Don’t Just Talk Transformation

Our process starts by clearly defining where the organization needs to go, in terms that are meaningful and observable, including: a) your desired commercial and cultural outcomes, b) the behaviors that must be extinguished or adopted, and by whom, to produce those outcomes, and c) the conditions that also must be changed in the process.

However, this isn’t a typical “discovery” phase: it’s faster and far more collaborative. Our goal isn’t to “map” the entire organization as this would waste precious time and likely give us a false sense of the organization, instead our goal in this phase is to develop a working hypothesis for the transformation and just enough political momentum to begin testing and learning from how the organization truly responds to change.

Once we have a set of working hypotheses for the change and transformation, we bring together the necessary internal stakeholders to own and champion the first changes to the organization. For many clients, this looks like a deeply engaging offsite with top executives, people leaders, rising stars, and cultural torchbearers to reflect on the need for the work ahead, generate ideas for behavioral intervention, and ultimately leave with buy-in and political momentum for what’s to come.

In a matter of weeks, our process begins to test changes to your organization, both to generate early momentum and to uncover insights about the organization and its capacity to change. These “scout interventions” lead the way in the transformation and offer intelligence back about what’s to come in the broader effort.

Our process is so effective because it acknowledges two types of organizational change, each requiring a unique approach. We distinguish these as “Fail-Safe” versus “Safe-to-Fail” changes.

Fail-Safe: Companies need to get changes like reorgs, mergers, leadership transitions, and large tech implementations mostly right the first try because they affect the entire organization and are painful to reverse. So while no change can be guaranteed, these interventions need to be as “fail-safe” as possible. Our approach to these changes borrows the best ideas from many different traditional change management models to help you weigh your options against your desired outcomes and then plan effectively.

Safe-to-fail: Other changes—new processes, tool implementations, cultural rituals—actually benefit from rapid iteration, and can be reversed without much cost or harm. These interventions should be designed as “safe-to-fail,” where rapid experimentation and constant iteration lead to better solutions, all without causing irreparable harm. Our approach to these changes borrows from agile methodologies (without the dogma), and enlists cross-functional teams of your people to test their ideas together, pursue clear and measurable outcomes, and then work with leaders to scale successful solutions to the rest of the organization. During this Scout phase, we tend to prioritize safe-to-fail changes first so that we can learn more about the organization quickly, without risking too much in the process.

Once our initial interventions have begun to demonstrate value and traction in the organization, we then focus on how to scale successful ideas to new areas of the organization and bring more teams into the change program. For most clients, this phase is when change is most dramatically felt—not just because of the amount of change, but because of the speed of changes being made now that others are empowered to own making the changes.

In this phase, we respond to early signs of change resistance, either by adjusting each intervention or modifying the program as a whole.

As we move to new teams and focus on new problems, we also launch more safe-to-fail interventions. Moreover, we likely embark on the most complicated fail-safe changes (like a reorg) at this stage in the program, because of the extensive understanding that we now have about the organization and its people.

In addition to ongoing measurement, we also conduct an audit to assess the effectiveness of the overall program.

Finally, our process ends when we’ve successfully trained and coached your staff well enough to make us irrelevant. For some clients, this looks like leaving behind a Community of Practice, an informal network of internal change agents who continue to shepherd the program and build their craft of change together. Other clients might prefer a more formal Center of Excellence approach where we work with either an already-dedicated team or help establish one that will marshal resources and attention toward change and transformation well into the future. Some clients prefer a blend of the two approaches. Regardless, our ultimate goal is the same: for the organization to effectively make change without the need for outside consultants like us.