Jodie: Kia ora koutou and welcome to today's webinar, Leading Through Transformation, Insider Tips for Getting It Right. To those of you joining from Aotearoa, ngā mihi nui ki a koutou katoa. And to those of you joining from across Australia and from anywhere else in the world, we wish you a warm welcome to today's discussion. I'm Jodie O'Neill and I lead our strategy work here at Allen + Clarke. And joining me today is Sonia Sharp, our new Managing Director in Australia. For those of you who haven't joined us before, Allen + Clarke is a consultancy that helps organisations make complex, high-stakes decisions with evidence, defend them with confidence and build them to work for the people and communities affected.
We specialise in transformation, strategy and change management, and today we're going to talk about the challenges of getting transformation right. Before we get into that, I'd like to welcome Sonia to her first webinar. Sonia, we're here today to talk about tips for transformation. What transformation projects are you drawing from in today's session?
Sonia: Well, I've been involved in a number of transformations at both organisation and whole system level, whether that's system reform or performance turnaround. Early in my career, I had the great fortune to work with a team that was struggling both culturally and in terms of delivery. And that was my entree into leadership and management.
I discovered that I love transformations, shifting performance, transforming the way people were thinking, behaving and delivering. And that started a trajectory for me that's continued throughout my career. I love bringing people along and delivering great results.
From there, I've been involved in both organisational transformation and large system transformation in a number of different places and different roles. I've reshaped the system for children out of home care so they have better experience and better lives and are set up for success in the future. I've reduced crime rates across whole communities. Shifted our whole education systems into being more inclusive. So children with disabilities and different learning approaches have their needs well met and are socially included as some examples.
And then from a performance perspective, I've done things like lifted student grades by more than 20 percent, closed the equity gap in schools for traditionally underperforming students, reduced exclusions from school to less than 1 percent. Boosted workforce satisfaction and retention, and also restored confidence of key stakeholder groups. Those are just some examples. For the last 10 years, I've been working with other organisations who are interested in transformation, walking alongside them as they transform themselves.
Helping them to accelerate their transformation journey, helping them to do transformation. transformation well and helping them to deliver better results for others.
Jodie: Wow, so you really do have the insider knowledge. All right, so first up today, we're going to talk about one of the most common pitfalls in transformation, which is rushing into things. We'll cover why you should start transformation slowly with deliberate and thorough discovery, and then how you can kind of build momentum after that through the use of transformation sprints. And then in the second half of the session, we'll give you Sonia's top tips for transformation, including how to keep momentum visible, how to keep leaders aligned, and how to predict the hardest parts of your transformation before they derail you.
So, Sonia, it's a real temptation for leaders to rush into transformation. It's understandable, right? There's generally a good reason or a need for the transformation. Leaders can feel compelled, pressured, determined to get results, which often lead us into rushing. So what's the danger that you find in rushing?
Sonia: You are so right, Jodie. As leaders, we are often tempted to rush in and fix things. And I've experienced that pressure myself. However, the danger with doing that is that we miss the most important information that we need to understand so that we can appreciate the dynamics of the problem ahead of us or the thing that we want to fix or reform. And also then we don't necessarily design our transformation well to deliver the results that we need. This leads to... False starts, low levels of engagement in our transformation mean that we lose the support of our people.
And we can leave some of our people confused, hurt, bemused or cynical. So being disciplined enough to slow down, step back, means we can properly explore and understand the factors feeding into the challenges that we're facing. Powerful, in-depth exploration means that we can understand the diverse perspectives of the different stakeholders in our ecosystem, because there will be different points of view. And we can listen to those views, including the cynics, the dissenters, the disgruntled. We have things to learn from them.
And also the people who are hardest to hear. For example, I'll give you a practical example. When I was working towards a more inclusive, building a more inclusive education system, I heard from parents and families who'd had a really poor experience of mainstream education and were rightly anxious about their child's needs not being met or understood or about their child being bullied or socially excluded. Taking time to hear those views and then work with those parents and their teachers, the students'teachers, to design better approaches to inclusive education was absolutely crucial in designing a transformation roadmap that delivered success. So an example of one of the things that we're doing is we're going to be doing a lot of work on the We did, because of that listening to parents and educators' views, at the behest of the parents and educators, we created a joint team of teachers from mainstream classrooms and special educational classrooms, and they worked together to design physical spaces and approaches to teaching and learning that would work well. This joint approach boosted the confidence and capabilities of the teachers, both in mainstream settings and special school settings, reassured parents and families so they were more comfortable in exploring more inclusive learning environment and led to successful inroads into building a more inclusive education experience. Taking that time meant that we were able to identify the levers that will help us most and also help us to focus on what needs to change first and most importantly, bring people with us on the journey.
