Category Change Management

While it has become a necessity for many, remote working will not be ideal for everyone. Success can be challenging and complex even for the most seasoned and experienced employees and managers. The leadership challenges associated with such a wholesale and abrupt shift are numerous. Since we published our article about remote working last week, we received a number of questions about several of these implications: 

• Which employees and/or roles will remote working hinder success for? Will remote workers have the ability to create the right environments for themselves?
• How will they handle daily distractions at home? For example, as nice as it is to spend time at home with small children, how do you explain to them that it is work time when you’re at home all day?
• How can managers establish supportive work environments and ensure effectiveness and relevance in employee performance?
• How to keep teams together when every team member is sitting at home feeling lonely and/or scared, or being surrounded by family doing family business?

These questions highlight that despite the advancement in technology, moving away from habitual and traditional work environments hasn’t necessarily been easy. Some remote workers can feel isolated and experience difficulty in managing time. And productivity levels can be a contentious discussion. These issues are now compounded by the distressful nature of the COVID19 health crisis and the associated economic crisis. It can be near impossible for any of us to stay focused on task for a full workday.

But what does it take to keep your team’s or organization’s eyes on the prize during this crisis? It actually starts with you, the leader! What are you doing to transform your approach to leadership during these testing times? For example, are you taking full advantage of technology to serve your people and your business? This is the time for you and your leadership team to develop and/or leverage your online forums for building and strengthening your virtual teams in different ways.

Of course, sharing business updates, meeting outcomes, and employee business and personal achievements can be a great opportunity to improve engagement. And scheduled virtual check-ins may now be more critical than regular face-to-face meetings in the not so distant past.

But more importantly, leaders could benefit from some extra creativity in assigning performance objectives and projects to pairs and teams rather than individuals to ensure continuous team engagement. Also, technology-enabled feedback systems have now become much more important than ever for ensuring engagement and an instantaneous flow of information about how the employee and client experiences are evolving during the crisis.

The fast unfolding health crisis is making figuring out remote working solutions a necessity, almost for all but essential businesses and business functions. While this decision is already made for many leaders already, there are other decisions to ponder upon:

1. The frequency of communication from/with CEOs, executives, and managers to solicit input on business decisions, or to just talk about non-work-related matters
2. The frequency and balance of formal and informal team and one-on-one communication
3. Identifying and empowering employees and roles that could even be much more successful in solitude
4. Ways to adjust performance management systems to the new reality and develop, prioritize and measure team-level objectives
5. Professional development resources to support managers and employees with the new challenges related to self-discipline, clarity of expectations, productive virtual team dynamics, and motivation during a time of collective hardship

The world is changing very quickly as the crisis unfolds, and that comes with opportunities to be creative. Perhaps with this crisis companies will exhibit a sense of urgency to build more on of the use of technology to their advantage. Be strategic with the crucial roles that will jeopardize the smooth flow of business. It is imperative that this is given immediate attention. There is no time like now.

The coronavirus pandemic is a harsh reminder that the world is changing more rapidly than we can comprehend. And the challenge to learn how to live, work, and do business differently cannot be overestimated. But the change presents real opportunities for some of us: those who have embraced the very different nature and pace of the shifts happening beneath us. Only those will be able to find out what works and how we can capitalize on the opportunities to make transformational improvements in our lives, businesses, and our larger environment.

Declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday, the coronavirus outbreak and the ensuing economic downturn or crisis are now compelling us to find new means for living, working, and running businesses. Schools, universities, and religious institutions are all now talking about going virtual. We believe that leaders who succeed at planning and implementing effective remote working programs will have a better chance at not only surviving but succeeding. While remote working is not perfectly right for every role and every organization, leveraging technology that’s been available for some time to help human beings and businesses survive is not just optional now. Every leader will have to address what this means for their organization or their team. The real winners are those who have been in the middle of this transformation for some time and are finding it more straightforward to adjust to the health and economic crises responsibly. Followers who have accepted the reality of change and are considering how to reshape work and the workforce could have good chances at succeeding.

