The Agencia Change Blog has published a number of posts about taking and enabling action from different perspectives. In Navigating Change Through Storytelling we advocate that compelling narratives inspire action. In Self-Limiting Beliefs and Change: what’s holding you back? we discuss how the limits we place on our thinking can hold us back from taking positive action. In Rainmakers and change resistance: The Sustainability Honey Trap we presented a case study about turning around the last stand of resistance into a platform for taking action to sustain change.
Over four decades, Dr. Kotter observed countless leaders and organisations as they were trying to transform or execute their change strategies. He identified and extracted the common success factors and documented them as the 8 Steps for Leading Change. Since the introduction of the 8 Steps, Dr. Kotter expanded his focus with the founding of the firm, Kotter. Together with the firm, he evolved the linear 8 Steps from his book Leading Change to the 8 Accelerators outlined in his and his company's later books. The 8 Accelerators are now shown not in a linear, but a circular model.
The circular nature of the model allows for iteration, which I believe acknowledges two important aspects of change. Firstly that change is constant. Just as you wrap up delivering a change, you're on to the next one; and secondly that we have full permission to iterate our approaches to allow for the human side of dealing with change.
Today's War Story is about enabling action by removing barriers to change.
From the website https://www.kotterinc.com/methodology.
Enabling action by removing barriers involves identifying and eliminating obstacles that might hinder organisational change generally, and the change you're implementing specifically. These barriers can include bureaucracy, resistance, ineffective internal systems, or cultural challenges. By clearing the way for people to innovate and work better across silos, organisations can generate impact quickly and facilitate progress toward their vision. Essentially, it’s about creating an environment where action can happen smoothly and efficiently.
Working with a fast-moving consumer goods company (FMCG), I had been tasked with sweeping up behind some outsourcing changes that were not necessarily showing the benefits expected. The financial business partners had been relied on heavily by the Sales Department and were over-involved in sales processes. This meant they were not just coordinating the financial inputs required to cost and verify deals, but were coordinating overall sales approvals, booking appointments, creating proposal presentations and drafting contract wording.
Instead of this, deal coordination was being handed back to sales. Financial preparation, analysis and contract drafting was being overseen by business partners with the detailed work being outsourced.
My role in the tidy-up was to ensure good change management and embedment of the new roles and responsibilities. But the sales teams felt they didn't have the commercial acumen to complete presentations and contract wording which is why they'd relied so heavily on the finance team. And the finance team didn't feel comfortable telling sales what their processes should be. As a result, neither team had mapped out what the new interaction points would look like. They had no way to implement the future state process, and were instead hoping that system changes would prompt the right interactions to occur.
I set about to remove the obstacles. First I asked Sales Leaders what they needed to know from Finance to create workable processes. I gained the support of Sales leadership to ensure the agreements made would be duly implemented.
Next I worked with with Finance to map out a high-level process that showed Sales the decisions they needed to make: as Finance was handing over to sales, they were in the best position to know where the process worked and where it didn't. Next I created a checklist of the key deliverables required to drive the realisation of benefits from the process changes. Finally, we conducted a series of workshops and meetings to get agreement to each process step, and each decision that was needed by both teams. In these meetings we explained to Sales teams why the process was changing, and why they needed to define their own process.
Both teams participated in the workshops and took the actions they agreed to take. Just when it seemed that inter-team communication and workshopping had removed all the barriers to determining an effective process, we tested our effectiveness. I asked the Sales team what communication tools they had developed to share the new process with the Sales Department.
As there was nothing planned, I removed further barriers by enabling action. I pulled together project leads from Sales, Finance and the internal change management team. We met for a number of sessions in which I lead the design and development of 5 infographics. These graphics explained the new processes and all the inter-team touch points for the 5 categories of deals.
During these discussions more details were uncovered that, if not resolved, would have caused the process agreements to fail. These included details such as incorporating new financial delegations and decision making responsibilities. Putting these details into infographic format enabled the teams to think through their process, while also enabling leadership in both Sales and Finance to easily grasp the changes they were agreeing to. We next needed executive sign-off for responsibilities up to CEO level, which we achieved using the infographics to explain the complex changes simply.
The go-live date was being driven by a few things, one of them the development of the supporting system. The internal change management team put together an engagement and communication plan based off our workshop timeline and deliverables list. I coordinated with the system build team, and the Sales and Finance leaders followed the engagement plans to ready their teams. Immediately following go-live, deals were being entered into the new system using the new process and decision-making as agreed.
Conclusion on Kotter's Step: Enable Action by Removing Barriers
As in most change management success stories, broad engagement, teamwork, understanding the business and a willingness to get hands dirty were key success factors in delivering a successful change. Enabling people to take action by removing barriers in this case meant getting everyone to the table to work through challenges step-by-step as they arose.
Working on the goal together, encouraging teamwork and taking an action-oriented approach was what made the new process work.
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