Digital Strategy

Enterprise Change done right: keep your vision in mind

Alistair Russell · November 9, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Whatever the label used by our clients, be that transformation, digital, agile or change, fundamentally we see our purpose as enabling change. Laing Russell is about getting enterprise change done right.

Recent Bain & Company research endorsed our perspective that the central focus of any programme of work in this area should focus on changing the behaviours of the human beings. In contrast to what is often taught on MBAs and promoted by the writers of airport business books, our insight is that enterprise change is complicated and it is unhelpful to reduce the complexity of the real world to simplistic, predictive Newtonian models.

There are many useful models and thinking frameworks that we use to focus and structure clearer, more productive conversations about what to do as leaders of change. Our recent experience is that the foundation for us all is to persist with a clear vision in mind. Success comes from using that shared and explicit clarity of your desired outcome, your vision, to guide your actions in leading change.

In building that shared, explicit clarity on the vision, the framework developed by John Kotter is better than many in creating a checklist to get you started. The focus on a sense of urgency, as Kotter describes it, is key. A critical early step is to develop that clarity around what we would call the rational and emotional ‘case for change’. Crucially, it is important that case has the support of sufficient number of the wider and influential leadership team.

Kotter argues for gaining the support of 75% of the leadership population, although often it is more important to just start. Rather than wait to hit a specific threshold. Our recent insight is that you have to persist with creating that sense of urgency and never stop working at it. This persistence includes using more ‘viral’ communication approaches, building stories as we set out in our last insight piece.

A critical, perhaps the most critical, part of your leadership behaviour is the communication of this vision. In our experience you cannot ever do enough communication, especially two-way communication. Communication is much more conversation than broadcast, more of a process to enable the change to be led by others. Enabling and empowering others to interpret the vision and make it their own, which Kotter calls enlisting that volunteer army facilitates others to translate the vision into their own changed behaviour. Once outcomes start to be delivered, the role of leader moves on to activities such as removing barriers, designing and delivering early short-term wins, and sustaining acceleration of delivery of the change that has been delivered. At all times it is important to institutionalise the change byanchoring or embedding the changes in systems, process and corporate culture.

An important reflection from our recent work is that whilst Kotter’s model is useful in making sure we think things through and develop plans, following the model will not on its own deliver the outcome for you, and you will not realise your vision.

To achieve your vision of lasting change, you must persist with all of the activities that are summarised in Kotter’s model, all of the time. Spot opportunities to deliver or embed your vision that you had not seen in your first round of strategising and planning. Review and learn from experience in a fast cycle. In practice, it never was and never will be a serial, sequential start to finish activities. Leading change is messy, it’s a parallel set of on-going processes that need to be led. Persist and do it right you will deliver.

Rip it up and start again?

Alistair Russell · July 15, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Every now and again a song lyric becomes the summary of an idea for me. Over the last couple of weeks a key theme of sessions with clients has been to what extent should their pre-pandemic strategy, approach or play-book be ditched and an entirely new approach be set out. Or, with acknowledgement and respect to the great Edwyn Collins and his erstwhile colleagues in the band Orange Juice, should we “Rip it up and start again?” And in line with our last insight post its proved a useful, powerful question.

The two key foundations for this challenge to us all to “rip it up” are:

the enduring benefit of what we might call “zero-basing”; taking yourself, your team and your organisation back to first principles; re-assessing the needs of your customers, clients and colleagues and making sure you can make the case for what you deliver, how you deliver it etc. as if you were starting from scratch, with no legacy, no technical or organisational debt and then deciding on and committing to the strategy on that basis; not because that was what it was at your last board meeting when it was reviewed.
the importance of ‘managing the show’; a learning point for me in early years working and advising senior executives was that developing the best answer, make the business case for the most logical and rational strategy was never enough; to be successful you have to communicate actively with your stakeholders; you will not be successful without also having the best communication strategy; you have to manage the impression that you have the best strategy and build confidence and trust in your approach.

We need to manage the show and the analysis.

We see it as imperative you consider if the time is right to “rip it up”. To take the opportunity of this changed business and society context to signal to your colleagues and/or customers that the strategy you started the year with is not the one that you will be persisting with. To reinforce the adaptability and agility of your team and your organisation by coming forward at pace with a new strategy. A new strategy that clearly builds on all the fundamentals that you know about how and why your organisation is valuable and incorporates the learning from last three months. A strategy that re-focuses yourself, your team and your organisation forward and is presented as something that is more dynamic than before, and will be under more frequent review.

Drawing on insight from corporate comms colleagues, a few thoughts:

choose to give yourself enough time to do this work, managing the show as well as the analysis takes time, especially when you are looking to get better at it;

get clear on the outcomes, in terms of what you want key stakeholders to think and feel.

work really hard at simplicity, the alignment of audience, message and your method of communication is key.

Powerful Questions

Alistair Russell · June 16, 2020 · Leave a Comment

We spoke with a number of established clients in developing Laing Russell’s positioning, seeking to understand what was the source of our value. A common theme that got us thinking was that whilst knowing stuff is important, clients speak in terms of the value is based on asking really good questions.

Aligned with our encouragement for all of us to engage in reflective practice, we wondered what makes a good question in our context? In the spirit of sharing our insight and encouraging a discussion, some thoughts follow. Let us know what you think.

The key themes from our reflection were that good, powerful and productive questions are:

specific to context, good questions and their impact are socially constructed, they work best when they are relevant, based on human connection, have meaning and are significant. The nature of consulting engagements is that the context is significant, the harder bit is using all one’s skills and experience to build connection and asking questions that are and feel specific, we work hard to avoid generic, consulting playbook questions.
Indicate a direction, one way to think of consulting is as a catalytic process, applying a new force to the complicated set of systems that are an enterprise. Good questions, point in a direction and guide either divergent or convergent thinking for the client.
- divergent questions would be… how might you?….what could you…?
- convergent questions would be…what are the priorities here?…why? which specific issue(s) should you address first?
Balance depth and degree of challenge, deep, existential questions are mostly unproductive. Good questions encourage deeper consideration than a client would do on their own, the client should feel what we call a learning force. A force that builds on the human connection to promote new thinking. Noting we should not push or pull the client in directions that are unhelpful. The qualities of balance are embedded in :
- asking open questions that promote new thinking whilst remaining relevant to the context;
- holding the level of intellect required to engage successfully in any debate to the intellectual common denominator within the client;
- engender excitement through the realisation of possibilities.

In our experience, the foundation is the relationship. Powerful questions that challenge the client fundamentally require that human connection or trusted relationship. This trust is evidenced by client seeing you as integrated, yet distinct, part of their enterprise’s network.

To complete the loop, on reflection, our success in building enduring relationships with clients is dependent on our ability to ask really good questions – it’s certainly part of the secret sauce that we apply. The other part is working with the client to deliver answers, at pace.