06 Making change happen

and the systematic change management has lots of parallels with the way that we, design and innovate. It's just with a different focus. Now, this conversation follows on nicely from the previous two episodes, in that it explores both a potential career track for some design and innovation leaders, but more importantly, it lays out a skill set that many could benefit from integrating into their current initiatives. Okay, let's get into it

by all means. and I think I'm just going to go back, because I've done three pivots in my career. so I grew up abroad and my adopted home is the Netherlands. I've, I've, I think my first job after international relations, I landed in the international broadcasting and I was surrounded by really creative people, journalists and producers. And in my early days, and my first exposure to designers was, building out website productions and audio productions with radio content.

And, we're talking way back when, and, it was such a great learning environment because, digital and online was really new. It was called new media then. And, we experimented a lot at that time. And, and. We didn't have any kind of specialism, so we did everything ourselves, coding HTML, experimenting with audio, designing your own graphics in the first versions of Adobe, and so in my very early days, when the first designers arrived on the scene, it was such a great experience.

upping of the standard and the quality of the first online productions. My first pivot was actually stepping into a leadership role and leading designers. And it was also the first time I was exposed to, uh, change and resistance to change because there was a lot of resistance to the technology that was just about to go and, disrupt a lot of industries, including broadcasting. and then the next pivot was when I moved from public service. To corporate environment.

and that's when my digital background really scaled. So I landed as a leader of a design operations team, UX and UI, and then spent the rest of my career, leading design teams, leading digital teams, launching websites, rolling out mobile apps, aligning new processes, rolling out agile and really, embedding and aligning new process and new ways of working. And in all of that, what I really loved was. Just being able to help other individuals be the best versions of themselves.

and so I later I, I upscaled to being a professional coach and mentor. and then the third transition, which goes back to what you were saying, was that I decided to take all of the digital transformation skill set, the change skill set, the design leadership and change management, and go freelance. And so now what I do is I help businesses through digital business change. transformation.

I think another example of that is rolling out agile, globally across, In a number of markets and actually working with designers at the time to set up a center of excellence for design, and working substantially and with the markets. Um, and then I think a third. third type of change is just a function only. So more recently, helping roll out a collaboration tool or in the design case, rolling out a design system would be a good example of that.

And the parallel with design is, like design thinking and the double diamond is very much about looking at the as is journey. And then the to be journey.

And with that background in mind, when I moved into the space of change management, there's a lot of parallels and In its core, I think it's about minimizing the resistance to change, helping individuals through that, tying what they're doing to organizational objectives and just being really transparent and, you know, about the communication about why you're doing it and what's the benefit to you as an individual and those to the organization.

So it's very functional and transactional. I think where change has come in is really about the people. And I think there are two statistics to share here. The first, I think, is there is evidence. that you're seven times more likely to meet a business objective with a structured approach to change. I think that's the first one. And an often cited statistic is, the 70 percent failure rate of digital transformations that I think McKinsey has, researched back in the day.

where there's many reasons why they fail. But three of the reasons that they fail is lack of employee engagement. It's lack of sponsorship at the top to manage that change and walk the talk throughout because change is hard. And the third one is, people managers and directors need help and support to manage change effectively because suddenly they have, different roles, they have to manage resistance within their teams. They have to be coaches.

So it's not only about delivering to, financial results or the commercial results. And I think that's the fundamental difference that it was more transactional then. And now there's a real need to focus on the human, on the people, the human

So often, real good change takes at least a year, maybe one and a half years before you really start to see the impact. And you've got to manage people through that. and very often, so I will show them the Kubler Ross change curve, uh, to illustrate the grief process. And when individuals go through change, they actually have to let go first. You there's a lot of pain, frustration and anger. And we need to understand, what's in it for us?

