Whitepaper Organisational Change - Fox...

© Fox Resourcing 2013

Organisational Change Whitepaper Changing the culture within your organisation

Andrew Fox GCAPM CPPD PMP

Director, Fox Resourcing Pty Ltd

Organisational Change Whitepaper ii © Fox Resourcing 2013

Table of Contents

Organisational Change Whitepaper .................................................................................. 1

Changing the culture within your organisation .............................................................. 1

Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................ 1

Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 1

The Approach ..................................................................................................................................... 3

The Why ............................................................................................................................................ 4

Policies ............................................................................................................................................... 7

Change Management .......................................................................................................................... 9

Methodology ..................................................................................................................................... 10

Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 15

Organisational Change Whitepaper 1 © Fox Resourcing 2013

Organisational Change Whitepaper Changing the culture within your organisation

Executive Summary

Some very deep seeded cultural problems currently exist within many organisations that need to be critically addressed to ensure that the organisations continue to become vibrant, forward thinking and technology focused company that produces first class products and work across borders and industries to create solutions that enrich millions of lives. Global citizenship is core to many large companies values and business strategy, benefiting everyone from customers and shareholders to employees and communities.

Most do operate with a set of shared values such as trust and respect for individuals where the company works together to create a culture of inclusion built on trust, respect and dignity for all. Achievement and contribution where they strive for excellence in all that they do and each person's contribution is considered critical to their success.

Results through teamwork where they effectively collaborate, always looking for more efficient ways to serve their customers. Meaningful innovation, they are often a technology company that invents the useful and the significant. And finally, uncompromising integrity; meaning that they are open, honest and direct in their dealings.

Whilst these motherhood statements are great; they are just that, motherhood statements, and there is often no specific plan within the company to address the cultural problems and to improve the overall working environment.

This paper seeks not only to bring the major cultural problem facing company’s of ‘the blame game’ to the forefront, but also provides a clear plan and implementation methodology to provide a clear path forward and address the issues head on.

Introduction

This paper will demonstrate:

1. The leadership behaviours approach I would adopt to successfully implement change in this environment, including addressing potential obstacles;

2. The team dynamics I anticipate and how I would handle them;


3. How I could manage difficult conversations with individuals within the team;

4. The role of the company’s formal people management policies and legal obligations (e.g. OHS, Equity and Diversity) in safeguarding and motivating staff, and dealing with conflict.

Of course, with many large organisation, and perhaps this happens to all organisations, once they reach a size that makes it difficult to control, the problems are as equally large. Not least due to the fact that the company often developes very much into a ‘blame oriented’ company making for a very unpleasant working environment. This in turn leads to a decrease in the level of performance and a reduction of client satisfaction and trust that they once held with the organisation.

Like any mature organisations, often they realise it’s faults and then are prepared, albeit often at a relatively low level within the organisation, to begin to make some changes that will hopefully, in a rolling wave manner, affect the rest of the company.

So this should not be a performance improvement programme that follows the norm within a company that would normally consist of a ‘night of the long knives’ followed by the new regime publicly ridiculing the old guard and beginning the blame game once again.

The change programme should follow three of the four identified paramaters that Hofstede (1983) mentioned that underpin country culture preferences in management style, being Collectivism versus Individualism, which reflects the strength of ties between individuals, Power difference - the degree of expected power distance between the leader and employee and Uncertainty Avoidance - tolerance for uncertainty; and use these preferences to aid the change programme to become successful. What I hope to do is to move the organisational culture from individualism where one looks after ones self interests only to a culture of collectivism so that the organisation becomes more tightly integrated.

Now I do have to admit, after my previous experience consulting to large multi-national companies, I didn’t believe myself that this would have been at all possible, but then I began consulting to a large ($6.5 billion) worldwide company called NetApp, and my opinion changed. NetApp has very much a very tightly integrated culture whereby I never heard anyone mention the term, ‘it’s not my job’. In fact, quite the opposite, employees of this organisation will go out of their way to help their colleagues in whatever way that they are able. So now that I have actually seen with my own eyes, that this can work in a multi-national organisation within, I have a greater level of confidence that the same lessons can be applied to any large or small company and prove to be successful to that organisation also.

