Process Side of Change Management

People, Process and Technology are three pillars of change management. In this blog, I am going to look at the process side of change management. Although Process has a considerable overlap with other two aspects, there is still room to look at process in isolation. Borrowing from the simple yet effective model of Lewin, Process can be unfreezed, analysed and repackaged as shown in the below diagram.

Figure 1: Transforming Cube to Cone

So, how do we go about analysing/transforming the process? The rest of the blog will give an overview of three styles using which the process can be analysed.

1.       Process Related Analysis

One of the important things while conducting this analysis is to keep things simple. It is easy to dive in with all the six sigma and lean tools to collect and analyse and weed through massive piles of data to calculate the work-in progress, processing times, queuing or waiting period etc. There is nothing wrong in using them but the mind-set with which it is used makes them more effective. The key question is to check whether the process is ready to take on the challenges expected in the future i.e. based on the organisation strategy. If not, where is the waste in the process? In simple terms, what is the value-added time? While it is easy to ask what is value-added time, it sometime gets difficult to clearly draw a boundary between value-added and non-value added time. Here are some pointer questions that help identifying value-added time:

• Is this step adding something that is of interest or value to my customer? 
• Does this step help contribute towards on-the job learning for my employees?
• Does this step introduce any additional work downstream?

2.   Quality Related Analysis:

During my childhood days, my parents used to say that if I spend quality time studying and doing my homework, my life would be much easier later on. All of us must have had similar sort of advice during some stage in life.  Same principle applies to this type of process analysis. While analysing a process, it is essential to see whether a process is done right the first time.  Right first time means “quality”.  Immature organisations especially in service industry measure quality as an after-effect i.e. Just before the service is ready for consumption or even worse with metric such as “No. of customer complaints”. And then a post-mortem is conducted to find out the issue. To avoid such reactive behaviours, the answer lies not in just about adding a metric but it’s about uncovering the symptoms earlier in the process. i.e. being more proactive than reactive.   

3.       Governance Related Analysis:

This aspect tells how good a process is handled. Right from designing a process, adding a measurement metric to ensuring proper resource allocation is very central to this theme. There are several parameters that determine good governance such as reducing the variance, drive down the learning curve, use of good metrics that provide good insights etc. Here is where smart leadership and management play an important role.  Smart leadership & management skills because many times, organisation just look at all parameters within governance in isolation but depending on the nature of the business, these parameters might be interlinked. For instance, I knew an organisation which tried to improve resource allocation by allocating one resource per task within a process but as a result, the learning curve & time to acquire complete process knowledge increased multi-folds. As a result, the employees got disengaged which pushed the attrition rate up but the metrics never revealed any problem until very late in the game.

Overall, these three styles of analysis provide a guiding hand to analyse the process from multiple perspective. However, it is also vital to know the dynamics between the process, people and technology in order to deliver successful change implementation.

Digital Transformation – Watch out for these 3 gotchas

Few days back, I attended a conference “Leading through Change” in Cranfield School of Management. One of the key themes was the pace of technology changes. Specifically how does it affect organisations & its people? It brought back vivid memories of my Digital Transformation experiences. On reflection, I can definitely share three gotchas & lessons. If you are leading a Digital Transformation or being a part of one, keep an eye on these three gotchas!

Gotcha #1:Partial digitalisation and/or digitalising bad process are not good.

How can we simplify things and deliver better customer experience – That is how most of the Digital Transformation start. Therefore, it is pretty useless if you digitalise only part of the process. In one of the Digital Transformation works, our aspiration was to digitalise all customer interactions completely. However, behind the scenes people were still holding on to the notion that old practice of keeping a physical copy for every customer order would continue. This was leading to i) Increased cost of inventory due to need for stationary and storage space year on year ii) Increased time & effort due to manual search to retrieving orders. After working out the cost & benefit, we manage to avert both. Thank god! Lessons learnt: When you do digitalise, do it completely. No half measures.  Don’t lose ethos of transformation. Digitalising bad process means garbage in & garbage out

Gotcha #2: Linear project execution to deliver change are not always suitable.

