Making Change Work (*)

What 4000

managers, executives and staff

say that really matters …

(*) This presentation is a simpler version of presentation of professor P.

Verdin and E. Cabocel at Insead Conference September 2011

Key findings from a collaborative study Prof. Paul Verdin Solvay

Business School (ULB) /TiasNimbas (Tilburg) & Eric Cabocel Synthetron

N.V. with J. Celens /Synthetron N.V. & F. Faelli /Bain & Co. Benelux .

More details can be found on “MAKING CHANGE WORK-What

managers, executives and staff tell us that really matters” Review of

Business & Economics -June 2011

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• A lot of theories on how to address and conduct Change

• High failure rate among strategy implementation and change programmes

• What is the feedback from the “(battle)field” ? What is the perspective of change actors and targets?

Preamble

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• an empirical database of 8000 +verbatims created by more than 4000 managers and other employees and supported by 50.000“votes”

• issued from 90 “Synthetron” online discussions

• all addressing issues associated with strategic or organisational change:

• involving 22 companies and some public institutions –mostly large and medium-size multinational companies

Background – The data

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• Synthetron helps managers to listen to relevant stakeholders

via purposeful crowd-sourcing.

• Stakeholders safely discuss with many, from their own PC

online, identifying collaboratively what matters most to them

via 1 hour smart online discussions : Moderated around set of well drafted key questions

Anonymous, written, collaborative conclusive of the public web Conclusive and scalable thanks to evolutionary discussion process

and special table setting Participants feel engaged by the interactivity and co-creation the outcome is a short list of “synthetrons”: those ideas matter

most to participants, ranked by importance, and the long list of all ideas.

obtaining actionable insight from further analysis and benchmarking at different levels as fitted (Synthetron method for content, meaning, lab, buzz

words, benchmarks, 3H, EBC)

• objective is to get deep insights into what really matters from participants’

view to accelerate change and

to engage them as change subjects to collectively share their feedback and co-create the change initiative

About Synthetron

Instant

short list

of

top opinions

& ideas

©

Specific characteristics

not aboutshare of

voice

about share of thoughts

anonymoussafe space

Participants are Discussions are

moderated focused on

key questionsnotpublic

interactive & evolutionary

conclusive

short list of participants’ most

important ideasranked by them

long listall dataIdeas

written

noGroup think

engaging experience of feedback and co-creation

deep insight •what they say, share•what they think, feel important• buzz words & mindset •what divides them

Efficientonline

Outcome is

peers

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Writing online PC

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• Detailed bottom-up analysis

• Subsequent bottom up tagging– key themes

– and consolidation in categories and sub-categories without any pre- established list; but avoiding gaps and overlaps.

• Verbatims also indexed one-by-one along other dimensions

– phase of the change initiative during which the project took place

– orientation of the message: “critical”, “lever” or “barrier”, based on how the comment was worded by participants

– position of the participants within the company

– geographical scope of the project

– type of company: multinational , regional, country-based, public institution

– “weight” of the verbatim: level of support/ consensus it reached among the discussion group; based on participants votes

• A collaborative study with senior consultants form Bain & Co., Synthetron N.V. and Solvay Business School

Our approach

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FINDINGS

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• Change and implementation

seen “from the field” appears

somewhat more complex and

perhaps complicated than what

many top-down “how-to books”

may imply

• we came up with 7 broad

categories and 26 sub-

categories of topics that

matter in creating

change, making it stick, enable

it, accelerate implementation

or overcome hurdles that may

arise,

1. “Whoever said it was easy?- If it looks or sounds simple, get worried”

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......7 broad categories matter

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....26 sub-categories of topics that matter in making change work

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2. “Change is evolutive – “what matters when changes!”

Key drivers of change vary with the programme stage: •

• 7 categories do not matter in equal proportion across the various stages of transformation programmes.

• “Vision”, “Design” as well as “Leadership and Communication” seem critical during the “Design & Plan” stage of change.

• “Process and organization”, while being the number one driver of change at almost every step; becomes pivotal after the initial launch phase . It is also relevant for the Scope stage; quite likely as managers and staff also want to share issues of more operational nature - which prevent the organisation of “functioning” efficiently.

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Ongoing

Implement

Design & Plan

Scope

Relative weight of categories by phase of change initative (sum of reach %)

Vision & Motivation

Design & Plan

Leadership & Communic.

Processes & Org.

People

Values & Behaviour

What's in it for me?

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3. “Change is seen as positive and pragmatic…”

People are not against change • verbatims spontaneously focus more on enablers, and critical success factors across all categories

they are against bad change

0 500 1000 1500 2000

Barrier

Enabler

Critical

Factors vs. Type of Levers (sum of reach %)Vision & Motivation

Implementation Plan

Leadership & Communic.Processes & Org.

People

Values & Behaviour

What's in it for me?

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. “… and barriers are much less important then often thought”

Barriers are most frequently linked to the “Process & Organisation” category and are associated with operational issues such as resources, processes, IT systems, …

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4. Change is Collective we are all in it together

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Frontline Employees

Middle Mgmt

Top/Middle Mgmt

Categories vs. Participants' position (sum of reach %)

Leadership & Communic.

Implementation Plan

Vision & Motivation

Processes & Org.

People

Values & Behaviour

What's in it for me?

In order to be more effective, top management ought to pay attention to what the middle management and frontline employees are concerned about: values and behaviours as well as organisation and processes rather than planning and vision

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5. “Change requires pragmatic answers

–Please give us the means to do it!”

A detailed analysis of the sub-categories “Budget, Instruments, Infrastructure, IT, Tools and

Means” as well as “Processes & Work practices” highlights the importance of more

operational factors:• A major concern is the issue of resources; especially in the elaboration/planning phase of the change.

Another point is the importance of IT/ and other tools as well as work overload.

• With respect to processes, there is a clear and loud request for simplification; in order to allow change to

happen

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……People - as change subjects, not as change objects

people as change objectshard

to change

people as change subjectswill

do the change

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6. Change is about 3 driving vectors simultaniuously

Heart ,Head, Hands

Not yet published

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6. Change is about 3 driving vectorsHeart ,Head, Hands simultaniuously

Conclusions

1. “Whoever said it was easy?- If it looks or sounds simple, get worried”

2. “Change is evolutive– “ What matters when changes”

3. “Change is seen as positive and pragmatic…- People are against bad change”

4. “Change is Collective -We are all in it together

5. “Change requires pragmatic answers –Please give us the means to do it!”

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Want to know more?Contact us

eric.cabocel@synthetron.com or Joanne.celens@synthetron.comFor more international contacts : www.synthetron.com