Why is my role, or my purpose or my skill going to be better after I've gone through that change curve? And it's okay. And I think that's a really important message up front when, helping people through change. And I think one of the key things is really tying the purpose of the change to the individual.

let's talk about that. Why it's so hard then. you can imagine some design leaders that, they've spent quite a long time, figuring out which, Which system to roll out or whatever. And it's clearly better than this old creaking system that they had before. they're quite excited about it. They've got the budget, and they want to make it happen as quickly as possible. why doesn't everyone get on board? what are the typical kind of barriers?

to change that, I might be below the surface and less, less easy to spot. So

So there's such a plethora of very emotional, psychological reasons why people are resistant to change. and I think leaning into that is, is really key. And I think that's where designers are are people who really ask open questions and they will probe to really understand, the needs, the wants, the pain points. And that's the same in change. It's basically the same. It's, it's the human centered approach, to making something better.

But it, you have to start first with, okay, what are you taking away from me? And what am I getting in return? And how is that going to impact me personally?

And what I mean by that is, having an anonymous survey where you ask people questions that they can fill in anonymously, both, on a sort of four point scale or an open question, that's one. Follow it up with one to one interviews and select people to really have deep conversations that follow up on those surveys.

and then with all of that, and this is something I've learned also in team coaching, is You keep everything anonymous, but you play back the reflections and you bring people together to actually talk through the resistance and the barrier points and clarify and co create the solutions. But going back first to the root cause, it's having everyone understanding how people are feeling, but keeping it anonymous, but reflecting it back.

You but actually bringing people together and work shopping and, having post its and journeys up on the board and asking questions, all of those techniques you can use today to uncover exactly what's going on in a group. in a group of people or a team and you'll be surprised once you get people together and they feel like it's a safe space, a place where they, they are, it's trusted.

that there's a wide, there's a softer element to getting, people to do things differently. And, and then we've stepped back and go, how are we going to introduce this and how are we going to track, to what extent it's getting, real traction. I'm guessing the work that you do now as a consultant is that, projects have already been identified as well. This is a change management challenge, but we need to get some support on this.

are there some signs, if you like, that, that sort of flag up that, a change management, approach is needed?

and I think from a structured change approach, you actually start at the beginning. you go back to, doing more of an audit and a gap analysis and interviewing people and understanding, doing the health check, where are they? and there's, there are structured surveys that sort of determine, um, in what areas is it the strategy that they don't understand, the vision, Do they understand the purpose of the change? Do you really have to take stock, take a step back and go back to the beginning?

And then go through that structured process again. and change, a change lead can be one person. So I've been in situations where I am the change lead and working with an organization to help them. by taking that more structured approach, and I've also been part of a, almost a squad where we had different roles, and together, like this three or four of us, one will look at the processes. One will look at the training and the communication.

One will look at sort of the business readiness and focus on the stakeholder group and the actual engagement and adoption of the people. But it really starts with tapping into. Okay, do they understand the vision and the strategy? Do they understand the benefits of the change? Do we understand what the objectives are of this change? What are the benefits of to the organization? And how do you tie the impact on each of these teams?

whether it's finance, HR, the commercials, the retailers, whether they understand how the impact on their department or their division is directly tied to an organizational benefit or the program's objectives. and so we really go back to the basics and take that structured approach before moving on.

So I think that was a long winded way of saying, If something gets stuck, if a change program or a program of transformation gets stuck, I think from a change lead perspective, I'd always go back to the beginning and check in with the people, and why and what is the resistance? Where's that coming from? Um, and that's really root cause analysis. So you have to go back and I think the other key thing about change is keeping tabs on that. throughout the program.

if you work with key sponsors and you've asked them to come in and to mobilize and motivate the teams, to explain the strategy, why we are doing it, why the organization needs to move in this direction, that message needs to get out. continue to be repeated throughout the change because every single change transformation I've been through, there is a point in the middle where everybody just gets so tired and exhausted.

and I think as a change lead, it's really key to help people through that exhaustion. And, keep the faith and to keep going.

