Hearing ‘real comments from real people’ nearly always leads to insights that help you find the edge!

In 2018, Si2Partners together with ClickSoftware talked to 41 service professionals who attended 7 round tables at two leading Copperberg After Market conferences. We thought you would be interested to see their observations and top tips for managing change associated with the implementation of Service Management Systems. Here are 30 snippets from these conversations:

  • Success of change can be judged when
    • The team understand and can articulate the direction/vision
    • All stakeholders (change team, users, manaagement etc) are enthusiastic supporters
    • In small teams you can gauge this from 1 on 1 conversations

  • Driving Change:
    •  Use Train-Trainer waterfall type programmes to generate change momentum. Especially as people like to hear the message from their peers
    • Sometimes target challengers of change, convince them & turn into powerful allies – keep close to negative people. Sometimes important to let them vent and then work on them

  • Some felt that Vision/Strategy comes at the start of the change process and is essential to driving Teamwork. i.e. you cannot tell people to work together, but must create the environment where they can

  • We had one discussion around a Transformation Process where there were 3 axes of success
    • Realisation Power: The ability to realise a strategic goal where the measure is % to meeting target
    • Culture: living to desired values: The key is to translate generic values into specific behaviours that are relevant to the employees.  You can measure success through assessment of company culture (Cultural Scan) as well as a performance review system that includes a 360 degree appraisal
    • Leadership: Ability to deal with dilemmas. Finding the right balance of Trust & Control . Observe and develop common language based on the notion that language will impact the success of change. Understanding the Knowing/Doing Gap

  • Overcoming Silos: We discussed one idea of setting up change programmes without KPI’s.  The rationale being that KPIs can create functional boundaries. We had a good discussion around this and there is a lot of truth in the point, but KPI’s do set direction, so it is a balance.

  • Celebrate Success, Communicate benefits aim for quick wins. 

  • Communication should be Top down and bottom up!

  • One organisation talked of using a separate “Accelerator/Incubator” organisation (like Skunk Works) to create innovative change. Allows the unthinkable to be thought, but the challenge is to bring the concept back into the mainline organisation

  • Technology is a great catalyst for change, but has to be super simple and compelling (eg like Uber App)

  • Always Pilot before scale up. Especially in global organisations where cultural elements can have a significant impact. It also helps to break large projects down into more manageable lumps. i.e. define the vision and then the small steps to get there.
  • Changing valueswill often mean changing organisation
  • Understanding company cultureis a key element that can help predict the project outcome. Don’t fight culture but build on it.
  • Importance of Communication – ‘Press the flesh’: Never assume that people know about the change or that you have all the answers!  Communicate the change through open forums, surveys, 1:1 interviews, roadshows, demonstrations and even prototype work areas. This gives people a chance to engage in the change process, as well as test your thinking against a larger number of creative use cases. Often your employees’ pain point is similar to the customers’ (but do not fall into the trap that they totally represent the customers’ pain). To retain credibility and keep people engage in the change process, it is critical to feedback what you have done and the input you have gained

  • Don’t forget the customer: Remember to communicate with customers so they are as aware as they have to be of any change that is happening. Use different feedback mechanism to gain a feel for your success through the eyes of the customer. Don’t just rely on one method such as NPS, or if you are, then understand the strength & weaknesses of the feedback. Customer forums were suggested as a good method to get direct feedback.

  • Follow through on decisions: If in the communication process you empower teams to make decisions, it is very important that the decisions are implemented. Some managers use these meetings/workshops to get their team to confirm the direction they want to take, but be careful with this approach as it can backfire if people feel they have no choice. This leads to disengagement and apathy as they feel they have no influence.

  • But if you make a mistake, take fast corrective actions or even be prepared to roll back change: A few managers commented on the importance of acknowledging when an implementation is not going to plan and putting corrective actions in place or even rolling back the change

  • Identify problems early: An important role for the manager is to continually dig deeper into issues and find out when the project is really not on track.

  • Too much democracy: The problem with democracy is that it can slow the decision-making process or make it incredibly unwieldy. Many people talked about the balance of getting a representative number of inputs but through a small enough core team to make decisions and drive action. Remember with 20% of the people you should be able to cover 80% of the requirement! 

  • Time is a way to give people a feeling of influence: If change is mandated, then one element where teams can be given more decision-making space is the timeline. 

  • People Selection: Is key to success. 
    • Many managers talked of pulling in the biggest detractor onto their project team in order to break down general organisational resistance.
    • People with the right knowledge and motivation
    • Bring the customer into the team through user groups

  • Easy Wins: critical to gain momentum and maintain enthusiasm

  • Empathy with impacted people and stakeholders: It is critical to understand the key motivators of all the actors. In particular the people most impacted by systems/process change. Often, they are fearful that change will lead to job losses. Or that new technology will lead to a loss of job status. Dealing with these fears will help smooth the change process. Sometimes incentives can be used to encourage a change in perception. But also remember that “engineers are quite used to working in a broken world” and so quite good at dealing with change.

  • Explain the business side as well as dealing with emotions:  It can help if the emotion of change is managed against the business impact. A good example quoted was a situation where service technicians were having to quote customers for additional work. The problem was that these customers were often older and quite vulnerable. Some simply refused to quote resulting in a significant loss of business. By explaining the business context, and giving the service technician a ‘give-away’ piece of work to be used at their discretion, the situation was reversed. 

  • Emphasise the positives & sell change: it is important to sell change so that your employees believe in it. Their attitude and approach will filter down to your customers. For example providing i-Pads to service technicians, on which they can put their own apps, motivates them as well as giving them the latest tools that they can show off to their customers.

  • But also set expectations: System changes are rarely smooth and people know that. You don’t have to specify the problem, but don’t pretend that none will occur. Instead be prepared to react quickly and effectively in the situation.

  • Change management starts before your change programme:  Get people involved at the earliest stage. This comes back to COMMUNICATION!

  • Leadership
    • Leadership needs to generate trust
    • Can occur at all levels in the organisation
    • A powerful executive sponsor is important
    • Vision for change: it is not a one-off event and show how the solution will be improved/iterated

  • Reduce risk through stage/phased delivery: big bang is high risk. Pilot, then role out is recommended

  • Sprints: are a good way of developing change as a cultural habit in an organisation, as well as breaking down large projects into more manageable deliverables.

  • Change in 3rdparties (distributors/agents): It is difficult to implement change when the benefits are not clear to your partner(s). Understanding this and selling change within the context of the balance of power in the relationship, is vital to success.

Nick Frank is a Managing partner at Si2Partners and can be contacted at nick.frank@Si2partners.com