This leads me to Hofstede’s second parameter of Power Distance. Within the organisational context Hofstede believes that the power distance is related to the degree of centralisation of authority and the degree of autocratic leadership. This relationship shows that centralisation and autocratic leadership are rooted in the "mental programming" of the members of the organisation.

It would be clear then that the mental programming of the employees needs to be changed to a more positive programming of engagement with employees. Apropos, the employees become more programmed to automatically trust their leadership in the same way that a soldier in battle will trust his corporal completely and follow his lead. Or perhaps a better example, at least a more gentle one, is the environment created in a normal functioning family between parent and child where the parent wants only the best for their child and will do anything possible for that child to succeed in life. Every now and then of course, correction is needed but that need for correction is very clearly explained to the child and although they might be short period of discomfort, the child will normally come to realise the importance of the lesson learned.


One thing that doesn’t happen though is the parent publicly humiliating the child for making a mistake, the lesson is learned and the family moves on.

The third of Hofstede’s dimensions that I intend to use is possibly the most critical in driving a successful change programme such as this one but probably the trickiest one to apply to this programme of change. The reason being that although I would want the organisation to move away from the anxious and aggressive ‘strong uncertainty avoidance’ to a more "weak Uncertainty Avoidance" organisation where employees are able to feel relatively more secure; and be more tolerant of behavior and opinions different from their own because they do not feel threatened by them; I would hope, without going so far as to have them not working as hard or taking risks too easily therefore exposing the company to a whole other set of risks. Meaning it will be a case of finding some sort of middle ground where the employees do feel as though they are in a more relaxed environment but at the same time, be anxious enough to continue to work hard and deliver results.

Perhaps the ‘anxiety’ should come from not the threat of being fired, but from not being able to achieve all that they wish to in their careers. That desire to reach ‘self-actualisation’ (Maslow 1943) so that the team can feel engaged with the broader mission of the organisation and then in turn, find the empowerment needed to advance that mission (Hendershot 2013).

The Approach

Before I move into the actual ‘how’ of implementing such a culturally different change within your organisation; it behooves me to speak about the kind of leadership approach I would engage for this activity.

Some of the larger organisations that I have consulted to are organisations of over 300,000 employees. To put this in context, the entire working age population of Canberra is 262,600 as of the 2011 consensus (ABS 2011) 1 so if the entire workforce of our nations capital began to work for just one company, there would still be not enough people to fill all the FTE positions needed.

The leadership approach then is paramount for a successful change programme such as this. In a small company, it may well be ok to have an ‘it’s my way or the highway’ approach to force a change through but when the highway could potentially be filled with the population of a capital city, that approach is quite possibly not the wisest.

Kotter (1990) identifies leadership as critical in achieving change and the rate of change in activities and processes appears to be escalating. Leaders inspire and motivate others to refocus on new goals, to change the way in which they achieve outcomes and to invest their emotional energy to stop doing what they used to do and adopt a new approach (Lecture Notes, Week 3).

Kotter also wrote (Kotter & Cohen 2002) that change only occurs when people change their behavior and presented eight steps that characterised successful major organisational change. The steps that he suggests are:

1. Create a sense of urgency in the relevant people

2. Build a guiding team with the credibility, skills connections, reputation and formal authority to provide change leadership.


3. The guiding team creates a sensible, clear, simple, uplifting vision of the new state.

4. Communicate the vision to induce understanding, develop gut-level commitment and free up energy from a critical mass of people.

5. Remove obstacles to empowering people to initiate and implement the change behaviours.

6. Select projects that assist people to achieve the short-term wins, which provide credibility,

resources and momentum to the effort. Communicating the successes help to reduce frustration and settle the doubts of the skeptics.

