Managing Business Change

Change is constant in business – Who would have predicted the effects of Covid 19 on our workforce, our bottom line, and our mode of working?  Remote working is more common than ever before and many businesses are implementing real changes in their employee structure.

I work directly with companies or individuals to help them make effective changes in their workforce. Whether this is related to its people, processes, or culture. It is important to make sure that the company goals and what it aims to do match its people practices. Many companies need a helping hand to structure change programs. I have experience creating major transformation programs with large UK companies, below is an example.

Change Project examples:

Working with Marks & Spencer

For three years, I worked helping Marks & Spencer with their Supply Chain Logistics Change programme. The project aimed to get all the supply chain providers to work together in ONE TEAM. Their goal was to drive down costs – making a saving of £150m, by accelerating the network change, building the best team, establishing a ‘one-team’ culture and delighting their customers. They wanted to be the world’s leading quality retailer. Providing great products and services to our customers anytime, anywhere. They identified people were the key to improving the way they worked, revolutionising their service, delighting their customers, by having the best team,
and improving our own culture I was engaged at the very beginning of the program and worked with them as a Programme Manager, Executive Management Training and Development Consultant, and more recently on Leadership Coaching.

I worked specifically with their supply chain providers Wincanton, Norbert Dentressangle, and DHL. Bringing 3 companies together to work in synchronisation under a new business model and plan. This involved setting the Vision and Mission for the change programme (workstream 1), creating common values across all of the logistics business which didn’t replace individual company ones but provided a common language and way of measuring customer facing success (workstream 2), Creating ways to collaborate rather than compete across business (workstream 3), Creating a communication plan and toolkit to share programme successes across all businesses - including a new intranet for sharing knowledge and social, career information (workstream 4), working on sharing talent across businesses rather than competing on talent (workstream 5).

One of our most successful interventions was with the shop-floor, and warehouse staff where we used Drama and Insights Discovery to portray real life examples of where issues exist in the workplace around teamwork and support for co-workers. These were underpinned by the values we worked on and created in one of the work-streams. We delivered this to 150 employees over 20 sites in a two year period in 1 day training workshops at a number of sites in the UK by engaging with value champions we identified in the workplace of each company.

We learned that breaking the rules and doing things differently can work but you need to be brave, consistent and have a jolly good internal sponsor who is prepared to take the risk.

Working with B&Q

B & Q were undergoing major cultural change programme in their 3PL Logistics network Omni Channel spearheaded by a Steering Group (approx. 10 people).  At the end of this two-year journey, B&Q wished to see improvements in terms of people’s abilities to do their job and deliver great service to their customers. I facilitated a residential off-site to help them take ownership of the project, understand themselves within the context of it, and plan for the journey ahead. There was time to explore how this project fitted in with the wider Omni Strategy, ‘Team Branston’ and other Cost Saving projects. The focus was on building the team, sharing leadership, learning how to communicate about the project and planning the change journey.  There was time for personal reflection, and socialising.

Methodology:

 As a trained licensed practitioner and distributor of Insights Discovery (A tool that underpins self perception learning is based on Carl Jung’s, psychological theories of personal behaviour) I was able to use that in a series of group exercises that focus on the project and how the team worked together using an easy to follow four colours Earth Green, Fiery Red, Sunshine Yellow and Cool Blue methodology.  Prior to attending the workshop each attendee completed an online Insight Discovery Profile that provided them with their colour preference, which they shared as a team at the offsite, thereby enabling a greater understanding of each other and how they wished to operate. 

The work with the Strategic team then followed by a ‘cascade’ journey down to the next level of managers (approximately 25). By communicating and explaining the change plan and involving the next level of management in the project they were able to take ownership of some of the aspects of the project. This included how to resource, communicate, and work on in detail some of the actions that come out of the earlier Steering Group.   

My experience has shown me that in order to get real traction on a project like this you need to throw, people resources and time at it. Things don’t get done without it. The role of the steering group is to steer the project and cascade the project down the organisation. This is much better done by engaging these managers in it in a meaningful and creative way,  by giving them the time and space to experience the change journey for themselves. Once this has been obtained then you can ask for their commitment and time often over and above their day jobs, to deliver what is required. Without this and by just relying on communication alone the project is unlikely to gain as much momentum.