Leading Change

The need for change continues to be a major focus for organisations and the cycle of change continues to gain pace. Yet the poor track record of organisations in successfully implementing change is well documented, as are the significant and common reasons for failure.

This tension between the importance of change and the significant risk of change failure explains why change leadership is a critical aspect of our leadership development programmes and something that we support clients with as a stand alone service.

Typically, lack of stakeholder engagement and alignment cause change initiatives to fail – whether ‘top-down’ planned change or ‘bottom-up’ emergent change. OPDC guides change leaders in engaging and aligning stakeholders so that they understand, support and ultimately adopt new ways of working, new structures and new responsibilities. To achieve this we use a proprietary approach, built on well-regarded research, to engage stakeholders and create a change leadership plan.

We help clients significantly improve the likelihood of success from their change initiatives by running intensive ‘change readiness’ workshops with change leaders and business stakeholders prior to initiation of change programmes. This work puts a significant focus on the people that will be affected by the change and surfaces potential reasons for resistance, the nature of resistance and (SMART) tactics to ensure that people come on the change journey willingly. Our people focus is far beyond that included in traditional change management processes and covers import foundations to successful change including:

Ensuring the significant needs for change are well defined
Emotionally engaging stakeholders in the need for change
Identifying and mobilising important influencers and stakeholders
Providing a compelling vision of the post change future
Supporting impacted people into and through the change transition
Identifying valuable communication and celebration opportunities

If you feel that your organisation could benefit from a greater focus on engaging people in change and supporting them on the journey, pease get in touch so that we can introduce you to what we do and show you the evidence that it works.

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Faced with escalating tensions with a particular customer and narrowing of opportunities we asked OPDC to help us re-vitalise our customer relationships, de-escalate tensions, and explore what we suspected were wider business opportunities. OPDC worked with us to develop a six month development journey for our teams. This took the negotiation theme as a foundation but framed the learning in our objectives of acheiving wider and deeper conversations and opportunity identification, engaging multiple functions in influencing and negotiation, identifying leading indicators of negotiation progress, and mid-delivery problem solving. Over the six months of the programme we gained a de-escalation of tensions with a particular customer, improved relationships across our customers more widely, discovered new customer needs with revenue opportunities and improved speed of payments.
Kim Wrighton, MD Ultra Controls
ROI achieved: As just one example from 3 projects runs by the last MAD group, we gained £xxk (to be obtained in the coming week – David did you get this?) through disposal of inventory and plant related to legacy products. This alone covered more than the costs of the programme for the 12 delegates.
Mike Clayton, MD, Ultra Precision Control Systems
I have witnessed and participated in the work of OPDC over many years as a delegate, a commissioner and as a sponsor. Their programmes for our senior leaders not only develop leadership skills but also deepen the network of leaders across our international businesses. These senior participants then act as sponsors and mentors for the programmes OPDC run within our different businesses to develop leadership at the next levels.

Through this leadership development work, their facilitation of our annual business leaders’ conferences and their work with the Executive Team, OPDC touch every level of our business and deliver measurable impact. Their willingness to engage with the customer to develop tailored programmes which integrate with the Company’s values is an important aspect of working with them.
Douglas Caster CBE Chairman, Ultra Electronics Holdings plc
At Graduation today the participants are much more excited and engaged in moving the business forward and are making an impact. Individually, every participant stated this was the best leadership training they have received in their careers and they are committed to stay linked as a team and to practice what they have learned.

ROI achieved: Project 1: 11% reduction in inventory Project 2: $50k saving year on year from a shift to paperless working Project 3: Enhanced functionality features linked to ERP, now working to use the tools across multiple sites.
Steve Tyler, VP, Engagement Assessment Services, CGI
The structure of MAD that we have created with the OPDC team allows cross site, cross functional application of the learning on real business issues and delivery of three essential business improvement projects.

Whilst initially daunting as to how additional time can be inserted into already overcommitted schedules, MAD is not “time out training” but quality time focused on business issues, whilst developing leadership skills to address these. MAD has been universally praised by all those who have completed the courses.

We see Making a Difference as a key differentiator in our ability to support the development of our high potential employees.

ROI achieved: As just one example from 3 projects runs by the last MAD group, the revenue we gained through disposal of inventory and plant related to legacy products alone more than covered the costs of the programme for the 12 delegates.
Mike Clayton, MD, Ultra Precision Control Systems
At Graduation today the participants are much more excited and engaged in moving the business forward and are making an impact. Individually, every participant stated this was the best leadership training they have received in their careers and they are committed to stay linked as a team and to practice what they have learned. ROI achieved: Project 1: 11% reduction in inventory Project 2: $50k saving year on year from a shift to paperless working Project 3: Enhanced functionality features linked to ERP, now working to use the tools across multiple sites.
Pat Thurman, CEO, AMT, Senior Aerospace
“At Graduation today the participants are much more excited and engaged in moving the business forward and are making an impact. Individually, every participant stated this was the best leadership training they have received in their careers and they are committed to stay linked as a team and to practice what they have learned.”
ROI achieved:
Project 1: 11% reduction in inventory
Project 2: $50k saving year on year from a shift to paperless working
Project 3: Enhanced functionality features linked to ERP, now working to use the tools across multiple sites.
Pat Thurman, CEO, AMT, Senior Aerospace