7. Persist with the harder change activities. The short-term wins don’t guarantee that the whole

process will now roll out without continued focused effort.

8. Make the changes stick by nurturing a new culture of group norms of behaviour and shared values.

I believe that Kotter’s list can be further summarised down to creating a sense of urgency, communicating the vision, building the right team and rewarding the new behaviours and shared values.

So by using a transformational leadership approach (Bass, 1985); this programme stands the best chance of being successful for such a large, culturally diverse and deeply embedded culture. Employing those transformational leaders behaviours of idealised influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration will mean that I will, as the programme change evangelist, need to be seen as admired, respected and trusted as well as motivating and encouraging.

Especially important will be the last behaviour of individualised consideration. Obviously it would not be possible for me to learn and understand the individual needs of 300,000 people but nor will I have to. Much like the butterfly effect, I would expect that once employees see the benefits of this new way of behaving and develop that trust that they will not be put at risk by ‘putting themselves out there’.

As discussed by Whitely (1995) it is important to remember from a culture-building point of view that the individual will already hold strong values from his or her home culture. Those values will be brought to the work place and manifested in various ways but on the whole, most employees have bills to pay and a desire to achieve in life and doubtless would want their family to feel proud of what they do. All in all, I believe that most employees want to perform well and would resent any accusation that they are anything but a hard worker.

If that then is the case then, and we can take it for granted that workers want to work hard then the next obvious item is the workplace environment and replacing the current culture with this culture of trust and helpfulness.

The Why

It is doubtless that a strong culture is a competitive advantage and it should be at the heart of the organisation. The intent is to create a unique environment where the employees are supported and encouraged to be innovative, where management communicates openly and transparently so that employees focus on critical and impactful work that ties directly to business strategy. Employees should lead with integrity and trust the leadership team. Companies are often able to attract some very talented employees either because of its innovative technology, the outcomes they deliver, or simply their name alone; and they will stay because of the people they work with and the new culture of trust and integrity.


At the core of this change will be a commitment to deliver the best possible results for the communities that the company serves by embracing and living a set of shared values. The organisations commitment to actually living core values will be key to being recognised as a great place to work and fundamental to this change programmes success. Creating a model company philosophy will take the values one step further, by defining a set of principles in which the companies hold themselves accountable to. This will provide a further benefit of achieving market leadership.

This new culture and the commitment to maintaining it will mean that values are threaded throughout the organisations culture. This can even be the candor that employees have with one another, the approachability of the executives, the unity and teamwork spirit and the trust everyone has with one another. It will be these characteristics that define the culture and make your company special.

So what is then that makes a model company? Quite simply it is a company that does the right thing. This would be not only the right thing in relation to its customers, its staff, its suppliers and so on; but also the right thing in absolutely every aspect of the business.

Being committed to creating a healthy work environment and making your company or organisation a great place to work by living the values and embracing strong principles. The company culture can then be defined by its core values—creating a model company, trust and integrity, leadership, adaptability, simplicity, teamwork and synergy, and going beyond to get things done. These aspirations should at the heart of every employee.

Once these core values are defined, they will help unite employees behind a common purpose and inspire them as part of a team that wins on many levels. A key differentiator for this to success will be that the executives and all employees live these values every day, and they become the strength and foundation of the culture.

Employees will then become more committed to doing great work because they are proud of the company, and because it will help to deliver an outstanding customer experience. As new employees join the organisation, the hope would be that they too would embrace it and share it.

There should also be the strength of a shared vision regarding company direction and objectives. Senior management needs to communicate openly and frequently with employees, as that communication is crucial to the success of not only this change programme, but also of the employees themselves and ultimately the business. It will become a collaborative and open communication environment where everyone is expected to contribute and his or her input is valued. This is the foundation for innovation and is how your company will become or continue to be an innovation company. Senior management should make it a priority to keep everyone informed about all the important aspects of the company; and use a variety of tools to communicate with employees about external and internal events (positive and negative) that affect the company.

