IpX True North Podcast
The IpX True North Podcast is a global industry resource for all things people, processes, systems, and technology created to share conversations with our network of thought leaders, innovators, and founders changing the shape of the digital future. Here we share their stories, impact, vision and tools for success in the areas of process optimization, engineering, the model based enterprise, operational excellence, and digital transformation.
IpX True North Podcast
From Hope to Power Play: The OCM Wake-Up Call
We make the case that organizational change management isn’t a nice-to-have but the painkiller that prevents rework and missed benefits. Leslie Ellis shares how early, human-centered strategy, layered alignment, and capacity planning turn installations into real outcomes.
• involving OCM at the wake-up call, not at go-live
• rework versus course correction and why it matters
• building the foundation upfront: alignment, incentives, capacity
• PM and change leadership in lockstep for shared outcomes
• engaging practitioners early to avoid blind spots
• embracing naysayers to surface truth and improve design
• layered alignment across functions and time
• IT and the business aiming for benefits, not just installation
• breaking silos and coordinating enterprise change
• change rescue and recovery with an honest reset
• change requires effort, not heroics
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Welcome to the IPX True North Podcast, where we connect people, processes, and tools.
SPEAKER_02:Hi, welcome back to the IPX True North Podcast, where we explore the principles, the practices, and the people driving enterprise transformation. My name is Brandy Taylor, and today we're diving into a topic that's often underestimated, but from my vantage point, it's really never optional. And that's organizational change management, or sometimes we'll say OCM. So joining me today is someone who's made it her mission to elevate the people side of change. Leslie Ellis is the founder of Meaningful Change Consulting. And she's here to help us just unpack this a little bit and why OCM isn't just a nice to have. Like we really believe it's a painkiller for transformation headaches. And really, I in my opinion, Leslie, it's really the secret weapon for successful enterprise change. So I want to welcome you to the show. Thank you so much for joining me. And let's just, I'd love to just start with your story, you know, let us get to know you a little bit. What led you to this work? Tell us about your background, what keeps you passionate, all that good stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. So thrilled to be here, Brandy. Thank you for having me. Um, so a little bit about me. So uh currently live on the East Coast in the Carolinas of the US. And um I have had meaningful change consulting, previously called Involved Change Consulting for a little over eight, nine years now. I probably need to check the months to know which year that is. Um, but I am I'm the classic uh accidental entrepreneur in this sp in this space. So the way I ended up in organizational change was I got my master's in human resources and industrial relations around the time that the economy dipped in the late early 2000s, I guess we should say at this point. And um I ended up working with a manufacturing company who had a big four company create their framework for change, and they did not have a way or anything built to help teach leaders how to use the framework. And so I actually started in building organizational capability around change and transformation in companies in the global engineered product sector or industrial sectors, really enjoyed that work, even got to own a culture assessment, assessing the culture and the microcultures in the organization, and really enjoyed it. But the one thing it wasn't giving me was a significant amount of go out and hands-on and delivering transformation. I was helping build capability, but I wasn't doing the work. So I didn't actually really know the pain points at first. I only know what people told me. So I went out and I found an executive in the organization who said, yes, come work for me and help me do transformational change across the global company. So I did that. And through that, I started to recognize that the pain points were really interesting to me and also very frustrating because it was this constant amount of rework on the back end of change efforts. So we install, we implement something, we think we've done all the right change management work, right? So today's traditional definition of OCM or change management, comms, training, get the people ready for the go live, whatever the go live is. And ultimately, um, we still did a bunch of rework. We did that perfectly in some cases, but we still had significant rework to get the business results or the benefits realization for those changes. And um, I started questioning it. And I started saying, why? What are we not doing? What are people not telling us about the OCM space that is causing this rework? And I started going out into the profession to find honestly who would be the elders of the profession at this point that started back in the 70s, and they're very forward thinkers about what is happening in the OCM space and what is missing from it that is causing organizations to not um achieve the results that they want. They can install a technology, a new process all day long. They can put it all in place, but it doesn't matter if the people don't adopt, it doesn't matter if we didn't do all the steps needed to ensure benefits realization. And so I realized and started to open up my eyes and realize how changes this big process? And it starts way earlier than any of us in leadership think it does. And that's how I've continued in the space ever since. I continue to work with organizations who really want to make sure that they achieve their benefits that they want to realize in their organizational transformations. So that kind of gets us to here. And I've been doing the work for I guess we're over 20 some years now, and um still at it and still enjoying it and love watching my clients have their aha moments and move through all their own personal transformations while they transform their organizations.