In addition to business continuity and productivity goals, leaders and organizations now have an opportunity to meet some of their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals in new and creative ways. Accommodating remote work imperatives for employees is a means to demonstrate commitment not only to their health and safety but also to the health and safety of the larger community. As we have all learned, carriers can be asymptomatic. And social distancing has now been proven in China as a successful measure to slow down the trend of growth in new coronavirus cases.

Over and above the ongoing global force majeure of coronavirus outbreak, developing the ability within your organization to run virtually when necessary is helpful in many ways:

Working remotely can be a huge cost benefit for companies. Huge savings involve expenses associated with locating and leasing/buying the ideal physical location, purchasing, rental and maintenance. That money can now be allocated to marketing, additional staff benefits, to a cause supported by the company, and/or to improve overall finances. It can also be used to expand the workforce to undertake new initiatives.  The company would also spend less on overhead, and other menial unnecessary expenses which can add up. Also, introducing the remote working culture make organizations and employees better able to save on business travel as they learn how to productively run and participate in virtual meetings and workgroups. These are just some of the cost benefits that can make it attractive to begin the process of encouraging a remote workforce.

We shouldn’t always allow situations to force us into thinking of what would attract some of the best employees, however this more often than not is the case. Otherwise, they will probably end up with competitors who are willing to offer that flexibility. There is a case for working remotely. There are individuals who get more done working from home. Most people who work remotely will have more control as to how time is utilized, display a higher level of commitment, dedication and accountability because they are unsupervised and deadlines become even more important. Businesses who offer remote work opportunities also have a good chance of attracting some of the best candidates because they now have a much larger and more diverse pool to choose from. Attracting a diverse workforce is another key ESG objective.

Also, being able to work from home gives parents with young children the chance to spend more time and flexibility for raising their children just as they would like to. It may even become very convenient for parents to home school their children. Parents who feel confident that their children are safe will be more productive. Trust will be built and diversity and inclusion will be served, meeting ESG aspirations in yet another way. Also, when people have a good work-life balance there is a good chance that you have an employee for the long haul, higher work morale, less absenteeism, an opportunity to engage with other remote workers around the world which helps in expanding their knowledge at perhaps no cost to the employer. Working remotely reduces the pain and time spent on long commutes and unpredictable travel nightmares.

As we experience this new health and economic challenge, businesses will benefit from being intentional in their thinking and staying prepared for testing times. In cases of highly contagious diseases the work will still go on with less disruption unlike the panic and fear that can be caused working together in a huge office space or eventually not being able to work for long time periods. Forward thinking companies must spend more time exploring the reality of the constant changes taking place in the world and the workforce, and the effectiveness, growth and cost savings that come with working remotely. However, going virtual doesn’t come without personnel and operational challenges which we will soon discuss in another article.

In my previous post, I discussed some typical leadership pitfalls that derail digital transformations. I got some good feedback that it resonated with many who’d been involved in or leading such transformations. There seems to be some good consensus around the danger of neglecting the cultural and commercial implications of digital transformations and treating them like isolated technology initiatives. Also in follow up conversations, some common themes began to emerge around strategic approaches that actually worked. Collective experiences suggest that a combination of the top four strategies discussed below establishes a solid foundation for the successful integration of digital technology.

Communication: simplify the message

I actually heard this repeatedly from technology heads who felt that their teams and larger organizations would benefit immensely from simplified top leadership communication. These high-level messages need to articulate the rationale behind the transformation and what to expect during the journey:

• What are the goals of integrating new digital technologies and going through an organization-wide transformation? How is this going to affect the bottom line, operations, or safety? Is the organization being reactive or proactive considering where clients and competitors are on their transformation journeys?
• Which teams and functions are responsible for figuring out how to get there? The answer- which typically requires some investigation- need not include the fancy solutions that some executives tend to promote prematurely: the Internet of Things (IOT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, Analytics, the Cloud, etc.
• What is expected from other functions to support the planning and execution of the transformation? Will some roles and responsibilities change during or after the transformation? What exciting growth opportunities does this transformation present for people and teams?