 Anybody with good experience will know that this is true. Yet with Digital Transformations, I quite often see traditional project plan & execution taking over when the pressure to deliver kicks in. Agreed, delivery is important but not at the cost of losing people. The role of the transformation programme is to help people manoeuvre their way around the change adventure. Whilst doing that, it is ok to be reactive at times & have small failure(s) along the way.

Whilst having a plan is a good thing, we need to blend good stakeholder management with those plans to increase effectiveness of the delivery. Here is one way to do it – As and when you deliver (or not deliver) each milestone, what change bombs will present itself? How will it affect the views of your stakeholders and specifically will it cause them to go back & forth on their stance?

Lessons learnt:

• Plans are means to an end so don’t jeopardise the end game for the sake of sticking to a plan. 
• Use traditional project plan in conjunction with stakeholder management to guide your change execution. 

Gotcha #3: Turning a blind eye to people’s feelings & emotion will cause irrevocable damage 

With Digital Transformations, there is a lot of focus on delivering a system that can be a game changer. That often drives the people leading change to concentrate purely on digitalisation and forget that people are very important. In this day & age, organisations will undergo number of changes at the same time. So the chances are that there is some other change ongoing simultaneously. Although Digital Transformations is for greater good, it will not be beneficial to everyone. People have to make radical adjustments. Talking about these adjustments openly will boost the authenticity of the programme. Allow people to share their fears & aspirations honestly in an informal setting. Initially such an effort might seem counterproductive but in the long run, it will pay dividends. Lessons Learnt: Change programme will affect people so don’t brush away their concerns  Emotions are a big factor but being transparent is the only way to be authentic

Feel free to share your lessons on how you are winning in your Change adventure.

Why driving Improvements beyond Organisation boundaries matter?

Business improvements and customer experience are topics that are very close to my heart. Driving business improvements is my core capability. Delivering better customer experience through improvements is something that am passionate about.

As an Improvement lead, my current adventure is to improve O2’s Change Process. On a daily basis, O2 uses this process to make a fundamental difference to its Network & IT landscape – whether it is maintenance, upgrade or rollout of new technology. With close to 100k changes a year, this is a key operational process. If this process does not live up to the expectations, O2’s customers are going to know pretty soon as the service will be affected.

Until recently, the focus has always been on the implementation and delivery of a change on the day. However with growing customer base and changing time, customers' expectations has grown and so has O2’s commitments to them.  Therefore, in order to provide a consistent customer experience across the piece, there was a clear need for improving the operational efficiency. However, there was a small challenge. Just like any other big organisation in today’s world, the end-end process stretched beyond the organisation boundary.  From the start of this year (2017), I dedicated my efforts to a key yet challenging area of the business that had 60+ (yes, 60+ vendors!).

Recently, I visited one of our key vendors’ office to conduct a workshop/awareness session with 30+ people. The session was very effective mainly because everybody shared the common ethos of delivering better customer experience through operational excellence. During the workshop, we discussed number of challenging issues and used a data-driven approach to develop a deep understanding of root cause & solutions to it.

Result: Until date, there has been 25% improvement. That means only one thing – Better Service and hence improved Customer experience.

Here is a pic of cross-border team in serious action mode (Sorry, next time I will take a better picture)

Final thoughts:

Irrespective of where you work, the key thing is to understand where your process is d delivering great customer experience. Therefore if you are:

• An improvement or transformation professional - You will have to break the mould and encourage organisations to be bold enough to stretch into its supply-chain. Only then, they can truly become “customer-centric”.
• An Operations Manager/Leader – Know where your process begins and ends from the customer experience point of view. Then look at how you can improve continuously to deliver better customer experience.