An example of this could be the development of an internal social networking website that includes threaded discussion bulletin boards for employees to communicate both with executives and other employees around the world. This can also become the repository for internal corporate communications so that it allows the various departments within the company to increase transparency, ensure everyone is aligned, and as an easy real-time method to track employee sentiment, issues, and concerns.

There should be a strong commitment to transparent and open sharing of information on a regular and consistent basis. I know it sounds very cliché but even having an open door policy that fosters a free flow of communication between employees and managers, including upper-level management to the point where any employee should be able to schedule a face-to-face meeting with any executive.

The role of the leadership will be to articulate and demonstrate the shared vision, values, and goals of the organisation. Leaders transform individual effort into high-performance teams that are prepared for expanding roles and challenges.


Trust and integrity will be everyone’s role and interactions should be based upon candor, honesty, and respect for individual contributions. There should be a strong commitment to earning the trust and confidence of ‘teammates’ and to always acting for the absolute good of the whole.

It is also important to reduce complexity wherever possible and to embrace a principle that everything should be as simple as possible and no simpler. By maintaining simplicity in internal processes and structures with objectives that are succinct, quantitative, and time bound; it will become possible for even new employees to focus on the more important tasks at hand that will drive the company to market leadership.

The change programme should ensure a culture of adaptability; meaning that the organisation should be one that embraces change to create competitive advantage, and stay focused on remaining agile, flexible, and nimble to thrive in an evolving business environment.

Teamwork and synergy should be a major focus and it will be possible to achieve synergy through the skills and ideas of all participants. Through collaboration and striving for win/win solutions to issues and problems. Personal success of employees can then be realised through the teams’ achievements.

Although it may seem quite rare now days, it is possible to achieve an environment of, for want of a better phrase, of going beyond. I believe the best way to achieve this value within employees is to set extraordinary expectations and goals and celebrate this by believing in the joy of achieving significant results. As such, embracing creativity, even risk taking, and continuous improvement, will enable the company to make and meet aggressive commitments. It will quite simply be an environment of getting things done.

The plan for this will be the process of helping employees develop and document goals and objectives for 12 month periods of time that are aligned and fully integrated within the company, the function, the team and at the individual level.

Support and development is an on-going process of the manager and the company providing support (in terms of guidance as well as resource support) and development opportunities such as on-the-job experiences, mentoring, training, and other types of activities that allow employees to grow and develop professionally with the organisation.

The function of assessing and evaluating the employee’s performance in their current role by reviewing goals and objectives achieved over the performance period as well as continuously monitoring performance throughout the year; should be a task of the employees direct manager who they would have the closest working relationship with.

It then follows that the process of providing appropriate recognition to employees for their performance and providing the appropriate rewards that are linked to the achievement of goals and objectives should be part of that managers delegation.

Any performance management and development model should have at its centre, a manager and employee partnership. The philosophy should be that:

The employee owns and drives their performance and development. The employee and manager partner to achieve success. There is a key role for the manger in this

process and it is one of providing support, guidance, and direction to the employee. The company also plays a role in providing resources and support so that employees can achieve

their goals in a positive and productive work environment. 2


Policies

The organisation should become committed to attracting, rewarding and retaining high quality professionals and strive to maintain a progressive, productive and energetic workplace with compensation programmes that reward individual as well as group performance.

To effect this, there should be a comprehensive set of policies that address common Human Resources policies and practices, and provide information that will enable all employees to make informed business decisions when conducting their normal daily business; but also clearly document benefits such as working from home or similar so that it is a company wide policy and not just on the whim of a particular manager.