So involving others very early on, um, creating, you know, I've had transformations where we've created, change champions. Thanks. Um, so individuals in different teams that represent the rest of the team almost, and they become your champion of change or your change agent. I think in, there are situations where they, it calls for a coalition of peers. So one of the things I'm really passionate about is what I call, Horizontal alignment.

leaders who actually build the relationships with their peers across an organization because you're not in it alone. And I think if you create that sort of peer, uh, alignment, that horizontal alignment, then the change will be much easier and smoother to affect across the organization.

let's on that, let's unpack those three types of change you, you mentioned earlier on in the conversation. I think you talked about vertical, horizontal and function only, if you like. So let's unpack one of those one by one. So by vertical, do you mean that there's a, an initiative or strategy coming board level, it might be an efficiency driver, whatever it is, and every function in the organization has got to execute their part of it. Is that essentially what you mean by a vertical change?

So they may step into these roles, because that's the way the structure has been decided, and then have to evolve and adopt and accept that they have a new, a new role in a new part of the organization. So that, I think that's one example. Um, you almost have to do the change in the reverse because then, uh, you almost have to help them understand what their new role is and how it will benefit, how they will benefit from it individually and how it's tied into the organization and the strategy.

And I think intellectually people understand why a change is needed. But that's still maybe a gap in how they're actually feeling about it, individually. and I've had experiences where I think the first two or three months is quite tense as people try and adopt and work in their new role. And not quite understanding exactly what's expected from them and then having to work with other colleagues that they do know, but they've also got a different role.

So I think in that sense, again, going back to the structured approach, the approach is the same. So you still go through a planning stage. And managing in a sustained stage, but you spend, I spent a lot of time bringing people together and really understanding the root cause of their emotion and then helping them to understand their races, their roles and responsibilities.

Understanding how that role will deliver to the strategy, almost setting up a team charter together, the rules of engagement, but all co created. So really working with the teams to co create rules of engagement, clarifying roles and responsibilities and basically setting up this new purpose and vision. So that's, I think, vertical, that would answer that question.

So Creating a, a senior state, bringing senior stakeholders together because it's very often they will need to be equipped to be able to support their teams, and creating that horizontal alignment and coalition of peers to help drive the change. The same things are true. you still got to understand the strategy and the vision. And why we're doing it, but then creating that peer coalition horizontally. because each of their teams will be impacted and maybe in varying ways.

and the sheer scale of a BSS transformation, or even rolling out Agile, Agile, the Agile rollout, also globally at the time, hit every market and every, uh, function operationally. And you almost have to create smaller coalitions within market or within global to help that process and each market or each division may do it slightly differently. And I think that's the other thing, is allowing people to experiment, that's a nice, thing about design, so experimentation is really key.

And if it's safe to try, just go ahead and try it, and then iterate and change the process.

and, I've seen that work really well in, in organizations more recently, where we've done, new ways of working, we've aligned new processes, a really key one in Agile is retrospectives, introducing retrospectives, and then just iterating. doing those on a frequent basis to actually look at your way of working and improve your way of working as a team, as individuals and across the teams. Yeah, I'm a big proponent of starting things small, experimenting and then scaling up across an organization.

But trying to explain to somebody in HR or, maybe even in the sales part of the organization, exactly what the design system will bring and how it will benefit is it. is quite, is more of a difficult one. but again, going back to your question, yes, functional change contained, within a function of designers is much easier because they understand it, they get it, they understand why they're doing it.

at the top of any function, but they're being encouraged to lead change. Could you just talk a little bit about, how change is led and to what extent it needs formal authority to do that and to what extent it can be done, through influence rather than authority.

But I think what's true of any change is creating, you call it volunteers, for me, it's change champions, which are almost these, talents within a team that suddenly emerge as, real champions of the change motivated, highly energized and creating, again, bringing them together. as your volunteer army, so to speak, or your champions of change. And working with them, I think, has been really powerful in all the work I've done.