SPEAKER_02:I love it. I love it. And I think the rework is a really great way to talk about it because that everyone they see that is this nice to have, as we keep saying. And but honestly, like the rework piece is what we don't want to do, and that's what everyone is afraid of. And I feel like everyone just goes into these things like with fingers crossed, if they've never done this before, and hope is not a strategy.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You're absolutely right. And I do want to clarify because um, you just what you said triggered for me. There is some necessary in change. There is some we call that course correction in some cases. Um, there's things that we learn through transformation because it's not a linear process plan. Sorry, everybody. Transformation does not get run on a linear point A to point B process plan. So we learn as we go, which is necessary because there's so much we don't know when we start, but there is unnecessary rework, which is what I was referring to of why are we basically doing the project over again afterwards? And that's what we want to try to avoid, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yes, I think that's a key point, is to probably set that up front here is we don't expect everything to be perfect. You don't implement perfectly. You never do. We're not aiming for that, but instead of the chaos and the big oscillations is how do we then try to narrow those guardrails and think about it, you know, more in an agile perspective. We know we need to be agile, we know we need to kind of revisit these things. And it's not just, you know, and we encourage that, right? We don't necessarily want that big bang approach or that big waterfall approach. We want to have some level of agility here so that way, you know, we as we as we uncover things, there's no way you're gonna not uncover some surprises along the way. And so you need to be able to do that. But that's that's also course correction, and that's you know, so rework to me is is something truly that we probably could have controlled if we would have had some foresight.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Tend to set it better.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, awesome. All right, so you know, at IPX, we see this a lot. We see this all the time, where organizations invest a large amount of money in digital transformation or harmonization initiatives, you know, what, but what they they fail to intentionally manage the most unpredictable variable is the people. You know, I think just tell me a little bit from your perspective, what are the what are some of the most common missteps you see when it comes to managing that human side of the change?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that great question. And there's there can be so many of them, but I'll try to highlight some of the higher leverage ones, the ones that really shift the trajectory of things. And so first and foremost, I love all the executives out there, but if you think a project plan is your transformation, I'm here to tell you. We need we need to realize that a project plan is not enough, right? There is alignment work up front that needs done. There is change strategy development that needs done. There's an entire setup process of setting the foundation for success in the very beginning of a transformation that we just skip right over and we hand this amazing transformation need, idea, wake-up call over to a group of PMs, who don't get me wrong, we need all of our program managers. They're fabulous. They help us get the work done. But we hand it to them and say, create a plan and execute. Well, we just skipped over an entire part of what makes the process as successful as possible in setting up the right foundation to lead that change on. A project plan is just a tool, it's just a piece of the proverbial paper, right? Of tasks. Um, and it's managing to that, whereas we just completely skipped over, even at the top of the organization, taking care of the people. All of the officers, executives, seniors leadership, they're all people too. And we just skipped over taking care of them to ensure that the change will be successful. And so it's a true process that needs to be looked at and looked at from a how do we make this an excellent process so that we minimize that rework, that chaos down the line. And you actually, I'm not saying you don't need the traditional change management elements, training, engagement down the line, and um communications, but they're significantly easier and smoother when we do the upset work. And so that's a big one that encompasses a lot of different elements of we got to slow down a little bit in order to go faster through implementation. But a lot of times we want to hand it off and expect the implementation to go faster. Well, hold on a second. If it's truly transformational in nature, then that means we have a lot of change to do, including personal mindsets, behavior, maybe, and most likely cultural implications. All of that implies the human side of the work. And we can't skip over that. If you want to skip over it, say, oh, well, we're gonna do this transformation, but we're not gonna touch culture. Well, okay, then you're not going to get all the benefits that you said that you wanted, right? So we have to really weigh the pros and cons of our approach and make sure that we're attentive to what is required in our process to be successful by bringing more of the human element in all the way at the very, very beginning. Like before you even think you should start, you should have started the human element side, not bring in an OCM professional or a change strategist, you know, months down the line, which I see happen very often.
