Overcoming the barriers to change...

The need for change

There are numerous books and famous speeches on the subject of change and the need to change is universally recognised as essential, if ‘things’ are to improve. To quote Albert Einstein, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So why is change so difficult to achieve; and what are the barriers?

The barriers to change

The barriers to change are numerous and are open to never-ending debate; however, it is widely agreed that these are the headline issues:

1.    Getting the people involved to agree what the problem / issue is, and that is important enough to warrant action and investment, as we often live with things because they are not seen as serious enough to justify changing.

2.    Agreeing the actions to effect change, who is responsible for making them happen, and the timescales in which they must be implemented.

3.    Ensuring that the actions are implemented and the required change actually happens.

4.    Measuring success, outcomes, benefits and return on investment.

Examples of change in action

Britain’s most successful golfer is one Sir Nick Faldo MBE, who, after failing to win two major titles by ‘collapsing’ in the last round, decided to undertake a complete overhaul of his swing. He enlisted the help of the leading coach David Leadbetter and after thousands of hours on the practice ground and several years of greatly reduced income, Faldo won 6 major golf titles and was No. 1 in the world rankings for 98 weeks; which by any measure was a magnificent achievement and a great return on investment.  What Faldo did were the four things listed above; he recognised his swing was not good enough, worked with a recognised coach to remodel it, set time and money aside to achieve it and as the record books show, reaped the rewards.

In business terms, some readers may be familiar with an IT company called Computacenter.  They started out selling computer hardware in the days when the margins were high and the economy was strong, but over time margins reduced year on year and they recognised the need to change in order to be profitable and survive.  Their business model needed to change to a services led approach, which, although more profitable, involved a more complex, time consuming and expensive sales process. This was not the cheap option, however, profitability has improved year on year since 2005; when a severe profit dip highlighted the need the change. Improved processes and systems plus better trained and more effective people made this change possible. 

Overcoming the barriers to change

Earlier we talked about the barriers to change; agreeing the problem, the actions, the owners, the timescales, then implementing the actions and achieving the desired outcomes, benefits and return on investment. We use a proven methodology known as Get to Great™ to overcome these barriers. Get to Great™ uses the following approach:

1.     Agreeing the problem

Get to Great™ uses a series of facilitated workshops supported by ‘best practice’ competency models.  Each competency model tackles a specific subject, for example sales performance or leadership, and breaks the subject down into about a dozen ‘chunks’, each with five levels of performance, making the diagnosis process simpler and more effective. Using the chosen model, the first part of the workshop allows stakeholders to define their own view of their organisations current and desired performance level, followed by facilitated debate to achieve consensus in each ‘chunk’.  The output is three-fold:

Firstly, a one page prioritised scorecard showing the consensus view of the current and desired performance levels. Secondly, notes that capture the reasons why you are where you are, for use in the second part of the workshop.  Finally, and most importantly, a group of people who agree what the problem is, and what ‘better’ looks like, which is the key to achieving effective and sustainable change. 

2.     Agreeing the actions, the owner and the timescales

The second part of the facilitated workshop focuses on producing action plans for the high priority areas identified in the scorecard, using the ‘reasons why’ to underpin the process of agreeing the actions. Each action plan is captured on one page, clearly defining the actions, owners and timescales. Most importantly, the owners ‘commit’ to the plans in front of their peers, helping to ensure they are implemented.

3.     Ensuring the actions are implemented

Having committed to the action plans, owners will receive support from agreed resources, both internal and external, as well as participating in scheduled monthly calls with the wider team, facilitated by us.  This ensures that any blockers are addressed with minimal delay.

4.     Measuring success, outcomes, benefits and return on investment

As previously mentioned, Get to Great™ uses a series of facilitated workshops to continually benchmarking progress against the competency levels in the chosen model, enabling organisations to measure success, outcomes, benefits and return on investment, typically five-fold or better.

Typical outcomes and benefits

Outcomes and benefits vary from model to model and fall into hard and soft areas.

In the area of sales performance, better processes and systems, and better equipped and trained sales people, led to improved sales effectiveness; typically accelerated revenues, improved margin, higher win rates and a lower cost of sale.  In one customer we were able to reduce time to revenue from seven months to four months with a team of 20 sales people, effectively giving them a 5 man-year improvement.  On the softer side, sales morale improves, as does communication, activity levels and attrition rates.

In terms of Leadership, the impact can be seen in both personal and organisational measures. Leaders can transform their team’s performance through improved decision making, delegation ad personal impact. This is turn generates clearer goals for teams, better staff motivation ad higher productivity. Results include better use of resources, faster project implementation, lower operational costs and better staff retention. All these have significant bottom line impact. A recent client project showed clear return on investment in direct cost savings, cross-selling improvements and higher staff utilisation.

Hopefully this short article will prove to be informative. If you want more help, please contact the author on +44(0)777 929 7401 or via email at chris@gettogreat.co.uk