The “C’s of Change”

Set up for effective business transformation

It is the set of the sails not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

Jim Rohn

What really matters when it comes to delivering successful business transformations? 

Nick Smallwood, the Government’s Chief Executive for Infrastructure and Projects Authority shared his view on this question in January 2020… “we need to focus on the three ‘P’s: people, principles and performance, to improve the effectiveness of delivery and provide better outcomes for citizens:

• Making sure our people have the tools, competence and skills they need to deliver.
• Being clear about the principles of delivery and getting the basics of delivery right.
• Driving a step change in performance so we can meet future challenges.”

It is my belief that in the world of technology enabled organisational change we could sum it up successful approaches to setting up transformation programmes for success instead with the three C’s – Conscious, Creative and Collaborative.

• Making sure our decisions are driven by clear intent, are well informed and supported by/ aligned to corporate strategy – even if that means we need to challenge and change the narrative on strategy first
• Being creative with How we deliver, employing staff with the appropriate capability levels to be adaptive and find effective ways of working
• Driving performance through strong relationships – with employees, third-parties, clients and wider stakeholders.

Conscious – in what way?

By Conscious transformation I mean to use all three key senses of the word – 1. To have awareness of one’s surroundings; 2 to have knowledge/ be informed and 3.to be deliberate and intentional.   

First, the transformation idea must be aware of and informed by the organisational strategy.  Programmes morphing out of reaction to circumstances or divisional initiatives will only succeed through major investment processes if it is also clear that they align with the overall corporate strategy of the organisation. If yours is an organisation where strategic thinking is weak/variable, new programmes create an opportunity to “force” a discussion about the best way forward. So, if there isn’t already a clear strategic agenda that your transformation programme fits into, be prepared as a product owner or leader of transformation programmes to use the process of building a case for change as an opportunity for shaping the broader strategic discussion.

If you are trying to deliver your organisation’s equivalent of SpaceX, playing it down and expecting to simply “get it through the process” as if it was “just another transport project” will do you no favours. You may sneak “under the radar” in the first round of funding, but if you haven’t build up strategic support for the full vision, sooner or later you will simply find yourself sabotaged, underfunded and ultimately culled or left to limp along farther down the line.  

Sometimes it is right to challenge the status quo position on things like risk appetite, but the key is being aware that that is what you are doing, so that you can lead the right types of conversation.  Otherwise, you will waste time in futile debates and nit-picking over design details which are really a mask for more fundamental concerns. “What makes you sure it will work?”  can really mean “are we comfortable with this level of risk?”  Get the real question on the table first – acknowledge that approving your initiative would mean stretching the appetite but demonstrate why the prevailing corporate thinking needs to move on and in what way your initiative provides the answer.

Tips – engage widely at idea stage

Before you expect people to sign up to your idea, have you listened to their perspective and understood what their concerns are? You will only be able to address and overcome objections effectively if you know what they are. 

Know the delivery context

How the programme runs/the risk to delivery will be informed by the programme’s context within the organisation.  Is it THE top priority development this year?  Or will you have to jostle for resources? Have you got a contingency fund within the programme’s own control, or is this held centrally? Are the routes for determining decisions when conflicting priorities arise clear?  If not, better to get these clarified at the outset, not mid-way through a key promised delivery!

Identify what’s going on outside of the programme?

If your initiative is a bold multi-dimensional vision for the organisation that will span multiple years for delivery, what market, technological, social or regulatory developments are afoot that may require you to pivot during delivery? Are you hooked into any existing corporate horizon-scanning activity?  Does this even exist?  If not, make sure that there is some activity streams within your programme to help you stay pro-active on this front.  No one in the board room likes surprises!  

Work out who cares?

Awareness of your key stakeholders is crucial in business transformation context.  Sometimes delivery managers simply like to get stuck straight in to the technical task ahead in a bid to “get things done”… but to lead effectively on complex change it is important to know who the key players are and how their influence is likely to be borne out within the programme.  Your programme may be one director’s pet project, but what is the strength of support amongst the wider leadership team?  Programmes can quickly topple if there is not a good foundational consensus across the business. 

Plan for Transition…

Sometimes we need to pay experts to swoop in and deliver key components of a programme, but what happens when the delivery fund dries up and your operational staff are left to handle the new changes and systems by themselves?   To be a truly transformational programme, there will need to be both an upskilling of existing staff and a bridge between the delivery and business as usual teams, so a carefully managed transition. Make sure that these considerations are built into your plans from the outset or there could easily be an extra 15% cost to add on.  This becomes be a bitter pill to swallow as it brings no additional financial benefit.  You wouldn’t purchase a luxury vehicle and then expect that when it comes to replacing the tyres you can simply “make do” with budget tyres.  

Creativity

Given the scale of the challenge ahead, when it comes to major transformation programmes, yes we all recognise the need to upskill our existing workforce but we also need resources who are skilled enough to lead the change effort.  Due to the nature of complex change, that skill should be at the “Creating” level on the “Bloom’s Taxonomy” education model. There will always be room in the team for fresh thinking from a diverse range of perspectives including bright new junior recruits, but if the majority of the project delivery staff are only at basic levels of “Understanding” or “Applying” when it comes to change delivery,  they will not be equipped to deal with the complexities of a major transformation programme. Effective governance and competent project teams are two of the key Conditions for Project Success identified by independent research published by APM. These cannot be left to chance.

If your change is bigger and broader than anything you had to deal with internally then your resources may not have been stretched to analyse and evaluate methods far less be able to adapt and identify useful new approaches as they go.  The existence of the programme itself creates opportunities for internal staff to stretch and grow but they will need support and you should not expect delivery capability to go from level 2 or 3 to level 6 overnight.  

 The cost of investing in augmenting the workforce with more expensive, experienced hires or interims may seem unappealing at first, but the weekly run-rate on a typical moderately scaled programme team of 175 people, based even on UK average weekly earnings (ONS 2019 £585pw) is over £100k.  We know that typically an IT based change will not be paying only UK median earnings, but even if it was, just a four-week delay could set the organisation back £0.5m. Therefore, the scale of this risk into £millions, whereas the cost of experienced programme leadership team will be covered by avoiding even one 4week slippage.

Collaboration

There are many other great articles on effective management of the internal workings of teams but in this context, it is important for business leaders and transformation managers simply to recognise just as “no man is an island”, no major programme exists in a silo.  There will be touchpoints between your programme and other projects, between the programme and key suppliers, between the programme and operational areas. Setting out to identify and maintain a regular route for 2-way communications between the programme leadership team and all key stakeholders and suppliers – either external or the other areas of the business that you are delivering into – is critical to enable you to deliver success, pre-empt problems and respond to issues in a timely way. Establishing your network early will allow you to identify dependencies and agree mechanisms for managing these.  This in turn enables you to avoid or minimise costly and frustrating delays as well as setting expectations with your downstream stakeholders more effectively.

Conclusion

There are, of course, many further aspects to successful delivery, but if you can nail the “C’s of change” during the start and setup phases of a major programme, before the team gets bogged down in the nuts and bolts challenges of the delivery itself, you will be onto a very good start!