SPEAKER_02:Same. We see a lot of that too, where you know, companies will say, Well, we have OCM, we have an OCM team. Yeah. Um and that, you know, that that OCM team may be a nice little three to five pack of individuals doing a lot of great things. They've got their methodologies, um, but it's kind of cookbook. And what they do is the problem is there's too many things going on in an organization. So they never we they never get involved soon enough. And and they and when they get involved, it's it ends up being lighter load than what you know was originally anticipated. So and to me, you know, let's talk about the communication piece, right? A light sprinkle of emails or a few town halls, you know, they just don't cut it. So, you know, what is what is like that surefire way to to tank adoption, right? Like it's like to me, so many times we just we see that this is not what I would say scoped even. Like it's like, oh, we'll we'll do OCM. Yep, we'll do that. We got it. But it's down the line. I'm like, son, it's it's kind of maybe packed as some small tiny bits, tidbits of milestones inside the standard implementation project timeline. And and we really want to push that these this needs to be a separate initiative that runs in parallel, that's funded, that's managed, it's got its own timeline, you know, it's got its own program manager, its own resources. So tell us a little bit more about, you know, how to do this right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So actually, I would even um push back a little bit on what you just said. And actually, I would tell you, yes, OCM or your change strategists need to come in earlier. They need to come in as soon as you hear the wake-up call and you're trying to develop the case for change and what it's going to take to set it up for success. So basically, as soon as officers say we need to do this, OCM should have been involved, right? Um, with the PM. I'm not saying don't bring it a PM as well. I'm saying at the same time, right? Because engagement starts right then. And when we talk about things like change communications and things like that, a lot of times communication engagement should be like hand in hand, bread and butter, you know, type of thing, um, so that they're right with each other from the very beginning and it's throughout. Because engagement actually starts the second you start involving people and building the case for change. As soon as you're identifying success criteria, the change strategy, building alignment amongst leaders, you know, as soon as you're doing all that work, that's all a type of engagement. And we should be and in it and tracking it and monitoring it and setting it up for success. The one thing I would nudge back on you is it's not necessarily a parallel process to the broader transformation. I would tell you that it's done well and when I've seen it done the the best is when the PM and the change strategists or the change leadership can be really in lockstep and supporting each other and understanding and believing each other. Even if you're a PM who's a little skeptical, like, well, I've normally done all this work, right? And and I can handle all this. You would be amazed at what kind of scenarios your change, um, your senior change OCM or change strategist can support you in with the human dynamics that will get you as a PM out of hot water like that. I have done it. I have won over PMs, program managers like me. And sometimes it's the simplest thing. If Jason ever hears us, he was my first PM to ever do something like that, but he would he would laugh. But it needs to be done in lockstep with each other as though it's one entity, but yet a parallel, a full parallel governance structure to day-to-day operations. Right? Safety-to-day operations has to continue with transformation alongside it. But then how do we run this transformation in parallel and day-to-day operations as a cohesive team delivering on the same outcomes? And I'll keep saying outcomes or benefits realization because a lot of times we only talk about getting to go lives, getting to implementation day, and then it just goes away 30, 60, 90 days later. But yeah, we didn't realize benefits, which is what the case for the transformation was built on.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. So some good things to talk about there. So and also tell me a little bit, I guess. I'm thinking about, you know, if I'm an organization or, you know, I'm thinking about what you said is having you in there lockstep with that PM. Tell me about is is that enough? Right? Is one person like yourself enough? And, you know, what kind of resources are needed inside of a business to make this successful for you?
SPEAKER_01:What a great question. So one person like me can be enough if I'm a full-time person supporting the transformation, because usually transformations are fairly aggressive, right? They're fairly wide, big in scope, far in reach, right? Um, usually involving a large part of the organization, if not the entire, plus maybe going out to your customers, vendors, and so on, retirees, who knows? Um, so if you have someone in-house that is actually ideal and having a change strategist, someone like myself or someone on my team, we come in and we we consult and advise to help that person, that change leader inside the organization be successful by partnering closely with the PM in order to support the sponsors who should be usually executives in delivering the the work they're accountable for in this transformation. And then there's usually a team of folks who help support, whether it's comms, a team around training, a team around impact tracking. Please don't forget to track your impacts, folks. That's my one plug. Please please don't forget to do that. Um, because how do you know what the what the change means if you're not doing it? And then um various other needs that could be needed in that that sphere, right? So you could have a team of people, whether they're third party, if you don't have the skill set in-house or in-house to support the transformation, but they should be as dedicated as possible to the transformation. Where we see a lot of organizations struggle is the size and meaning of the transformation is so large, but then they give all of the responsibility to individuals who 80% of their time needs to be focused on operations. But yet the executives and the senior leadership say, you know, um, which it's just it's not that they're um bad people. They just don't realize that somebody with 20% capacity can't support a big transformational effort that needs to go live in 18 months, two years, or even a year if they're really pushing it. Right. I've even seen challenges with five-year programs where they're doing huge um operation system implementations, and they're still those leaders are struggling to deliver on a program when they have an 80% day-to-day job operations focused and 20, maybe 30% at best, dedicated to this huge transformation. And they struggle and they burn out, right? So, really taking capacity is one of those things at the very upfront part of we skip over a lot in setting up a change for success. Um, we'll throw people on a project, they might be the right subject matter experts, but we don't do anything to prioritize to help them with their capacity. And then we wonder why our transformation struggle continue to be delayed, issue more issues arise, we can't keep things aligned because they don't have the time to do the transformation and keep the business running. So that's where a lot of times that parallel structure really supports and helps is if you who you can pull out of more of their day-to-day job to support and then have either the right third parties come in and help them or supplement with staff augmentation third parties to help if you don't have it.
SPEAKER_02:Makes sense. And so ideally, would it be better from your perspective for an organization for you to coach them to basically execute the OCM themselves so that way it feels like it's their own? Or, you know, do you see? I mean, sometimes I'm sure with the resource constraints that maybe they just need you to execute that. But but are do you prefer being more of like a guide or to actually go in and actually do the execution of it for them?