Execution: demonstrate success

Securing stakeholder buy-in and commitment can be extremely challenging in ways that slow down transformations. Anticipating and mitigating this and other risks are not necessarily straightforward. One proven strategy is to start with small demonstration projects with direct commercial or efficiency impacts. Successes can then be scaled up and failures can be avoided. Organizations that use this strategy typically scope out and implements individual projects to achieve very specific digital transformation goals similar to the following:

• Improving efficiencies in data gathering, manipulation, and analytics to liberate resources for higher value activities;
• Raising safety standards or overall quality levels across operations;
• Extracting better insight from employee and candidate data to inform HR strategies;
• Enhancing existing products or launching new innovative offerings; or
• Gaining additional intelligence on clients and competitors to support product development, and sales and marketing efforts.

Change management: engage the wider business

This is another strategic imperative that technology and data analytics team leaders are very big on. Their tech-savvy teams require so much support on understanding and transforming the employee and client experiences, which are what it all eventually comes down to. Therefore, it is critical that teams that are responsible for operations or interact with clients are sold on the value of the transformation and are partners in making it happen.

Effective engagement starts from the top and very early in the journey. It requires proactive communication and genuine solicitation of input related to the transformation. Otherwise, most employees will continue in a business-as-usual manner expecting some new invention to drop on their desks one day or maybe they won’t even have faith it will! Ineffective stakeholder engagement can easily make the latter a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Personnel: attract, develop, and retain hybrid talent

The scary pace of technological advancement is removing geographic and functional barriers much faster than we are able to adapt to it. Understanding and addressing this challenge is not only a strategy for success but also a necessity. Digital transformations involve changing the employee experience, or the way employees carry their jobs and interact with each other and with clients. They may also involve changing the client experience through enhanced and new products and services or more innovative methods of delivery and client interaction.

This requires not only solid understanding of legacy processes but also the imagination to visualize how these experiences would change. The latter calls for familiarity with the available technological options, what they can deliver, and how they can change employee and/or client experiences. Organizations will therefore benefit from the ability to attract, develop, and retain employees with hybrid skill sets that allow them to consider the operational, commercial, and technological aspects of the transformation. Defining what the ultimate hybrid skill sets and roles look like takes some work, but it is a clear necessity.

We are still in the middle of an overwhelming digital transition, which means there is still so much to learn about how organizations can make digital transformations successful. But our collective experiences are increasingly offering significant input on strategic approaches that work. What’s interesting about the strategies discussed here is that they are probably critical for orchestrating and executing any major transformation- digital or not!

Developing and implementing effective digital transformation strategies is becoming more and more imperative not only for growth but also for survival in many industries. If your organization does not become capable of fully leveraging the opportunities offered by new data technologies in innovative ways, your competitors will. Also, new competitors will emerge with the ability to readily adopt new technologies. Where relevant, this is being largely realized by executives who are making digital transformation strategies a corporate priority. However, to what extent are their approaches helpful or actually detrimental to the progress of their organizations?

Throughout my experience in the energy industry, which is pretty data intensive, I have noticed that the technology-driven transformations can easily be derailed by the same strategies that aim to support them. Some of these pitfalls can be more tragic than others of course but some combination of two or more typically collide to reinforce the natural resistance to change. Here the top four I’ve observed over the years:

• Communicating the digital transformation as an end rather than a means. Introducing digital transformations as a vision for the future can actually be pretty confusing. A digital transformation strategy is actually a means to develop the ability to quickly leverage state-of-the-art data technologies to realize an already well articulated commercial vision. Through time, this is becoming more of a must-have than a differentiator. Clarifying the specific objectives of the transformation is the first step towards success. Are the new technologies and the data they avail going to offer more insight into clients and/or competitors? Are they going to improve the quality of the offering or enable the development of new offerings? Otherwise, if the ongoing global technological revolution calls for an overall vision revisit, that should be well articulated. Otherwise, eyes should still be kept on the prize!
• Getting overly excited about solutions before defining the problem. Let’s admit it. Most, if not all, executives are not necessarily the most tech savvy in their organizations. A leader, however, may get extremely excited about the opportunities made possible by a specific concept like Big Data, Analytics, the Internet of Things (IOT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning, the Cloud, etc. And if a leader constantly raves about specific solutions, these may end up being perceived as the desired answer regardless of the question. Going back to your vision as a leader, it’s best if your guidance focuses on where you think technology can be helpful. And trust your organization to identify and implement the suitable solution because before I finish writing this some even more exciting concept, technology, or application will have emerged!
• Creating an unintended parallel organization. Investing in and empowering a highly talented technology team to migrate systems and data to new platforms is critical. But, if operations, subject matter experts, sales and marketing teams aren’t all fully engaged in the journey, the desired holistic shift could easily be slowed down or miss its business goals. Old systems and approaches may remain a mystery to the technology team, negatively affecting efficiency, quality, and, as a result, brand. Employee engagement and client centrism are significant ingredients for successful digital transformations. This requires a well formulated strategy for securing buy-in and establishing a sense of partnership among stakeholders.
• Isolating innovation as an independent business function. Allocating a department or function to innovation can be useful at a time when technology is evolving faster than we can figure out what to do with it. But it can signal that the rest of the organization has no business being innovative. Also, innovative efforts across the organization that go unnoticed can be a huge demotivator. Adopting an innovative culture that engenders creativity, on the other hand, will have positive impacts on the pace as well as the benefits of the digital transformation.

As the digital revolution unfolds, leaders are challenged with having to develop and implement transformation strategies while learning from their own mistakes. The importance of dynamically understanding and managing the wholesale cultural and commercial implications of this transformation can not be overstated.

I have struggled for some time with whether every leader had to be visionary- which is defined by the dictionary as “thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom.” Expecting the visionary leader to have imagination and wisdom implies that the their envisioned future state is a pleasant one. Ideally, visionaries are able to imagine and articulate a destination for their organizations to grow into. Growth aspirations send signals to businesses that there is abundance, i.e. there is more than enough success to be had and more than enough money to be made!

My recent experiences have taught me that while not all  leaders are visionary, every leader has a vision. And while leaders may spend so much time on crafting and communicating goals and objectives, their unspoken vision is perhaps the most accurate predictor of the future of their organization. A leader’s perception of how the future tends to unfold becomes clear from they way they carry themselves and make decisions. Foreseeing abundance, visionary leadership instills hope and inspires the creativity needed for unearthing and capitalizing on new opportunities. Non-visionary leaders run the risk of projecting into their vision of the future their perception of the past and the present. And the most dangerous ‘non-visionary’ vision is that of scarcity, instilling fear rather than hope. The future becomes about going after the opportunities of the past and the present, using old or new method. This makes scarcity a self-fulfilling prophecy that limits the imagination of the organization to grabbing a larger slice of the same good ol’ pie. But how?

• Externally, the perception of scarcity generates a desire to beat rivals to protect and/or gain market share. This places the organization in a reactive mode to retain or attract clients away from competition. In the meantime, competitors are finding or even creating new opportunities in a world of abundance. They are leading the way in identifying new client needs, taking advantage of technological advances, and empowering creative talent. Scarcity-lead organizations continue to play catch up and even the most loyal clients may start to loose their patience. This reinforces the leader’s perception of scarcity, which in turn re-energizes the fear and the reactive catch-up craze.
• Internally, slower growth and mounting competitive pressures sell employees on the notion of scarcity. Job security is not necessarily at its highest levels, nor is upward mobility. Squeezed between pressure from the top and dissatisfaction from employees, middle managers are in panic and barely surviving. In this ‘sink-or-swim’ work environment, competition with peers wins over collaboration. When it comes to sinking or swimming, one outcome is certain. Motivation, productivity, and innovation sink and even the most loyal employees may start to loose their patience.

It’s not that difficult to predict what the future now looks like given the combination of more innovative competitors, disenfranchised employees, and less satisfied clients. Destination scarcity  has now become an unpleasant reality. Clearly, no leader desires for their business to contract but what they miss is how influential their mindset is versus their stated goals and objectives. A mindset of scarcity rather than abundance paints a vision of rivalry and protectionism, rather than one of growth and expansion.

As a leader you probably invest heavily in assessing and addressing your external environments and team performance. But how much focus do you place on understanding and transforming your mindset? To what extent is your spoken vision aligned with your mindset? What is your plan for deliberately articulating a growth vision that reflects a mindset of abundance?