Changing change management
Research tells
us that most change efforts fail. Yet change methodologies are stuck in a
predigital era. It’s high time to start catching up.
Change management as it is traditionally applied is
outdated. We know, for example, that 70 percent of change programs fail to
achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management
support. We also know that when people are truly invested in change it is 30
percent more likely to stick. While companies have been obsessing about how to
use digital to improve their customer-facing businesses, the application of
digital tools to promote and accelerate internal change has received far less
scrutiny. However, applying new digital tools can make change more
meaningful—and durable—both for the individuals who are experiencing it and for
those who are implementing it.
The advent of digital change tools comes at
just the right time. Organizations today must simultaneously deliver rapid
results and sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive environment. They
are being forced to adapt and change to an unprecedented degree: leaders have
to make decisions more quickly; managers have to react more rapidly to
opportunities and threats; employees on the front line have to be more flexible
and collaborative. Mastering the art of changing quickly is now a critical
competitive advantage.
For many organizations, a five-year strategic
plan—or even a three-year one—is a thing of the past. Organizations that once enjoyed
the luxury of time to test and roll out new initiatives must now do so in a
compressed period while competing with tens or hundreds of existing (and often
incomplete) initiatives. In this dynamic and fast-paced environment,
competitive advantage will accrue to companies with the ability to set new
priorities and implement new processes quicker than their rivals.
The power of digital to
drive change
Large companies are increasingly engaged in
multiple simultaneous change programs, often involving scores of people
across numerous geographies. While traditional workshops and training courses
have their place, they are not effective at scale and are slow moving.
B2C companies have unlocked powerful digital
tools to enhance the customer journey and shift consumer behavior.
Wearable technology, adaptive interfaces, and integration into social platforms
are all areas where B2C companies have innovated to make change more personal
and responsive. Some of these same digital tools and techniques can be applied
with great effectiveness to change-management techniques within an
organization. Digital dashboards and personalized messages, for example, can
build faster, more effective support for new behaviors or processes in
environments where management capacity to engage deeply and frequently with
every employee is constrained by time and geography.
Digitizing five areas in particular can help
make internal change efforts more effective and enduring.
1. Provide
just-in-time feedback
The best feedback processes are designed to
offer the right information when the recipient can actually act on it.
Just-in-time feedback gives recipients the opportunity to make adjustments to
their behavior and to witness the effects of these adjustments on performance.
Consider the experience of a beverage company
experiencing sustained share losses and stagnant market growth in a highly
competitive market in Africa. The challenge was to motivate 1,000-plus sales
representatives to sell with greater urgency and effectiveness. A simple SMS
message system was implemented to keep the widely distributed sales reps, often
on the road for weeks at a time, plugged into the organization. Each rep
received two to three daily SMS messages with personalized performance
information, along with customer and market insights. For example, one message
might offer feedback on which outlets had placed orders below target; another
would alert the rep to a situation that indicated a need for increased orders,
such as special events or popular brands that were trending in the area. Within
days of implementing the system, cross-selling and upselling rates increased to
more than 50 percent from 4 percent, and within the first year, the solution
delivered a $25 million increase in gross margin, which helped to swing a 1.5
percent market-share loss into a 1 percent gain.
2. Personalize the
experience
Personalization is about filtering information
in a way that is uniquely relevant to the user and showing each individual’s
role in and contribution to a greater group goal. An easy-to-use system can be
an effective motivator and engender positive peer pressure.
This worked brilliantly for a rail yard
looking to reduce the idle time of its engines and cars by up to 10 percent. It
implemented a system that presented only the most relevant information to each
worker at that moment, such as details on the status of a train under that
worker’s supervision, the precise whereabouts of each of the trains in the
yard, or alerts indicating which train to work on. Providing such specific and
relevant information helped workers clarify priorities, increase
accountability, and reduce delays.
3. Sidestep hierarchy
Creating direct connections among people
across the organization allows them to sidestep cumbersome hierarchal protocols
and shorten the time it takes to get things done. It also fosters more direct
and instant connections that allow employees to share important information,
find answers quickly, and get help and advice from people they trust.
In the rail-yard example, a new digital
communications platform was introduced to connect relevant parties right away,
bypassing middlemen and ensuring that issues get resolved quickly and
efficiently. For example, if the person in charge of the rail yard has a
question about the status of an incoming train, he or she need only log into
the system and tap the train icon to pose the question directly to the
individuals working on that train. Previously, all calls and queries had to be
routed through a central source. This ability to bridge organizational divides
is a core advantage in increasing agility, collaboration, and effectiveness.
4. Build empathy,
community, and shared purpose
In increasingly global
organizations, communities involved in change efforts are often physically
distant from one another. Providing an outlet for colleagues to share and see
all the information related to a task, including progress updates and informal
commentary, can create an important esprit de corps.
Specific tools are necessary to achieve this
level of connectivity and commitment. Those that we have seen work well include
shared dashboards, visualizations of activity across the team, “gamification”
to bolster competition, and online forums where people can easily speak to one
another (for example, linking a Twitter-like feed to a work flow or creating
forums tied to leaderboards so people can easily discuss how to move up in the
rankings).
This approach worked particularly well with a
leading global bank aiming to reduce critical job vacancies. The sourcing team
made the HR process a shared experience, showing all stakeholders the
end-to-end view—dashboards identifying vacancies; hiring requisitions made and
approved; candidates identified, tested, and interviewed; offers made and
accepted; and hire letters issued. This transparency and openness built a
shared commitment to getting results, a greater willingness to deliver on one’s
own step in the process, and a greater willingness to help one another beyond
functional boundaries.
5. Demonstrate
progress
Organizational change is like turning a ship:
the people at the front can see the change but the people at the back may not
notice for a while. Digital change tools are helpful in this case to
communicate progress so that people can see what is happening in real time.
More sophisticated tools can also show individual contributions toward the
common goal. We have seen how this type of communication makes the change feel
more urgent and real, which in turn creates momentum that can help push an
organization to a tipping point where a new way of doing things becomes the way
things are done.
Digital tools and platforms, if correctly
applied, offer a powerful new way to accelerate and amplify the ability of an
organization to change. However, let’s be clear: the tool should not drive the
solution. Each company should have a clear view of the new behavior it wants to
reinforce and find a digital solution to support it. The best solutions are
tightly focused on a specific task and are rolled out only after successful
pilots are completed. The chances of success increase when management actively
encourages feedback from users and incorporates it to give them a sense of
ownership in the process.
July 2015 | byBoris Ewenstein,
Wesley Smith, and Ashvin Sologar
http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/Changing_change_management?cid=digital-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1507
No comments:
Post a Comment