SPEAKER_01:I will tell my preference is to be a guide. We do a little bit of both, we do a little bit of done for you as well as um just that a lot of coaching and advising. And here's why. Many leaders in the organization, they want to build capability in their people. They want to build the muscle, the skill set inside their organization. Well, how do you do that? Well, you need to teach. You can't, if you just bring in people who do and substitute for your people, they don't build the muscle. They don't build the skill set. And so we're very big on listen, I I want you to be successful with future changes. And maybe you'll bring me, bring me and my team back for some advising in the future on big transformations. But I want to teach someone who can be teach them to be really great change leaders. Teach them on how to be that leader who can figure some of this stuff out or know when, you know, uh-oh, we didn't, we didn't, we missed a step. Let's pause real quick and let's reset ourselves, right? That type of leader who pays attention to that and isn't just driven on getting to the installation or implementation timeline. They're taking care of that human side. And it it is a skill set and it's a blend of an art and a science, right? Engineering, straight science, right? A lot of process stuff. A lot of it's more science-based or um engineering based, depending on what organization you're moving in. But the people side is a blend of art and science. And it takes some time to build that skill set and that capability. It doesn't just exist in organizations generally, except maybe in your HR space. And they're busy folks, as if your HR partners and everybody are busy too. So you have to bring somebody in who will help build capability at the same time that they might be doing coaching or advising. That would be my preference. Um, and what I recommend leaders think about when they're hiring someone to come in and support a transformation. Can this person also help us build capability too?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because you know, typical program managers or in a lot of the companies we work with, you know, they're they're technical engineering folks, et cetera. This kind of capability or this kind of skill set is not something that that we're taught in the colleges or universities, you know. So this is um something very different.
SPEAKER_01:No, when I went through my master's back in the early 2000s, it was, and this is one of the top public business schools in the US. Um, they only taught like it was three course elective or three three credit course, it was like one chapter was on what we call change management. Now, hopefully they've changed and adjusted over the years because of the importance, but I remember being like, what is this that you want me to do? And I've basically learned myself and through my own um experience on how to do this work and wonderful mentors. I have some really amazing mentors as well who really stretch your thinking in your cape, my own capability that keeps me going. So it's not something that's in organizations naturally. And if you have a leader who has a tendency for this, I encourage you to cultivate it in them.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:You know, one of the biggest mistakes we sometimes see is people or organizations defining, like you said, not engaging people soon enough. And so they're defining the process or the tool requirements or whatever needs to happen in isolation, right? And so without the people who will live it. So it's why is it so critical, you know, to include those practitioners up front? And how can, I guess, also how can we be sure that we've surfaced every critical stakeholder so we don't get blindsided mid-project by someone who maybe should have been involved up from the start? How do we how do we know?
SPEAKER_01:Uh, what an amazing question. So it goes back to the whole engagement conversation, right? Engagement doesn't start at implement when you're in your implementation phases. I'm using some project program management language when I say that. Um, it starts from the very, very beginning. And if we actually take the time to set a change up for success, we start that process way earlier of saying, who all needs to be involved? Who all needs to be part of building the strategy for this? What leaders across the organization? And those leaders can help tell you who needs to be involved where, right? And then you start that process so early that by the time you get to the implementation phase, right, you have found pretty much most of your stakeholders. Now, course correction exists, right? So we need to make sure we are constantly sourcing in an organization for is there someone we're missing or someone we should be bringing into that process. So that's that piece. It's engagement doesn't start down the line when many organizations decide, okay, we're coming up on implementation. Let's bring our OCM change management folks in. It should have started way earlier. But here's your other risk: designing process and solutions, let's just deal with the word solutions, designing any solutions without the stakeholders involved, it is a huge engagement miss. It's a huge oper, huge miss on getting their buy-in to the changes, educating them on what you're trying to do and why, and getting them to be willing to adopt it the minute that you put it in place, right? They can help you source all of the things that are needed in order to ensure that solution is going to work. And they are also the first ones who will be happy to tell you when it doesn't work when you implement something, and they're gonna tell you it doesn't work because you didn't ask me. And I'm gonna resist you, and then leaders are gonna feel like it's a resistance factor because they didn't bring those folks in. So we can either create our own roadblocks and challenges and transformation, or we can create a change process that's gonna make all of that easier on us. I don't know about you, Brandy. I could rather go with the smoother process and make sure that those folks are in there early and that we're building a solution together that is gonna work, as opposed to putting all that time and effort and putting a solution together that we hope will work. And then the subject matter experts on the front line or middle management or wherever they are, they'll just, you know, give they'll hoo-koo all of it and just let it all go. And then you're wondering what you're doing, and here you are with unnecessary rework. All because of what? Timeline? Because we wanted to save time, we wanted to save money. Like those are usually the two really big cases. I can't, you know, and then there's a little bit of the expert development mentality. Oh, we know how to do this when you're not the subject matter expert. Right? So we have to be aware of some of those dynamics that tend to drive us because predetermined timelines and transformation very commonly don't make it unless you skip over important parts of the change process that will cause you reworking.
SPEAKER_02:So when people help shape the change, it becomes their idea. And then the project reflects the voice of the business, not just the voice of IT or leadership or one function. And so it really forces that conversation about the repercussions of not changing. And that's where some of that urgency really lives.