This could also include the previously mentioned ‘open door’ policy. If the company genuinely believes that employees are their greatest asset. Then valuing employees’ input on any issue that they think is important to the company is paramount. If an employee has a suggestion or a concern that they feel needs to be addressed, then they should feel free to discuss it with their manager at any time and have the complete freedom to discuss the issue with the human resources department or with anyone at higher levels of management.

Alternatively, if an employee wishes to remain anonymous, there needs to be mechanisms to report any workplace concern anonymously and without fear of reprisal through an anonymous and confidential reporting system that is available twenty four hours a day, seven days a week by non-company employees trained as communication specialists. If your company is an international company, calls should be able to be received from individuals speaking most languages as well as from hearing impaired employees. Confidentiality must be protected to the extent possible under the law and company policy. Any retaliation against an employee reporting a perceived violation should never be tolerated.

The organisation should also maintain an affirmative action plan in accordance with commonwealth law and should in the very least remain committed to making a good faith effort towards achieving the objectives of the plan.

Often within a very large organisation and generally, the company has a very high expectation of its employees. Along with that high expectation I believe comes a risk of placing employees under stressful conditions. The manifestation of employees working for continuous periods of time under stressful conditions can come out in many and various ways. It then behooves the organisation to provide confidential counseling sessions and assistance to individuals and families facing emotional problems, marital or family issues, alcoholism, drug dependency, stress, and/or legal and financial issues. The company should have a policy that pays the full cost of this benefit, and services are offered free, or at reduced cost, to employees and their family members.

I would expect that this service would operate similar to the Employee Assistance Programme currently offered by most Commonwealth Government departments and major employers in Australia; and would help employees and family members with a wide variety of issues such as parenting and childcare referrals, elderly care services, financial counselling, legal consultations, short-term counselling and depression awareness.

It is very easy to reward an employee when things are going well; programmes such as the employee assistance programmes take into account the not so good times as well and create an atmosphere of trust and loyalty and goes far beyond any monetary outlay an investment such as this will cost. If we own a car and something goes wrong with it we don’t simply toss it away; we spend money (sometimes quite a bit of money) to repair the problem and often realise even within ourselves if the mechanic doesn’t berate us, that it would have been much less expensive to properly maintain the vehicle in the first place.


In life, second from our house, our car is probably in most cases our next most expensive asset and so we do tend to spend money to look after it so that it doesn’t break down just when we need it most. We should have the same attitude to our employees and have that expectation if we don’t maintain our employees properly through their working life that it will cost us more when the break down and need repairing because just as we can’t leave a broken down car in the middle of the highway because it is our responsibility to take care of it; we simply cannot leave an employee that is going through a bad situation ‘out in the cold’ as it were and must take responsibility for getting them back on track.

Other types of preventative care can be services that are performed in an effort to prevent an illness or injury. Common examples of preventive care are immunizations and annual physicals. Even covering the cost of age appropriate screenings and providing flu vaccines. All to aid employees to live a healthy lifestyle by allowing them to take advantage of preventive care services to maintain their health and of course prevent disease which is a benefit not only the company but the entire community and health system.

Other policies that need to be in place for this change programme to be successful could be around the actual working environment. Again, if your company is a very large and global organisation, then employees may want the opportunity to experience living and working in other countries.

The writer of this paper has himself personally experienced living and working in other countries when I was a member of the Australian Federal Police and was both personally and professionally enriched by the experience and can only encourage any one that is able to take up this challenge and especially go to a country that isn’t as well off as Australia as it will absolutely open your eyes to a whole world of challenges of even carrying out simple daily tasks in a country that speaks a completely different language to that of your own.

Your company should then also encourage and support employees' exploration of open positions within the company that may enhance or advance their career development and personal growth. The ability to transfer to another job opportunity is one of the advantages when working for a successful and global company. An internal transfer process that effectively matches positions and employees for the mutual gain of both the employee and company should be in place immediately. Of course, final selections will need to be based on the employee's qualifications, demonstrated skills, education, and past performance as the flip side of offering this benefit is to ensure that the company is not removing a problem from one country and placing it in another. This will just cause distrust to any international transfer programme and eventually lead to its lack of use and demise.