Heads & Tails of Island(s) of efficiency

70% of change initiatives fail, irrespective of their size. While this is true, many of the change initiatives are classified as failure not because it hasn’t delivered but because it hasn’t delivered a sustainable change. Generally, a transformation activity or change initiative (be it a small or big) sets out to change a sub-set of the organisation i.e. one or two divisions/functions within an organisation. As a result, an imbalance is introduced within the organisation, which is what I call as “Islands of efficiency” 

How does it get created?

For simplicity sake, let us consider that all things are equal before the introduction of a change. As a result of completion of transformation or change initiative, one part of the organisation starts to function better.  Whilst this is not bad, it creates an imbalance within the organisation. These imbalances aka “Island of efficiency” cannot be avoided because as the saying goes “World cannot be changed in a day” and the same applies to an organisation.  However, if the island of efficiency is not carefully nurtured, it can quickly disband to act as an opposing force to the introduced change and more dangerously, builds a culture of resistance for future change initiatives as well.

So what happens once Islands of efficiency are introduced?

As with everything in life, these islands of efficiency will create traits of thrills and spills. And these traits are inseparable because they are essentially similar to two sides of the coin – head and tails. Importantly, this means that the adoption and resistance to change is as likely to come from inside a change initiative as from outside!

What does the head side give? Essentially, three things

1. Create a Movement
                                    By starting small and wonderful, an organisation will be able to digest changes as it will be in byte-size chunks as opposed to dropping change in one big shot, which is often intimidating & scary. This helps build momentum and creates a right environment for the employees and leaders within the organisation to increase the momentum and thereby introduce further efficiencies.

2. Improve visibility
                                    By optimising one part of the organisation and improving how things are done within the organisation, it elevates the view of best practice to everyone – especially middle to senior management. At the same time, it also starts to uncover inefficient areas with proper insights to drive further improvement.
3. Approach to Improvement
                                    In this blog, I have made an inherent assumption that the approach taken to introduce the islands of efficiency is clean & credible and not quick & dirty. So a credible approach not only drives increased level of adoption but also provides a platform and mechanism for two things a) A template on how to improve things b) A template for how to work as change agents before, during and post the introduction of change. 

What does the Tail side entail?

Everything is not hunky-dory when you start & deliver something small. There are things that can cause negative impacts.
1. Slow bleed to death
                                    Changes generally will not have a sudden death; it will always be painful & slow. Why does it happen that way? The answer is simple – it’s called the law of equilibrium. Let me explain. Once an improved part of the organisation starts to interact with other part (read inefficient) of the organisation, there are only two outcomes:

a.       Efficient side of the organisation influences more  change to remove inefficiency

b.      Inefficient side of the organisation grinds away the efficiency to restore balance

The former is a direct characteristic of “Head” side in action and while the latter means, we are seeing “tail” side in action which means slow bleed towards the old status-quo!
2. Too much focus on the Island of efficiency
                                    By law of diminishing returns, continuous effort & investment in improving what is already good, whilst ignoring the rest, will increase the gap between the efficient & inefficient areas. Consequently these investments will struggle to deliver the planned benefits which will ultimately reduce the level of acceptance.
3. Loss of support & commitment
                                    This happens in two flavours. First one is very visible – this is when some of the key leaders and employees are frustrated and they move out of the organisation. Second one is a bit trickier to spot early on. This happens when some of the key leaders & change agents get promoted and the replacement, with no fault of theirs, does not clearly understand the improvements and subsequently starts to untangle the good work!

Now that I have explained both sides of the coin, what is expected of an organisation embarking on a change journey? The tip is simple but it needs extreme level of single-mindedness and focus – Keep fuelling the “heads” whilst not removing your eye off the "tails". And remember, tails is part of the same coin and heads can turn into tails if you are not careful. 

As always, I will leave you with one quote -  

“Once you start working on something, don’t be afraid of failure and don’t abandon it” – Extract from Chanakya

So never quit, once you initiate anything and never quit, until the goal is reached.