SPEAKER_01:And it gives them a chance to get on board, you know, even if it ends up being a solution that wasn't one of the subject matter ideas, they at least know what you're doing and why. And they've had some time to come along because if they own the final solution, especially if they're the ones who are gonna have to operationalize it later, you kind of want them already down their cheat, oh, through their change curve by the time that you roll it out. You don't want to introduce that to them on day one of your implementation or go live date and hope that you're going to get results. It's usually not going to go well.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, we want to identify even some of those naysayers early on, as early as possible and make sure we're managing that.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, we love naysayers though. We love them because listen, they might make you roll your eyes on occasion, but they usually have some nugget of truth underneath what they have to say that we're not hearing. And they can they can actually really help make a solution better if we help them reframe what they're may saying about. Now, on occasion, you have your folks who just, you know, they're never going to adopt, they're just not interested in change, but that's actually more of the minority than the majority, right? Um, we just need a critical mass to follow us in order for us to be successful. And that's not even 50%, right? Critical mass is actually in the 30% range to get the rest of the organization to start to shift over. But you will always have, I think we call them the laggards on the bell curve. You will always have 10% to 13% of laggards there. And that's okay. They'll either come along or they'll filter themselves out or they'll somehow be identified to be filtered out later. Um, we just can't go after everyone. So I'm I'm a I like the naysayers. Um, I try to I try my best to embrace them even on the most stressful days because they have something that is driving them. And if we can uncover it, a lot of times it's a gold nugget. Agreed. Agreed.
SPEAKER_02:And the people are watching those naysayers, you know, I think they're influencers. If you can kind of win over the naysayers, then a lot of other people just are soldiers.
SPEAKER_01:They just kind of follow suit, right? Yeah. It's so true. It's so true. It happens more often than not, but it is, it can be hard sometimes. Um, I watch people have a hard time interacting with the naysayers because we have this expectation of I want you to get on board now. Right. I expect you to get on board now, but it's actually okay as long as you have intentionally designed your process that by X time, if there's still a naysayer, now you know how you're going to handle it. Right. But up until then, allow it to be part of your change process intentionally to embrace your naysayers. Yep. Agreed.
SPEAKER_02:Let's talk for lead about leadership here for a minute. And how do we ensure alignment with our leaders? Right. Because even when there's no budget earmarked, let's say for OCM, um, or when the stakeholders are in control of the budget. So how do we how do we work with our leaders?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Um, it's it's way more common than it should be in transformation, right? We're willing to spend all of our money on the technology, on the solution, but we're not willing to spend it on the people, which is really interesting to me often. But there's a lot of honest conversation that has to happen. When I'm introduced to a client and they want to go through a transformation, there's a lot of direct conversation that has to be had around timeline resourcing that includes budget, people, capacity, right? There's a lot of realities because transformation by nature is not a transitional or a developmental or continuous improvement type of change, right? Operations day-to-day generally can't handle it. There's a reason it's called transformation. And so having the hard conversations up front, back to setting up the change for success, is really, really critical. And it requires change to be viewed as more of a strategic discipline in the organization than being viewed as an implementation discipline. Right now, OCM, the traditional change management, most of our profession is viewed as. As just in generalities, is viewed as implementation support. We talked about that earlier. Bring the OCM folks in as we get closer to implementation. They don't need to be here now. Right. So it's an implementation focus. Where we really need is we need leaders in an organization to be thinking that change is a strategic discipline that's going to be required to survive and thrive going forward in our organization. The level of disruption is not slowing down, folks. It's going to continue. Pace of change continues no matter what we want to believe. It might even get faster if you can believe it. So technology goes faster, we go faster. And so, you know, leaders have to start thinking differently about change. And they have to start thinking about what is it going to take to set this change up for success? And are we willing to do it before they actually kick off the transformation? Because you will pay for it at some point. It's just where do you want to pay for it? And pay for it being not just about money, right? It comes into the rework, the, you know, people uh resistance, um, you know, the effort that you put in, all the things. So it's it'll catch up, especially if you push forward and you don't invest.