The benefits to the company for a well-run transfer programme are employee retention, higher morale, increased efficiency, whilst at the same time lowering costs of training and recruiting efforts. Similar to the Australian governments policy of granting visa access to professionals such as doctors and teachers as long as they commit to working for a period of time in regional locations as it helps fill the gap Australia has for these much needed professionals within those regional areas. Your company will be able to have the ‘ten thousand feet’ view of the world and fill the gaps with highly qualified employees in countries that may not always have access to that expertise. As your company is doubtless an equal opportunity employer, it should remain committed to internal promotion and employee development.


Change Management

Change Management, is the set of activities and associated tools/templates designed provide business value through it's proven ability to increase adoption of the change, ensure alignment and set expectations at all levels, minimise disruption to day to day business, create ownership and accountability, anticipate and address potential impacts and resistance to the change, enable the impacted audience to perform and sustain the change to realise the full return on investment.

This can only be achieved if the change management process ensures people are aligned, ready, aware and capable for a new way of doing business.

So this effectively creates four key areas for the change; alignment, readiness, awareness and capability. Breaking this down further, alignment would include ensuring that all stakeholders from senior executives to end-users are committed to the change and are pulling in the same direction and tools to be used could be things like stakeholder engagement plans, networking activities, organisational alignment and team health checks.

Readiness would mean ensuring that, before the solution ‘goes live’, all stakeholders are prepared for the transition by conducting business and stakeholder impact assessments, developing a business readiness approach plan so that we are in a state of go live readiness. As well as ensuring that all appropriate support structures and processes in place.

Awareness is ensuring that all stakeholders understand what is changing, why and when it’s changing and how they will be impacted. This could be done by developing a communications approach and plan; communication measurement and developing a visual message such as a readiness curve for example. Something like Figure 1 below is a highly visible message that graphically depicts the emotional response stages most stakeholders are likely to go through during the lifecycle of this change programme. Readiness activities will be intentionally targeted to address the anticipated emotional response to successfully embrace the change.

This helps manage the change to ensure that the employees and management receive the support and development they need throughout the lifecycle of the change programme, equipping them to respond positively to the change. We should manage activities in alignment with the readiness curve to prepare stakeholders for the change they are about to experience. This then can become a very quick reference as to how the change programme is developing and simple for even employees not involved with the programme to read. 3


Figure 1 Capability is then making sure that all employees have the knowledge, skills and abilities to proficiently work within the new culture that the change programme will be developing.

The first logical step would be conducting an audience analysis, followed by a training needs assessment, then developing a training plan and curriculum; then actual delivery of any training that might be required. Of course the hope is that there will not be a great deal of formal training involved when talking about changing the culture of the work environment to a culture that everyone would want to embrace and work in; but we need to allow for where everyone is at currently. Apropos, the ‘disengaged’ state shown in Figure 1.

Methodology

The methodology to be employed should be executed through 5 programme phases:

Define, Design, Develop, Deploy and Support.

There should be specific activities that take place in each phase that align to the four key areas of change mentioned previously being:

Alignment, Readiness, Awareness and Capability.

This part of the paper is where I really hope that I can articulate accurately the how’s of what I am attempting to achieve within your programme of change. Four key areas that are included in each of the programme phases.


What I mean is that each one of the key areas will have activities within each of the five phases and also have outputs similar in fashion to the PMBOK guide (2008) to project management has nine knowledge areas, five process groups and forty-two project management processes with 598 inputs, tools and techniques and outputs.

By way of further explanation, within the define phase for example there will be a key area of ‘Alignment’ which will have activities such as key stakeholder engagement approach and so have an output of a document that steps out the approach, such as Key Stakeholder Engagement Approach.

