent behavior it's it although companies try it's not something that we can publish in a memo or um put in a policy uh if we determine that tomorrow we want to be a culture of learning or culture of innovation we can't just put that out there and and uh make it so that's not how it works um culture is built over time um and it is built through modeling um and the the as we progress in our project we need to understand that that the relevant behavior has to change to support the culture and so there's a really a link there between the two um i want you to know what culture in action looks like so i picked a couple examples here um culture and actions if you went to your organization tomorrow and you looked around culture and action would be how a ceo responds in a crisis so something's happened and you look at the ceo how is he responding that's culture because we're going to model our behaviors from that um it's how we treat our customers what's the norm it's how we treat our vendors again what's the norm in your organization um it's how we criticize it's how we praise um and it could be things as small as our behavioral norms in the office in in meetings um in team activities um all those kinds of things are culture at work um how do new folks who enter into the organization how do they um adapt to the culture when they join they they do so by watching um and really repeating what's being modeled by others so so essentially they're attempting to fade in so according to uh research done by mckinsey and company as well as deloitte as well as the prosci institute role modeling is the single most important factor in influencing successful change see that ultimately culture starts at the at the top and if the folks at the top don't quite look like they are buying into the change uh it makes it really difficult for others in the organization too the the kind of interesting thing about culture is that although it starts at the top it does get um kind of reinforced at all the different levels in the organization so as an example if your boss or your colleague is dismissive of the change then there's there's an increased likelihood that you also will be dismissive of the change uh purely through following those cultural norms so uh this of course means that role modeling whether it's very senior leadership or leadership throughout the organization is critically important and so when we talk about leadership again whether it's executives whether it's project leadership or informal leadership in the organization what do we need to be successful what are some of the things we should look for so um a leader who is passionate about their vision or the vision or uh project so someone who has a passion uh and an excitement for the change we want someone who is visible and active so someone who's experienced who understands their role in the project who understands change management maybe someone who's politically savvy and can leverage relationships across the organization to get buy-in to get other uh uh counterparts in the organization uh progressing with the change also and then of course it helps to be a good communicator um so we can actually use our existing culture to uh we can leverage our existing culture and and there's a great quote here the culture you have can evolve into the culture you need so um at the beginning of our project we would do kind of an exercise to assess our current culture and we would say what are some things that we do really well what are some strengths in our culture and then more so how can we leverage some of the things that we do really well to accomplish some of those really critical changes that we need ultimately it takes small changes which compound over time to change a culture so liking this to our personal experiments it would be um it would be where going forward i eat one healthy meal i eat healthy in every meal and therefore in a year i'm healthier so we can change our culture over time to become the culture that we need but it takes time and so in the meantime how do we leverage the skills and kind of the great things in our current culture to become the culture that we need in the future so moving on to engagement um so i mentioned this earlier uh in terms of how critical engagement is and we'll get into the details of that but i love this um organizations don't change people do so change um doesn't happen to companies i think this is probably the first thing i share with people when we go into projects is that change doesn't happen to companies it happens to individuals people change companies don't change individuals do and so when we think about change and we think about engagement we have to think about all the people who have to flip from past to future to become the change to become successful and sometimes it's just simply easier to look at the statistics and say this project affects 7 000 people we can't possibly address every single one of the 7 000 people and therefore we just need to change as an organization and realistically on that note we can engage 7 000 people but we do that in layers through good leadership um so let's talk about engagement um some of the kind of really key things on how do we get people engaged in the change so uh one getting people involved in decision making from the very beginning so we treat our employees as participants uh in the change rather than targets of the change we involve people in the interpretation and the shaping of that change number two we hire internally for the right leaders so we need to recognize that major scale change is a very big opportunity to build leaders in our organization and so we want to choose carefully and remembering role modeling that we mentioned earlier and just pick the right leaders uh maybe formal leaders but perhaps informal leaders who are passionate and who can be the forefront of that change and would engage in in the change um number three unleash the power and formal leaders yeah so really key so i think when we think about leadership naturally folks think of managers directors vps and in fact uh some of the folks who can have the most powerful impact on our changes are informal leaders in the organization so these are people who are trusted people who motivate others people who inspire others they instill pride in in their work in the organization these people are um can be incredibly powerful for for progressing the change and getting high rates of engagement number four create events to energize and kick start the change so one of the things that we know through um through readings is that events create kind of a shared history with respect to the change so having uh a kickstart um event or some some type of kind of origin story a beginning it acts like an anchor um to the change it it acts as a cultural shift for the change um and then further down the line as we talk about um moving through the change and and um change fatigue we can actually have leaders use these events and uh storytelling to re-engage people in the change um so events can be really powerful and then last but not least be prepared to make difficult people decisions so i i think i always think this is like the last resort in terms of what you want to do as a leader but ultimately sometimes we may have to remove people along the way for the benefit of the change if we find that um one person is making uh a fairly negative and substantial impact on us progressing the change forward um so just something to be aware of there and then last but not least in terms of our opportunities is um around change fatigue um so like we talked about earlier there are a lot of things that folks have recently been had had to contend with a lot of change happening a very short period of time um and so what are some of the things we can do to minimize change fatigue or to improve our chances of um of getting change fatigue so uh first is focusing on a few critical changes so pick the changes that will set the foundation for your your large scale change so um and then from there actively manage resources to avoid burnout that's probably number one in terms of um what you can do to prevent or manage change fatigue um keep reaffirming the urgency and the need for change so again we we met we touched on this earlier but having an urgency it just um it kind of forces us forward in terms of that change it's very easy if you're part of a project that's gotten out to like one and a half two years it's a very large scale project many phases after two years it's very very easy to look and go it's not very urgent anymore because it's been two years we've been doing this now so um having someone reaffirm the urgency and the need for the change and making it um understood is is really helpful in preventing change fatigue uh that feeling that it's this this fatigue will never end the work is ongoing and and not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel um measure and celebrate small and big successes along the way so again we touched on this earlier about creating events um creating uh uh points uh of measurement throughout our journey of change so not only being able to say uh this is what will look like in the end but how do we measure how we've progressed along the way and those small successes can be incredibly motivating to keep us moving forward prepare for attrition so change is not um it's not uncommon during times of transformational change to see turnover and it honestly can be a mix of different things um i frequently say it's rarely people being pushed out the door and it's more just people realizing that something is not for them so when we're going through transformational change sometimes someone will start in a particular role and and the ultimate role that they're in just looks very different to what they do today and so people leave other times people will leave as a result of a lack of communication and transparency like we talked about information vacuums and so there's a mix of things that can that can cause um attrition throughout projects um but having clear defined processes of structuring uh clarity on roles clarity on performance clarity on processes in the event of attrition helps to prevent um you know mass panic in terms of coverage people having to lean in do more than one job and the change fatigue that comes with all of that um and then lastly re-engage with quick win stories uh quick wins stories and events so uh again using small small wins along the way to keep motivating ourselves um using those stories so leadership sharing stories of the uh the kickoff do you all remember when we started our transformation in 2017 and that kind of thing it can really motivate people um to continue through any change fatigue in conclusion so when major change is successful you can certainly see it and you can feel it the benefits are great um the roi has been realized but more than that um the folks who are um who've successfully gone through that change there's learnings and there's personal growth and there's an immense amount of pride in having been successful lots of hope for future projects and future transformations i hope you found this session useful and and thought provoking as you embark on your own next change initiative thank you

2022-09-04 23:11

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