SPEAKER_02:Process improvement and some of the digitization initiatives that we find are often initiated by one function. You know, I'll just pick on my engineering folks with you know product lifecycle management, PLM tools, which is a big one that we we work with. And when and what happens is when leadership of other functions, they're not always incentivized to make the change stick, right? So, you know, their goals in this, we find this all the time in organizations, right? Where leaders, their goals are potentially in conflict with each other. And so even their bonuses don't reflect transformation success. So what's the fallout there? How do we how do we help with one function who's leading an initiative? How do we, how do we help the other leaders with that adoption piece?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I think it's back to the question, and and I know now that I realize that we didn't really go back and fully address it is how do you do alignment in an organization? Because that's what it gets back to, right? So you have a sp ideally every transformation hopefully has at least a sponsor at the executive level in an organization. And that sponsor, us understanding as change leaders or advisors to them, what are they, what are they trying to achieve? One of the questions is is this an installation or are we after benefits realization? Tells me a lot, right? Um, tells me a lot about what that leader's focused on. So based on that, and then understanding what kind of activities need to happen in order to get layered alignment across the organization, because essentially layers happen all across the organization, and alignment is what helps us simplify the complexity across those layers, right? The more alignment we have across all the layers of the organization, the smoother everything will run. Well, if we have two leaders or executives who they are not necessarily aligned in what we're trying to achieve, then that sponsor has some work to do, and we have to support that sponsor and working with that leader to find a place of alignment. And if they don't find a place of alignment, then sometimes it has to go up even further and go up if it's not the CEO or otherwise of what are we trying to achieve together. Because if we don't find those pockets up front where there's misalignment, that's where we will have problems down the line, right? Which is what you're expressing and experiencing. And so um we use the term layered alignment to understand, to help leaders understand the amount of alignment that needs to be done across the organization. And then, and that alignment is also its own process within the change process. It doesn't just happen once because something can change. It could be a multi-year transformation, new goals come out if we just stay with the the focus on incentives and um new focus areas for them to get their bonuses. And we have to realign and make sure that nothing's changed. Or if something has changed, how do things need to shift? And so there's all those considerations that have to happen when we're in a transformation and alignment and constant alignment as part of the process and journey is extremely important for the senior leadership to be willing to do if they want their transformation to be successful. Other examples can be a new executive comes in, right? A new CIO, right? You have the head of engineering or operations that has engineering, and you have now a new CIO. Well, technology is a key enabler and whatever the engineering transformation is. Okay, well, we forget what that new CIO and make sure that we're aligned and maintain alignment as he or she gets through their first hundred, two, three sixty-five days, that nothing changes for them and it's going to disrupt our transformation, or is the transformation gonna have to course correct and take another direction? It's constant need. And um, we don't do it. Most most organizations don't take that time to align. And so when we become sponsors as executives of transformation, a lot of times I don't know that the executives really understand what their role is supposed to be as that sponsor, and that they have this big responsibility to ensure the change is set up for success and continues to be set up for success as we progress.
SPEAKER_02:Agreed. Another classic scenario is you know, when IT holds the purse strings uh for a new tool and and it's led by IT. So and something gets pushed out to the business, but the business is not always involved. So, how do we handle that situation?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I would tell IT, uh, you know, times are changing, right? And I have a client, uh actually two clients right now who have this historical legacy scenario of IT's always owned the purse strings of all digital transformations. And and the reality being that IT over time has realized more and more, generally in organizations, they're key enablers of the business being successful. Well, once they have that mindset shift as IT, they start to recognize in digital transformation how important the business input to solutions really is, right? We can't, if we do it without it, we're going to have more problems on the back end with adoption. So there's a lot of organizations that have already turned this curve. There are some that are just starting, and there's some that aren't there yet. But, or I should say, and the IT organizations today need to realize that we talked about it earlier, early engagement, bringing the folks along with you to design the solution that are going to need to help you operationalize it later, right? Or those subject matter experts or customers if they're going to be using it, getting that UX input right from the customers to make sure that what you're rolling out is going to work and we've addressed the glitches that are going to prevent ease of adoption, which ultimately prevents or enables our benefits realization. So when we think through all those things, I a lot of times ask IT leaders, well, what do you want from this? Right. And we have to be listening for are they after an installation of a technology or are we aligned on going after the benefits? And you know I keep saying that and bring it back to it, but it is a mindset that exists in corporate. Um, I was talking with a potential client in the last six months and could have been a great piece of work, but they were their head of IT was actually after the installation. Worried about benefits realization later. Okay. All right. Well, that's not really for us because we're here to really help you up level your change and change capability. But the reality is there are still leaders out there that believe in the installation mindset. And a lot of them do live in the more technical side of the house. I don't want to just pin it on IT. There's some other ones, engineering and other places. But um we have to switch as leaders. If we really want to get the most for our investment, the best for our people, and be a thriving company, not just surviving today, but thriving tomorrow. We have to change our mindsets about what are we after. And one of the first ones is are we after installation or are we after benefits realization?
SPEAKER_02:And we are seeing some improvements there right over the years. IT is getting it is starting to really, you know, be that that that yin and yang with the business. So uh but there are still occasions where where we know that happens, but it is getting better. And I do really appreciate those IT leaders that do set approach, so yeah, and there's more and more of them coming around to it, right?
SPEAKER_01:Some there's some industries that haven't had to change for a long time. Yeah, right. And they're having to change now, and so they're working on their own mindsets and their own cultures on how they support the business in delivering. And it's great to watch and be a part of.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and and you know, that's when you know IT, you know, we just talked about that scenario where IT is kind of king, right? And but we've also seen kind of the opposite where IT is not king, they're treated more like a service provider instead of what I guess I'd call an enterprise capability owner. And so, you know, we've seen functions, you know, individual functions spin up their own software, their own processes, you know, and they're often redundant with other functions. And so, you know, and they just kind of expect other functions to just plug in after the fact, but there's redundancies there. So, what what's the cost of that siloed approach with regards to OCM?
