A Guest Post by Brig Fairbank
VP & Head of Workplace and Organisation – Capgemeni Invent
I can’t believe it’s been over a month since we met at Manly for an incredible day of learning, connecting, inclusion and mindfulness – all designed and curated by the amazing Serenity Collective team. I loved it.
I was fortunate and privileged to facilitate a series of think tanks on enabling inclusion during times of change. We dived into how we, as changemakers, want people to feel included and engaged following each change interaction. I liken it a creating that positive emotional wake. Just like a boat leaves a wake – when a boat is moving through the water it creates underway as it displaces water giving the water energy – we leave an emotional wake with every interaction.
The groups were open and generous with their examples, suggestions and ideas. It was amazing to explore change that is going on across sectors and in different contexts as well as how we, as changemakers, are leading the way.
We discussed how we can flex between leaders led models of change and open source models of change (see diagram) where employees have a voice and play a greater role in leading and owing the change, increasing change success.
Shift No. 1: Involve employees in decision making – increase change success by 15% by creating a meritocracy where the best ideas win, no matter where they came from, and decision making is transparent.
Shift No. 2: Shift implementation planning to employees – when employees primarily own implementation planning, change success increases by 24% and improves the odds of the initiative being well-received and sustainable.
Shift No. 3: Engage in two-way conversations throughout the process – Employees “getting it” is a driver of change success; their “liking it” isn’t.
To ensure there are no barriers to individuals contributing and being part of the change conversation you can run the “cards for humanity” exercise to get the change team and other groups thinking about access to decision making, planning and communication.
To provide some further thought starters, download the 2023 Capgemini Invent, Change Management Study where data driven organisations are boosting change success with data. The use of data in change management has great potential that has not yet been sufficiently exploited. Decisions and actions are often not data-driven, and there is no measurement concerning the change’s success. Major obstacles are a lack of trust in the data itself and a lack of skills to evaluate and use the data for business decisions.
Our study results show that the level of an organisation’s data maturity increases the success of its transformation efforts. The crucial factor in this context – people:
- Data-driven leadership promotes change success. Leaders who adopt data-driven approaches strengthen employees’ trust in the organisation and increase change success by 23%.
- Data transparency increases change success. Employees also feel a higher level of being informed when data used in the change process is handled transparently. The result is an increased sense of control, which in turn has a positive effect on change success. Specifically, 86% of employees in the study said they felt they could influence change when working in a data-driven organisation.
- Data maturity is essential for commitment and proactivity. The study also demonstrates that a high level of data maturity, the ability of an organisation to meaningfully use its data, strengthens the learning culture in an organization.
This learning culture is essential for commitment and proactivity in change. Organisations that rely on comprehensive data analytics show a 24 percent higher commitment to a learning culture and are more successful in implementing change for this reason.
Just to help you a little further, I have pulled together a collection of our research and insights here (a selection of my favourites)
I hope you find something interesting and useful from this collection!!
Please feel free to connect on LinkedIn.
Brig
brig.fairbank@capgemini.com