Change Management

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Introducing a complex change carries substantial risks of failure for the organisation, and reputational damage to its senior managers and programme directors. (I'm sure we don't have to bang on about all the studies but we do know that only one in five change initiatives are a success).

Statistically, this suggests that if, right now, you are in the middle of a change initiative, there is an 80% chance that it is going to stall, is already stalling, or has stalled and you may find that:

• There is a high level of resistance to doing things differently
• The momentum of the change has slowed down
• People impacted by the change do not seem to appreciate the business drivers
• The change has been diluted or lost direction
• The uncertainty created by the change is not handled well
• Managers are not managing the changes as they need to
• The change initiative is not producing the expected changes in behaviour needed to succeed

High risk is not to be confused with inevitability however. (We're not trying to depress you!). The good news is that recent advances in the field are providing new methodologies for either rebooting a stalled change or conducting preventative maintenance on a change that is at risk of stalling or failing. What is more, these new approaches accelerate the implementation of change with all the obvious benefits that then accrue.

The Death of Resistance
Imagine an energised workforce focused on the strategy, adept at keeping the show on the road operationally, yet making big change happen. They are no longer the 'resistance' that managers somehow have to drag along, 'kicking and screaming'. Imagine this groundswell of talent and energy, you and your workforce together, creating the solutions to complex problems: the whole has become massively greater than the sum of its parts.

Successful change starts with systems thinking, moves to projects and work streams and ends in the thousands of individual actions that make it happen. What matters is that you plan with the whole organisation in mind, in a methodical way and ensuring maximum participation by all relevant stakeholders.

You want your people to contribute their smartest ideas and perspectives, so that they embrace the change that allows your organisation to adapt and flourish in a complex environment. We work with you to ensure they receive the right briefings, knowledge, information, and analyses, using the right media. Their informed thinking can then produce the sophisticated actions, decisions and solutions that progress your complex change issues.

A New Beginning
For the leaders of change, the organisation contains many allies, but few if any confidants. We work in partnership with you to dramatically reduce the cycle time for getting the work done.

And we will stick with you to support you over tricky hurdles and help you implement successfully.

So, change is what we do and enjoy. We enable accelerated, transformational change, whether it is a greenfield change project or a stalled change in need of a reboot.

Two brief examples of our work

Following a major re-structuring, a global telecoms organisation invited OPDC to support the subsequent change initiative in one of their Divisions. This resulted in us working alongside a transition team to plan the necessary structural changes, formulate a communication plan, facilitate process improvement workshops between the different functions to encourage ‘process thinking' and facilitate large group whole systems events to ‘nail strategy and action plans' to get to the new vision.

We worked with a charity to design and implement a performance management system that would encourage managers to:

• Manage poor performance
• Set clear objectives
• Coach their people
• Reward people for the behaviours the organisation needed to grow to ensure a customer-focussed culture

We designed the behavioural competencies, all documentation and the process with the input of a great number of people in the organisation, in this way ensuring participation and buy-in from the start. The roll-out and implementation proved ‘painless' as a result.