Similarly, the next key area contained within the ‘Define’ phase will be ‘Readiness’ and that too will have some activities such as determining the magnitude of the change and conducting a business impact assessment by function. This will in turn produce an output of a document, which in this case will be an Impact Assessment. To make the steps easier to visualise, the tables following on the next pages show the activities and outputs for the individual phases in a more graphical manner that may make it clearer. Define Phase: Key Area Output Activities

Alignment

Stakeholder Engagement Approach

Create Stakeholder Engagement Approach

Stakeholder Engagement Plan Identify Stakeholders Create Stakeholder Engagement Plan

Approach Develop Approach

Readiness Impact Assessment Determine the Magnitude of Change

Conduct Impact Assessment by function

Readiness Approach Develop Readiness Approach

Awareness Communications Approach Develop Communications Approach

Communications Plan Develop Communications Plan

Capability

Audience Analysis Conduct Audience Analysis

Training Needs Assessment Define Training Needs Assessment

Training Approach Develop Training Approach

Engage External Training Providers if applicable

Define Training Engagement

Table 1


Design Phase: Key Area Output Activities

Alignment

Organisational Alignment Assessment

Conduct Organisational Alignment Assessment

Team Health Check Conduct Team Health Check

Stakeholder Impact Assessment by Role

Conduct Stakeholder Impact Assessment

Readiness

Programme Plan Integrated plan across all areas change programme

WorkPlan Plan for all activities

Support Model Ensure proper support channels

Readiness Metrics Measure readiness

Awareness Sample Awareness Communications

Create key messaging and Awareness messaging

Capability

Training Plan Develop Training Plan and Initial Deployment Plan

Training Curriculum List of training courses

Training Course Summaries

High level summaries, or outlines, of each training course Table 2

Develop Phase: Key Area Output Activities

Alignment Organisation Alignment Activities

Perform Organisation Alignment Activities

Readiness Interim Assessment Measure readiness

Awareness

Impact Briefing Presentation

Validate impacts to socialise changes and gain support in executing the Programme Plan

Sample Understanding Communications

Create Understanding messaging

Sample Buy-In Communications

Create Buy-In messaging

Capability Training Content Develop Training Content

Training Pilot Conduct Training Pilot Table 3


Deploy Phase: Key Area Output Activities

Alignment Pre-Go-Live Assessment

Conduct Readiness Reviews to ensure readiness for go-live

Readiness Support Model Readiness

Ensure support model is in place and embedded in communications

Awareness

Sample Go-Live Messaging

Communicate go-live status & operational instructions to impacted audiences

Contingency Messaging

Prepare contingency messaging

Capability Training Delivery Deliver Training

Training Evaluation Analyse Training Metrics Table 4

Support Phase: Key Area Output Activities

Alignment Lessons Learned Document Lessons Learned

Readiness Implementation Effectiveness Conduct Lessons Learned Survey

Awareness Ongoing Communications Provide updates, success stories, etc.

Capability Training Material Maintenance Plan

Ensure training is kept up to date as changes are made

Table 5

To further improve the chances of success of this organisational change programme. I would further recommend that as part of this change programme; a stage gate review process be implemented to ensure that each phase within the programme has in fact conducted all the activities required before moving on to the next phase. Types of questions that need to be asked and answered prior to moving through each stage gate are: Define Phase:

1. Have all key stakeholders been identified? (People who can significantly influence the success of this change programme?)

2. Is there a plan in place to manage key stakeholders and keep them informed? 3. Is there an identified Programme Sponsor for this programme? 4. Is there an understanding of both the “magnitude” of change of this programme and the

“readiness” of the organisation? 5. Are the vision, key goals and objectives for this programme clear? 6. Is there a clear and understood business case for this programme? 7. Is there a good understanding of possible risks to adoption of the changes being driven by this

programme? 8. Is a preliminary communication plan in place?