Rubber Band Effect in Change Management World

As we all know, change is the constant thing in the world. But why is that implementing change is so hard? And even if change is implemented, is it sustainable.

What is rubber-band effect?

Rubber band effect is one where a change is implemented but the organisations slowly, sometimes very rapidly, falls back to its old ways of doing things. It is very similar to our weight-loss plan during January. We do many things such as meeting dieticians or working with fitness trainer in the hope of reducing weight. Some people achieve success initially but eventually gain the weight lost. This effect of unsustainable change effort is called as “Rubber-band” effect.

Why does this occur?

This situation is very typical within many organisations. Everyone (or rather most) agrees that we need to improve the way we do business in order to survive and thrive in this competitive world.  Agreement on change is primarily because they have their rationale cap on and it does make sense to all our analytical brains at the end of the day.  But the underlying success formula is whether the change appeals to our emotional in addition to our analytical side. Therein lays the key to successful sustainable change. Now, how do we ensure that change appeals to both sides? Here is one approach:

Inside-out Approach

Consider a change that has been successfully implemented within an organisation – it does not matter what is the scale or impact of the change. Now, think what factors have actually contributed to the success of the change. If you do not know how to break it down, one way is to use the following change formula, as shown below:

D   *   V   *   F > R

D: Dissatisfaction with the status-quo. 

V: Vision of the future

F: First Steps

R: Resistance to change.

In other words, what were the success factors that can be aligned to D, V and F and how these factors helped the whole change programme to go past R. Then think how these success factors were embedded into business-as-usual. Utilise the lessons learnt from successful ingrown implementation in past and replicate similar conditions for the new changes. By doing so, you will be able to create an environment that is more conducive to organisation culture. One thing to watch out for is the time relativity. Obviously, one cannot copy the change implemented in 60s into current world without any implications.

For illustration, let us revisit the weight-loss example; consider why you were able to succeed in January. What are all the fundamental reasons for success early-on and how does it align with the above change formula. Now, think how can you replicate it across the year. Weight loss is just a metaphoric example but it can be any change of any size. Implanting such positive success for long-term success is what some pundits call as “Positive Root Cause” analysis.  

With that new terminology, I will leave you to do some “positive root cause analysis” for you and/or your organisation. Ponder over a change that has been hard and tried few times. i.e. you have seen the rubber-band effect over and over again. 

Change Transition Curve and Dark Knight Rises

Many people who are involved in a Change in some shape or form go through a transition curve and can relate their experience to the following figure – This does not have to be a change or transformation programme at work although the curve can be easily absorbed in corporate world. 

Take a minute or two to study the transition curve if you are not familiar with the curve.

Now to the question what does this transition curve have in common to Dark Knight Rises? The connection goes in two parts:

Part 1.          How does change happen in an organisation? What happens to leadership?

Part 2.          Is Leadership during change really a super-hero effort?

I am going to answer both these parts and whenever possible, I will try to compare and contrast the scenes from Dark Knight Rises movie (Apologies to those who have not watched the movie – It is a must watch in my opinion).

Part 1:  How does change happen in an organisation? What happens to leadership?

Who are our leaders in the organisation? There is so much emphasis put on leadership, their vision & values for change. No doubts – They are all important. But all set and done, leaders are also people and so they also follow a similar transition curve as mentioned above. But there is a difference – Change leadership go through the transition curve before the rest of the organisation experiences the same. i.e. for example, they hit the depression mode by the time others feel shocked about the change. Pretty bold statement from my side, but there is a lot of truth. Have a private 1-1 conversation, they will probably agree. The following diagram represents the curve that both leadership and the rest of the organisation go through.

Let us compare this to Dark Knight Rises - This is similar to how Batman gets into denial mode when he believes that he can take on the villain Bane by himself but gets defeated first time around while the rest of Gotham experiences shock phase subsequently during the American football match. It does not stop there. Batman goes to the depression stage but he continues to build up in that dark cell and comes back with renewed energy again before the rest of the city.