So in nearly every organization I've been in, There's there have been people without the formal authority, but they've had great influence on their own team members to influence, either the rollout of a new platform, a new way of working. they've understood what the benefits are, and they really help, um, to. Motivate and engage. And the also of the people who actually flag, what's going on and where the resistance and barrier points are.

And, um, so it's almost the eyes and ears on the ground, so to speak. and what I've really liked is that some of these have emerged as amazing talents in their own rights. And, if you follow them after a couple of years, you'll just, they'll suddenly emerge as, a leader somewhere leading another team themselves. And you could already see that talent back in the day when they were doing the change sort of champion work.

it's often people with a growth mindset who really want to learn something or develop the skills or, Yeah, so that's how I probably go and source them they're in every, they're in every organization.

Because you don't, again, going to, to this unconscious bias, you don't want, the, only the promoters, in a sense, you want the promoters, but it's also really good to understand, not so much the detractors, but the neutrals, who are willing to, okay, I'm not fully committed, but, I'll get on board and I'll help, because they, too, have such insight into, again, the resistance within the team and what's really going on under the surface.

And that means, or part of your priorities, not the priority, because obviously you've still got to meet your sales targets. but I don't think you can just say, If you want to get everybody involved, then it has to be part of the top three priorities of a week, a certain amount of time spent on, reworking a process or, um, going to do a training or a skill set, upskilling. Whatever it is. So I think that needs to be factored in. does that answer your question?

So as an example, more recently in the finance transformation, we needed, we had subject matter experts, but the volume of what they needed to do for the change would grow over time. And therefore you can plan for that. Also, when they had to step away and do sort of month end, financial planning and therefore weren't available for the change. And that goes back to the structured approach.

So all of that can be factored in if you're working very closely with the project manager, for user experience testing and training, all of that can be planned. Um, so that, I think that's another way of looking at it.

leadership background that helped with moving into change the, action. Asking open questions, the empathy, the journey mapping, the experimentation. There's a lot, obviously lots and lots of parallels and, approaches that you could, repurpose if you like. but what new? skills that you need to add to your toolbox to, to be really effective as a change manager.

when I did that sort of, the theory and the certification, really understanding how that would help me with all the digital transformation that I was doing. and then with hindsight, looking back and thinking, ah, if I'd known this, then I probably would have done a number of things slightly differently.

I think that's definitely upskilling, and what I'm now doing at the moment is team coaching, instead of, upskilling my team coaching skill set, because I think that is also going to be really useful in this transformation space. Um, so I think those would be the two things.

And I think what I've learned with the team coaching is that actually it's much more about creating a really clear mandate, the commissioning up front. Okay. So what are the goals? what are the outcomes? What will be different? after we've succeeded with the goals.

And then clarifying with the team, actually getting the team to understand the roles, responsibilities, what's their purpose, shape that purpose, co create that purpose, and then co create the ways of working, the new, how they're going, basically they become almost the coalition that drives the change.

And so the team coach role is there is a support and a guide to constructively challenge like with any coaching and to mirror back what you're hearing, but the team itself with the leader becomes, is responsible to drive that change through together. And I think that is a really key one that, that's different than say,

Um, cause I think people are interested to know what's going on, even if they don't have, it's not relevant for them at a particular point. Um, and I think even more so than I've been doing is experimentation. I just love the concept of getting teams together to co create an experiment. And I think this is where, the design, my designs to leadership, the value of how designers and agile practitioners really empower, teams and different disciplines to come together.

Yeah. And to co create and shape and experiment and then, iterate. And just keep learning that so that continuous learning and continuous improvement. I think that's certainly one that I wish I had known more about more intentionally. So many years ago.

And we all, the magic happens because we all want to have significance, in the contribution that we make to making things better.

And, They often tend to accelerate their career as a result, so I think it's there's some enlightened self interest, in there as well, I think, as well.