Design Phase:

1. Is there a specific plan in place for all activities at specific points in the programme? 2. Is it clearly understood which stakeholders will be impacted; the degree of impact; how they may

respond and any risks to adoption? 3. Is there an understanding the impact of the cultural impact to employees in other countries? 4. Has there been a decision made on the key messaging for this project (vision, key goals and

objectives, scope and deliverables, business benefits, programme metrics, timeline and key milestones, impacted stakeholders, programme governance and sponsors, key team members, where to go for more information)?

5. Has it been determined whether the programme will have any impact on the way the organisation is designed, reporting lines, decision making, task ownership, job design and cross functional interdependencies?

6. Has it been determined whether this programme will require some sort of an advocate network to help drive adoption?

7. Is there a plan in place to measure and manage the programme’s health? 8. Has initial programme communications commenced? 9. Has it been determined whether any training will be required? 10. If training is required, is there a training strategy in place? 11. Are business readiness metrics in place? 12. Are key stakeholders being continually and actively managing?

Develop Phase:

1. Are key stakeholders being continually and actively managing? 2. If required, has the human resources department been engaged to perform organisation alignment

activities? (e.g. redesigning organisation structure, job roles, decision making, task ownership) 3. If it was determined as required in the design phase, is the advocacy network being continually

engaged? 4. Has an interim assessment been conducted to determine the status and effectiveness of the

programme activities? 5. Have the proposed changes been socialised with representatives from the impacted areas to set

realistic expectations and determine whether there are risks to adoption? 6. Has the communication plan been updated to include pre-go-live communications? 7. If training will be taking place, is the development of training material complete? 8. Is there accurate measurement and management of the programmes health?

Deploy Phase:

1. Has pre-go-live readiness of the organisation been assessed? Do all stakeholders understand how they will be impacted, what they need to do and

where to go for more information? Is there an appropriate level of buy-in and support from impacted stakeholders? How

does the programme know this? Do all impacted stakeholders have realistic expectations of the changes?

2. Has the impact on business operations been fully considered? Contingency plans to address no take up of the cultural changes to the company Impact on partners or customers Need to supplement headcount during the transition should a negative reaction to the

cultural changes occur 3. Has everything been considered that needs to be in place to support employees and management

during transition? Can the systems, processes and procedures in place be accurately described to provide

employees with access to support during and after go-live? 4. Have all the pre-go-live communications been executed to plan?


The final step in this programme of change is one that can often be neglected even at the project level but one that is so important as it becomes and integral part of the companies asset register and that is the lessons learned. Lessons learned is important because we have all no doubt been involved in some change programmes where we've had a very earnest team who has worked hard to deliver a quality outcome, only to be disappointed after go-live when people weren't as excited or felt surprised by the changes since they didn't have awareness or understanding. So it is extremely important to take a more formal business readiness approach and look at it beyond what do is needed just to make the change but also what do the employees feel about the changes and how do they own the changes; versus the programme team owning the changes. It will make for a much richer and more positive outcome even in if things don’t go perfectly because we are also prepared for that eventuality as well.

Summary To summarise it is doubtless that your organisation is a great organisation that has come from very small beginnings and the associated growing pains have manifested itself in ways such as have been defined in the introduction section of this paper. We have discussed that from experience of the writer of this paper, as companies grow, they can morph into a blame-oriented company. This in itself isn’t altogether a bad thing as it means that it is a company that is able to attract some very talented people and those people are desperate to not only hang on to their jobs but to get ahead in their career and move up the ranks within the organisation. It would then follow that the organisation isn’t bad, the people aren’t bad, the structure isn’t bad, it is simply unfortunate that a bad culture has been allowed to grow and develop to the point where it has now become such a problem that ‘blame’ is being openly apportioned. This clearly must not be allowed to continue and a cultural change programme is exactly what a great organisation such as yours needs to implement to overcome these problems so that it can concentrate on doing what it does best and either keep or re-capture that lost market share. Andrew Fox


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