Theoretically, the transition/change curve of leadership and the rest of the organisation go in parallel (as shown above) but in the real life, there are two factors that play a big role:

1. The Depth of the curve:  
                                        Over the course of change, the highs and especially the lows might and will vary for the leadership and the rest of the organisation. However, what is important is that the leadership curve stays ahead otherwise; the rest of the organisation will start to have its own doubts.


2. The road to recovery: 
                                        The most sensitive part of the change curve is the depression stage. This is where the positive forces of change should tip over the negative forces. Many of the change programmes falter at this point and impact of such failure affect the future change programmes as well.

Part 2: Is Leadership during change really a super-hero effort?

Yes and No. Yes, you need a strong sponsor to run the whole change show. No, because gone are the days of one person championing the whole organisational change. There needs to be involvement from multiple people to support the whole change. Again, this is similar to how Batman defeats Bane. Even though Batman was a single person, he did not do it all by himself. He had allies – Gordon (the commissioner), Blake (the detective), Selina (Kind of cat woman) and an army of cops.

Not only the allies (read Stakeholders) are needed, they need to sustain throughout the course of the change. Consider the following dialogue from Bane (the villain):

“It doesn't matter who we are... what matters is our plan....”

With “Plan, Plan and more plan” strategy, we are walking a tighter rope and hence there is a chance of losing people deliberately or due to circumstances. Just like how Bane kept losing some of this ally during the course of the movie. People work for people and not because there is a plan to follow.

That is why it becomes important that the change leadership style change in order to cater to different phases and needs of the people undergoing transition.

Up till this point, we are considering that the change curve has different stages and both leadership & the rest of the organisation goes through this stage linearly. Generally, that is not the case. Most of the change programme that I have seen, heard or read has an “Oscillation effect” at some point of time or even at time during multiple phases of change.

“What is an Oscillation Effort?” Let us look at an example of that during the depression stage.

It is normal and expected to feel pronounced level of fear, anxiousness and insecurity during an oscillation effect. This is where the leadership and vision does matter. And, if enough attention is not paid to this situation, the performance will go down drastically and a pessimistic feeling can spread within the corporate culture. This is where the communication is very important. Just like how Batman conveys to Gotham with the bat shaped fire on one of the Gotham’s sky scrapers informing that the Dark Knight is back for rescue and to lead Gotham towards safety.

But again, Dark knight was not alone. Remember, he had his allies which prove to stronger at the end. So change is not a one man show. Here is the summary:

• Organisation and Leadership both go through a transition curve
• Leadership through transition need to take different style and approach
• Transition curve is not linear and there can (will) be bumps along the road

Finally, I leave you with one applicable quote for change from Dark Knight Rises:

“A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a little boy's shoulder to let him know that the world hadn't ended.”

Do Newton’s three laws of motion apply to Change Management?

Have you ever been in or seen a situation where a change has failed to materialise or even worse the change (or transformation) programme has been successfully launched but failed to stick and eventually your organisation reverted to old ways of doing things. If your answer is “oh yes” or you are gently nodding your head or recollecting that “one” project, you know what I am talking about.

Still wondering what Newton’s 3 laws of motion doing here, read further:

Law 1:

Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

All organisations and its people are happy to do the same thing that has brought the organisation success in the past and therefore want to maintain the status quo.  i.e. “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”. However, that is not true in the current world that we live in. Here is where Newton’s first law comes into picture. There are always forces that are constantly applied to any organisation. External forces such as changes to industry, new players, new market or even a new CEO, bring about change(s). These are the triggers or the reasons for the change management.

These forces should be strong enough to propel changes through completely and successfully. Simply, it should be strong enough to do 2 things – one, move the people out of status quo and two, see through the change fruitfully. Otherwise, things will not just revert to the “old ways” but also affect any future change programmes. How? Returning to old ways and the pace at which the changes are rolled back creates a strong impression within the culture of the organisation and it will take a lot more effort to move the organisation away from its steady state of motion.

