News & views
Introducing our change team… Meet Jeanette.
16 October 2024
Transformation
At CMC, we’re all about delivering long-lasting transformational outcomes to our clients.
We pride ourselves on offering bespoke solutions that focus on both organisational and individual behaviours to ensure that meaningful transformation happens – off the shelf packages and a ‘one size fits all’ just isn’t part of our thinking.
Our highly experienced change team specialise in delivering change, building change capability, managing change portfolios and enabling change leadership. Whether it’s a digital transformation, reorganisation, merger, acquisition or any other complex area of change that impacts people, they make sure that change is not only adopted but embraced, bringing about meaningful and successful transformations.
So, let’s meet one of them…
With over 20 years’ experience across both private and public sector, our Deputy Managing Director, Jeanette Lane, is a seasoned business transformation lead. She excels in driving major change, whether that be related to strategic transformations, process efficiencies, ERP implementations or organisation redesign.
Here Jeanette shares some of her expert insights into successfully managing change portfolios, her key take-outs for successful change, and how she makes sure that change is long-lasting for our clients.
What challenges do you see when organisations try to balance numerous changes?
It’s not unusual to see investment portfolios that aren’t prioritised or coordinated as effectively as they could be. As well as leading to the more obvious results such as duplication of work, or higher costs and risk, this can also impact people. It can lead to frustration around the workplace, that feeling of change fatigue, and can contribute to a drop in productivity or impact on morale.
How can multiple changes happening at the same time be successfully prioritised?
Visibility of the overall investment portfolio is essential for prioritising and decision making. We help bring together your portfolio to identify common themes, spot synergies, remove duplication and address conflicting demands. This might include creating a portfolio change heatmap to visualise the simultaneous impacts over time.
How do you work with managers to implement multiple changes effectively?
When there are multiple changes ongoing at the same time, we find it helpful to advise department leaders of all the changes that are scheduled to impact their teams over a certain period of time. This enables leaders to prepare, and helps with planning any downtime associated with learning and adopting new ways of working.
How do you help to make sure that change lasts?
Towards the end of a project, build in plans to transfer ownership to the business. Pass the reins to the relevant area(s) of the business so they can continue to champion, help staff adopt and reinforce the changes made. Also do continue to track performance measures and benefits after the project has closed. In major transformations, most benefits will be realised long after the project initiative has closed. Demonstrating and reminding people of the ongoing benefits can help to maintain the change.
What are your three key take-outs for the successful management of change?
- Make sure there is a compelling vision for the change that everyone can understand. Support this with clear reasons as to why you are doing it, why now, and what are the consequences if you don’t do it now or do it later. Don’t start until you have this.
- Be clear on what people need to do differently to make the change a success. Ensure any communications or change interventions contain actionable plans for everyone involved.
- Get clarity on what business problem you are trying to solve. Use business analysts to delve into the issues and ensure the business problems are well understood before embarking on solutions.
