Managing change:Case study

Our brief: Please help us to change!

Brutal truth: You can’t change if you don’t want to. Brutal truth: You can’t successfully change if there are people in your business who don’t want you to.

Where we started: Prove the possible

The business had always struggled with change. Slow to decide, slow to agree… too many cooks and not enough analysis.

We needed to find the root causes of the problems. Why had things failed? What lessons had been learned and how could we adopt a style that would work? What were the common barriers to progress?

It’s understandable that people had lost faith in change because it had never been managed successfully, so we had to make a difference. We had to instil enthusiasm and motivation in the people who were part of the change process. If the management don’t believe, why should anyone else?

And when you have the wrong people using the wrong process to try and obtain a result that doesn’t benefit the business, that’s a recipe for disaster.

What we did: We rationalised the people involved and created systems that were robust enough to measure what was going on and assess the ‘whys’.

We worked closely with them to ensure every decision made aligned with their strategy and was the best possible decision. As soon as we were changing the right things in the right way with the right process, we had a chance at being successful.

Decisions that were made on a whim, or decisions that weren’t being made at all became a thing of the past and momentum built through the organisation.

How we succeeded: We measured everything against a strategy, and made sure it happened

By stepping in like this, we got things working effectively. We formed a crucial part of the project team to create and implement the right plans and helped get the business through the barriers they had traditionally met. An independent eye always makes it easier to take a decision, as it is free from any emotion. 

The business now analyses everything to fit with their values and their objectives and is much more successful for it. One of the management team suggested we had helped them achieve more in 12 months that they had achieved in their history… over 100 years!