Law2:

The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors (as indicated by their symbols being displayed in slant bold font); in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.

After all, we want to make change successful and we do need to build momentum. I did mention above that, the forces should be strong enough to finish the marathon called Change. There are two chief requirements for a force though.

1. Greater the size, the stronger the force is required.  Consider the diagram; there are two components in play here: The sheer size of the change (rock that is pushed up) and the environment (hill) in which the change is carried out and which plays a big part too in change acceleration.  Although I have used this diagram to show a case, this is not representative of all cases.  The situation could vary anywhere from moving small stone in a flat surface to even massive stone up a big mountain.


2. Acceleration in right direction. To push the rock up the hill, the force or the effort to make the change happen depends on where the effort is applied. Lot of effort will be wasted if the effort is not directly against the lines of gravitation.  Many a times, knowing where the gravitation force is a tough one. And, this is where we need the right people, tools and skills. This gravitation in change management dictionary is called as resistance and that takes us into the next law.

Law 3:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

As we move along with the change programme, there is always resistance.  The change equation is given by:

D   *   V   *   F  > R

D: Dissatisfaction with the status-quo.  Why I law is applied.

V: Vision of the future

F: First Steps

R: Resistance to change.

While the first steps of the change management prepare the organisation for the change (Change Readiness assessment and factors that influence the success of change), resistance goes beyond the first stage of change management and that is why Newton’s III law is very true. Resistance is not bad. Consider any sports – A player or team has to elevate the level of its/their own game when pitted against a worthy opponent. In the same way, proponents of change should look to use the opportunity provided by resistance to increase the penetration of change. By doing that, there is a twofold advantage: First, change is accepted more widely and two, more importantly resistance is reduced or eliminated. It is better to eliminate resistance otherwise, it can modify the balance of change equation mentioned above to topple the change effort. Once the change effort starts to disintegrate, it is difficult to stop that chain reaction. i.e. equivalent of a rock rolling down the hill.

Now let us put all of these things together. While it is easy to break change management into three parts and analyse, things are not so easy in reality.  Why it is so complex might be the question? It is because of the fact that three laws are happening at the same time and organisations these days are running a few transformation programmes simultaneously, which complicates this problem further.  

Finally, I leave you with one line from Charles Kettering:

“The world hates change but that is the only thing that has brought progress.”

Why Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is very relevant

Is BPR a thing of past? Does it have any value in the highly globalised world of today? Yes, I strongly believe that BPR is all more essential for today’s businesses. There are three significant factors warranting the need for BPR:

1. Evolution of Technology:

   Technology continues to undergo changes at rapid pace. The evolution of cloud computing, virtualisation and on-demand computing are changing the way businesses operate. Technology, to be more specific IT, has gained prominence in CEO’s agenda. Organisations have been investing a lot in replacing the old technologies with the new ones and expect a giant leap in its progress.  There are couple of main reasons behind this change:

• To upend how the business is done

• To develop insights using information gathered

The overarching question, at least from CFO’s point of view, is whether new technology delivers the ROI promised. Can these innovations in technology re-engineer the way the operations of the businesses? There are few caveats here. For one, it can help only in small stepped change if the organisations are just looking for replacement, albeit a better version.

These IT products, both off the shelf and custom, can help in facilitating and managing the processes.  However, in order to get the synergy between the business process and technology, the underlying business processes on which IT is build need a serious look.  This is where BPR is all more essential. BPR focuses not just on governance i.e. managing the process but also on the dynamics of the whole process including the collaboration between business units, hand-offs between core and non-core business processes.


