change

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. 

In today’s complex, interconnected and rapidly changing environment, it is more important than ever that organisations can respond quickly whilst still achieving efficiencies of scale. A key enabler of this is having the right organisational design, and recognising that the design of yesterday (designed for efficiency and assuming predictable patterns) will no longer work in the digital age, where agility and speed of response is key.

Matrix working – please click to enlarge the image

Uber or Black Cab – Which is Your HR Function?

I’ve used Uber a few times, but have to say I’ve been a Black Cab kind of girl for years and there is something familiar about them that makes me stick with them.

Yesterday though I started to think differently.  My last few trips to London have involved a Cab ride, none of the drivers have known where to go and the cost, compared to what an Uber would have been almost double the cost and the card machines haven’t been working so cash has been paid, one driver even dropping me at a cash machine.

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to work at a summer camp you’ll know it’s one of the best “jobs” you’ll ever have. I use the word job in inverted commas intentionally because more often than not it doesn’t feel like work at all. There are deep and meaningful conversations with people who start to feel more like your family than your colleagues. There is the cold embrace of a dip in the lake after a late afternoon game of capture the flag that always gets a little too intense. There’s the jaw-ache you get after laughing too hard for too long at some silly in-joke.

Change has fast become the one constant in businesses today, but can there be a point when too much change is no longer good for business?

If the changes aren’t fully considered, fully implemented and the people are not engaged with the process, then yes.

In 2013 a large London based organisation commenced a two-year transformation programme looking to change everything from their systems, processes, policies, procedures, structures, IT infrastructure and nationwide office locations.

We are far better at planning for the short-term than we are for the long-term.

Think about when you get in the car. If you don’t know where you are going, you tap in the details to a sat-nav system to tell you the route. You might have an advanced system that updates itself to find quicker routes if there is traffic.

You probably know what you’re doing this weekend and maybe even the weekend after. You might even have planned your summer holiday.

Over the last few months' we’ve seen the likes of retailers such as NEXT and Tesco scale back their growing empires.  Where they had started to sell everything to everyone online and in stores, the decline in the retail sector has seen a significant change.  Store closures, redundancies and a change in the goods being sold seem to be just the start of the changes being implemented in retail.

Companies who have always been slightly more niche and specialist such as Aspinal, instead of a decline in sales and store closures, are on an incredible journey of growth.

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

“…in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

The famous quote by Benjamin Franklin has never been truer than today.

As political certainties are turned upside down and surprises come at us from all angles, organisations could add another rare certainty: CHANGE. And change is, err – changing.

Of course, business has always known that change is inevitable. But in the past, most of it happened over time.