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, it's a great question because I the reality is the siloed approach in general doesn't work well for transformation, right? So there are so many other, just even think about it, even across an enterprise, there are so many other programs and projects that happen in a company. And if we are only siloed in our transformation and not taking into consideration all the broader change, the enterprise strategy around it and how we integrate with all these other projects, we will miss something. We will not be as successful. And so, how do we make sure we're appropriate? We're integrated, we're supporting each other. And sometimes it can be as simple, brandy, as well, we're gonna be going live around the same time. So we need to coordinate resourcing around training and how we're gonna do communications and where can we partner up just to help the organization from a capacity perspective, right? So that's the simple side of it. But there are usually other integrations that if we don't make sure that we're talking, then we're gonna have that siloed approach and something will be something big will be missed, right? So it happens at the enterprise level, it happens at the the corporate function level, it happens at the teams within corporate function levels. I've seen it in various functions, HR finance and others, where even teams within those those um umbrellas don't talk to each other regularly and they're they just have a siloed approach. It doesn't mean that at some point in their history that didn't serve them. But in today's world, with the amount of disruption and the amount of change, we have to break down those silos if we want to be the most effective, right? Because if we're not, the silos will create the rework for us.
SPEAKER_02:They do. Yep, they absolutely do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a good call out.
SPEAKER_02:I'm pretty sure, you know, like in reality, that we know many organizations may come to you once they're already sealing some failure. And maybe they want some help. Help me salvage this project, help me save this thing. So what do you do when a project is half implemented and the red flags are flying? Talk to me about what you do then.
SPEAKER_01:That's great. We call that change uh when it's halfway through the change and leaders or someone all of a sudden gets the hair on the back of their neck standing up saying, uh-oh, we need help, something's not right. We call that change rescue. We come in and rescue the project or the program or the transformation. So we'll actually, uh, if leaders are open to it and based on a list of criteria, including, are you willing to look at timelines? Are you willing to prioritize and look at people's capacity? Are you willing to invest in X, Y, and Z? And assuming certain factors are there, we will come in and help the leadership assess where they're at and where what's been missed. Generally, it goes all the way back to somewhere along the lines we did not establish a foundation that would be successful for this transformation. And we have to pause, reset ourselves. We call that don't be afraid of the reset and go back, catch it up so that we can move forward effectively. Right. So there's a lot of um, there's a lot of human dynamics in a change rescue and starts all the way up a lot of times with the sponsors and the leaders of how they feel about needing to respause and reset because that can be scary for leaders. They sometimes will view it as a big mistake or a failure, that it means we we failed already if we have to do this. And I'll actually hopefully be speaking with an executive that she did it with her team earlier this year on an HR transformation on in the next year at a women's conference. But the power of the reset actually isn't like an acceleration or a catapult strategy that is very often overlooked because of our fear of what the perception is of it. Oh, this isn't working. Oh, it's falling apart, all the things we might be worried about, as opposed to just taking the risk, doing it so that we can actually go faster. So we come in and help leaders basically do that reset on their transformation or their complex change. We also have leaders who will come to us after the implementation and say, well, you know, we got the system in, we got the technology in, we got the processes in, or whatever it was. Um, but we're not seeing the benefits that we need to. And it's I'm getting dinged on it, or it's hurting the business or client customers are in a chaos or whatever. Would you be willing to come in and help us set up a second phase of this for success in order to get adoption up, help us realize our benefits, help us adjust whatever is needed. So we do that and we call that change recovery because that's recovering the project on the back end.
SPEAKER_02:So when we're in the recovery, for example, when I think about this, you you may have already fed what we call food poisoning to the organization, right? They already have a bad taste in their mouth for this process, this tool, whatever it may be. Um and so then, you know, when you guys come in and do that, do you do you have to reset your expectations for what success looks like? Because I know you said, like you said, a successful project could be 30% of so 30% adoption. Um, so how do you how do you need to reset those expectations in a different way?