2. Shared Services Phenomena:

   Shared services concept has gained an overwhelming presence in the last decade or so. However, the problem begins post the first phase deployment of shared services. Organisations try hard but struggle to optimise and refine the process further. As a result, the initial business justification for the Shared services operating model becomes weak. One of the fundamental reasons for such roadblock is because Shared Services are deployed using a push strategy. i.e. driven top-down and with that follows an opposite, if not equal, resistance from bottom-up. Using BPR as tool, the Shares services leader can engage the stakeholder to address the drivers instead of resistors and thereby achieving:

•  Increased buy-in from all departments

• Valuable inputs from users of processes

Once the buy-in from stakeholders is obtained, the BPR leaders can work collaboratively working with departments to develop the mindset towards standardisation of the processes. Post which, they can apply divide, conquer and consolidate methodology to target each function and plug in the best practices from Shared services seamlessly. By breaking down by functionality and diving deep within every process, BPR leaders along with key stakeholders can move the shared services model towards operational excellence. Through operational excellence, then organisation can channelise its focus towards providing better customer service.


3. Economic situation:

  With current economic malaise, companies are continuously on the search to identify strategies to re-establish its hold in the market place. The common denominator for such strategy is the core business processes within the organisation.  With employees more receptive to positive change during this time, Organisation can take this opportunity to shake the waste out of its processes and revamp the operating model using BPR.

In my experience, I have heard organisation questioning as to why we need BPR when we follow Total Quality Management (TQM) or Continuous Improvement (CI) techniques. My question is whether that is enough. Whilst TQM and CI have its own benefits, they work on the assumption that the businesses processes are fairly streamlined and strive to provide small improvements.



All these three factors bring a business justification on why BPR is an important leg in current challenging business environment. BPR, done correctly, will not just bring cost reduction and efficiency but also provide transparency and accountability. In addition, BPR can work in tandem with technology to offer right insights about the business operations.

Shared Services Model – Where is it heading towards?

First of all, what is a shared services model? It is the way in which the operating model of the organisation is designed to achieve the correct balance of centralized & decentralized services and policies. In simple terms, Shared Services means providing a standardized and consolidated way of providing services.

In the last couple of decades or so, the prime focus of shared services model was to achieve the process and operational efficiency – reduce costs through economies of scale.  “Pick the early winners” and focus on reducing the cost through continuous improvement and lean techniques have been the go-to strategy for many shared services deployment. But is that enough to sustain? Yes, would be my answer if I were to live in pre-2000 era. But now, the answer is clear “no” because the shared services center is expected to contribute to the strategy goals of the organisation.

Then, where is it heading? In the last few years, truly mature shared services are planning to cash in on two things:

·         Providing Service Excellence:

                                        From my experience, there was always been a prevailing focus on how to move from just process excellence to actually delivering service excellence.  As a consultant, this question that I come across regularly is how to provide the best in class shared services deployment?   The answer lies in the design of the metrics for the shared services model and of course metrics are not the only factor. Performance measurement is a vital part in the implementation of the shared services model.  By using the insights provided by the metrics as an input to Business Process Management (BPM), Organisation can really take the shared services to next level.

Let me give an example.

Once when I was working with a client and we were examining the Time & Expense (T&E) handling process. At that time, some of the metrics seem to project some bad numbers. By analyzing and diving deep into the process, I realized that the consultants of the client have increased their expense claim by multiple folds. The current process was designed to provide the reimbursements of expenses to the consultants from the local office instead of consultant’s home office. Later, to maintain its books, the local office would charge the expense to the home office.

This process worked fine generally but it started to show problems as the consultants had started to travel very frequently. After we identified the problem, we resolved the problem by re-engineering the T&E process. I was able to spot the problem because of the metrics that were in place otherwise I would not be able to solve the problem for my client. In essence, the metrics should provide the right insights and should be revisited periodically to improve the service offering.

·         Take advantage of new technology advancement:

                                                                When it comes to technology, Cloud computing is the block buster kid in the neighborhood. However, there is a grey cloud of thoughts hanging in everyone’s mind. Can cloud add significant value-addition to a mature shared services implementation? To me, cloud is another form of outsourcing.  In last 5 years or so, we have seen an increasing level of traditional outsourcing in shared services implementation.  But with the prevalent adoption of cloud computing, it remains to be seen whether it will contribute to the success of the shared services let alone increase the boundaries of shared services model.  Cloud is here to stay. Will it help in providing the insights required to provide the service excellence is the question that hangs in the minds of many many CEOs?

Unfortunately, we will have wait and watch but do visit my blog regularly to get latest updates about Shared Service Model.

Change Management – Story diffusion techniques

Change, change & more change – The only constant thing in life. In my experience, I have been involved in quite a few change programmes. In order to induce a change into a system, be it small or large organisation, you need to have a solid value proposition and this should be communicated using a powerful story. So, what are the ingredients of such story?


In this regard, I glean over to borrow a framework from Everett M. Rogers to explain my take on introducing change. There are six parameters in total. 


1. Relative Advantage: 
The degree to which a change brings a value-addition to the existing organisation. The relative advantage can include both hard – increased revenues/profits, market share etc. and soft factors – prestige, convenience, brand image.


Many of the smarter planet concepts of IBM creates, or at least wants to create, an appeal to citizens of the world by just showcasing how information can help us take better decisions. 


2. Observability: 
A change should not only make a visible change to the way organisation functions but also provide a clear picture of how tangible the benefits are and how long does it take to realise the benefits? 


This is where lot of IT implementation has taken a hit in the two decades or so. Did they provide enough visible benefits or simply did live up to its hype? Probing question about the benefits realisation are a given. Therefore, it is essential that a change story should not only outline the benefits but also go the extra mile to explain how benefits will be measured. 

3. Triability: 
Can the change be introduced in a phased manner? Can we do a pilot of the change process to see the visible benefits that the “Observability” parameter promised? The answer to these questions partly lies on the business of the organisation. 


If the organisation has similar Strategic Business Units (SBU), then the change can be trialled in one and based on the success, other SBUs can adopt this change. 


4. Compatibility: 
This ingredient runs very closely with Triability factor. Fundamentally issue to answer here is - Compatibility of change with the organisation’s culture, value and business model. 


I was looking at a company, which recently launched a marketing campaign. The initial idea of the campaign was great however; it failed because the back office struggled to keep up. The marketing campaign was just like a swan gliding smoothly in a lake/pond but the back office was the function beneath the surface struggling to keep the float. 

5. Complexity: 
The story should be simple enough but at the same time convey enough for everyone to comprehend. Here is where I think there is a lot to learn and borrow from the movie industry. 


For instance, the movie “Inception” takes the simple idea of stealing ideas and planting ideas but at the same provides enough information to keep the audience.
                                                                                                      
                                                                                

6. Perceived Risk:
We always here about resistance to risk and that is because people perceive a change to have a negative impact on them - Be it their influence, power, self-image or the loss of job itself.


I was doing some work on “The Vodafone Way” programme. It was a massive transformation programme taken to reposition the service offering. During the initial phases of the change planning, there was an increased anxiety about the job security for a certain division of the organisation. Vodafone faced a challenge because it has to refresh part of its labour force. 




Therefore, it took two-step training scheme to cover people with obsolete skills. 
   • Identify and move employee to jobs  created as part of this transformation programme.
   • Develop a coaching plan to transition redundant workforce to jobs in the market. 
Although the risk still existed, Vodafone mitigated the risk by having a transition-training program in its change implementation plan. 


While formulating and packaging such a story, it is not necessary to have equal proportion of all these six parts. Adapt the story based on the business scenario and the target audience. Having said that, here is my recommendation: 


Top-Management: Cover all six parts and give a very balanced story.
Middle-Management: Provide a story that is easy to comprehend – less complex and it should be compatible to their existing skills and to an extent should feed the ego. 
Blue-collar worker: Perceived risk is of the key essence as the employees are scared about the job security.  


Upcoming related article: Stakeholder Engagement and Management