SPEAKER_01:Sometimes with the leaders who are leading it, we have to, but if I'm interpreting what you mean by reset there, the you can actually overcome a majority of the legacy food poisoning or the poison and you know, that bad taste in your mouth kind of thing to use some of your language. It's all about the leadership being willing to own what happened and bringing their human forward in order to regain the trust, maybe the respect of their people that they're willing to step back and fix this. And I've run into scenarios where some leaders aren't willing to do that for their own reputation, whether and for their reasons, right? You can come up with all the human psychology reasons of why they wouldn't necessarily do that. But then a lot of times you do have the leaders that say, no, we invested 30 million. And it's like, I need this, I will do whatever you tell me to do, right? Which are ideal because then that means all right, so we need to work with you and on you, miss or Mr. Leader, so that you can be ready and step in front of your company or your people and say, Hey, we messed up, or hey, we didn't do, or that we missed some things. Here's the good of the came out of this and all the effort, but we know we need to fix this in order to regain our footing. And I'm asking for your help. It can feel like a big reputation hit for some leaders to do that. What they don't realize is on the back end, their reputation will soar because they showed their people that they're human, right? And they brought their human side, we call sometimes self-disclosure, to the table in order to help reset what is needed. That's like a post-reset kind of concept. Um, but it can be extremely powerful with your people and let them know that we're all in it together and we're gonna figure it out. But yet you whoever was originally accountable takes some of that ownership, right? Isn't pointing the fingers, isn't, you know, trying to say it was the third-party vendor's fault or it was a like, no, set it all aside, own it so that we can figure out a way to move forward together. Um, a lot harder than people would think it is to be willing to do that kind of work.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, indeed. And, you know, leaders who've lived through, I guess I don't know if I want to call it a failed change, but you know, any kind of a recovery or a rescue mission, they know the importance of this, right? It is it is not a luxury. It is the painkiller. It is the one thing that's gonna help them, you know, have some control over the adoption and the success of these projects. They're the ones that often push for, you know, that separate funding and fully allocated team from from early on, and and they value that. Um, unfortunately, sometimes these big initiatives just don't happen often enough where you know, we everyone has had to live those experiences. So they'll only need to live it once. They do.
SPEAKER_01:It's not and then after that, they're like, this cannot fail, or I had this happen in the past, I cannot do that again. Sometimes it's I don't want to do that again, right? So I want to do it differently. And those are, I mean, our favorite leaders because they, to your point, they felt that pain and they understand. And we might still have to work with them and convince them of certain things, you know, old habits die hard kind of thing, but they're at least open to it. And it makes a huge difference when the leaders really do want to achieve results um and outcomes because their orientation is different to what it takes to achieve it.
SPEAKER_02:Thinking about the leaders' organizations who may have not experienced this in the past, and they think that maybe they've got a really great culture and they don't need to do a whole lot of OCM because their people are just gonna do what's needed because they're loyal people and they're hired to do their jobs. Tell me what you would say to a leader who feels strongly in that direction.
SPEAKER_01:That is great. I'm thrilled for you. And I would ask them some questions about so I'm I'm assuming that I have an assumption that you've already thought of this, and how would you handle it if this happens? How will you handle it if this goes wrong? What will happen if this? And they may have answers in their mind for all of it, which is totally fine. And they might not have answers and it might cause them to think a little more deeply than they currently are and open their eyes earlier. And if they're able to put it in and get it in and achieve all of that, given what they believe is the truth, what their truth is, great. I guess I've learned over time is I don't overfight that, right? But if they're on a call with me asking me about it, then there's something that they are uncomfortable with, and we just have to find what that is to help them. Yep. And then that builds trust and credibility. And then over time, next thing you know, you're getting pulled in for various conversations. Because the reality is, is everybody needs some advice and some coaching, especially in transformation, which we've already said is nonlinear. It's got a ton of course corrections, a lot of emotions and feelings are built up into it, and there's a ton of human dynamics. So it's like a perfect recipe for things to go wrong. And how we lead it and how we design that process is critical depending on what the leader wants. And so I will never ever force a leader beyond. I might ask them some questions to see, you know, if it triggers anything for them. And I might ask them why they're talking to me if they feel that good and they have all the answers. But um, outside of that, I really do kind of let it go, Brandy, because there's so much change out there and there's so many people who who do need and want the help. Yep. I think I've heard once you can try to teach a pig to sing, but you're just gonna irritate the pig, right? It is, it is. I'm a believer in not wanting something more than my client does for themselves. Yeah, agree. I I can want it so badly for them, but I'm I might be setting myself up for disappointments, right? If they really don't want that for themselves. So I'm very careful to give the client what they want, what they need, um, as opposed to, you know, what I think they need.
SPEAKER_02:Makes sense. So lovely, I don't know. I think this is a really powerful conversation. If there's one message that you want our listeners to walk away with, is there anything specific there that that you'd like to leave us with today?
SPEAKER_01:I I will. Um, one of my it's very simple. It's one of my things I say quite often. Um, I'm not one of the folks who says that change is hard. I'm actually one of the folks that just say change requires effort. And that effort doesn't have to be hard unless you want to make it hard. It just requires effort. And so thoughtful effort, intentional effort, sometimes not intentional because you didn't know what was coming, but it doesn't have to be hard unless you make it hard. And there are ways to make it easier, set it up for success so that it won't be so hard downstream.
SPEAKER_02:I like it. All right, Leslie, well, how can people reach out to you or learn more about you and your business if they're interested in talking to you?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's really, really great of you. So, Meaningfulchange Consulting.com is our website. It has all of the contact information out there. You can also find me online uh and LinkedIn and Leslie Ellis find me, but you also find me through Meaningful Change Consulting's business page. So, whatever suits, please connect with me. And if anything, drop me a personal note. If you heard this podcast, I'd love to hear um any of the insights that you have.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, excellent. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the True North Podcast. So, and thanks to everyone who's listening.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for tuning in today. Don't forget to subscribe and review the show. And for more information on IPX, visit IPxHQ.com.