Jodie: Yeah. So, Sonia, the thing I see a lot, though, is leaders who don't want to take the time because they feel like they already know that information. They think they already understand the problems. We don't need to go through this big discovery. Let's just kind of get on with it.
Sonia: Yes, sometimes. By the way, sometimes that's true. And if we have already done the discovery and we really do understand the context well, that's fine. But more often than not, we're kidding ourselves. And we then run the risk of a false economy of effort. And most of us have not got time for that. We're much more likely to deliver well when we take that time up front to check in rather than rushing in less well informed.
Jodie: So we had a question submitted from the audience about this exact topic. So Jork asked, how do we create space for genuine discovery before committing to solutions? We often ask teams to define the problem, understand the drivers and test the assumption, yet the pressure to act quickly can lead to reactive fixes. The result is investment in short-term tactical improvements rather than systematic change. So, yeah, Sonia, how do we create the space for that genuine discovery?
Sonia: That is a great question. And my view would be it's important to be disciplined and systematic. So I often time box that discovery period to a three week or six week intensive process. What we do in that time matters as well. So I would typically look at the data, map out the system and in mapping out the system, notice who are at the edges of the system, as well as the people who play in the centre of the system. And then engage, look at the data, dig underneath it, listen, listen, listen. We have two eyes and one mouth.
As my mother used to say to me for a reason. From there, forming some hypotheses, testing them, following clues and digging below the surface to look beyond the obvious is really important. And we can do that in a really, we can do that in a limited time scale if we're disciplined and systematic about it. So planning ahead and doing that mapping really helps. For example, I mentioned earlier about improving outcomes for children in out-of-home care. And in one place I worked, not a single student in out-of-home care was finishing school with a formal qualification, which is curious.
In the discovery phase, the data suggested that many of these students were identified as having learning difficulties. Now, I could have left it there and some of my team said, oh, well, that's the reason then. But I was curious because children with learning difficulties and learning differences should also, with the right support, be able to achieve qualifications. So we went deeper. We looked in depth at a sample of young people in out-of-home care. And what we discovered was really interesting. We discovered that although some of those students did have learning difficulties or learning differences, most of them did not.
What they had was gaps in learning that had been misidentified as learning difficulties or learning differences. And so. What we did was we organised a really intensive and personalised education programme for each of them. And within two years, every student was achieving their certificate. And the first 25 were enrolled in university, which is why going deeper, being curious, asking questions is really, really important.
Jodie: Yeah, it can also be really useful to get an outside perspective. It doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, consultants like us. It could be another team, another agency, different leaders to really kind of test and challenge your thinking. Okay, so your first piece of advice is that it's important not to rush at the start of a transformation. But then how do you get momentum to start kind of planning and designing the required change?
Sonia: Okay, so when we go slow and deep in the diagnosis, then the design of the transformation can be easier to appreciate and articulate and faster to achieve. So we're kind of going slow to go fast. And the things we need next to mobilize people are a clear and compelling vision so everybody knows what we're trying to achieve and why. We need a roadmap, an action plan, so everybody understands the steps along the way. What's the next step? What's the step after that? What's the sequence and pace we'll be operating to?
We need to take time to assess the skills and resources of our teams that they will need in order to deliver and make sure that those are available. And we need to. to motivate those around us to mobilize around the transformation. Now, the how. Very early in my career, I was fortunate to work with a methodology called real-time strategic change, which is developed by a guy called Robert Jacobs, which, and his thinking was, If we bring the whole ecosystem into the room over a couple of days to think through the strategic change and transformation we want to deliver,
to take time to listen to the different voices and perspectives, what's working, what's not, and stay comfortable with the idea that there will be competing views and needs. Then we can design an approach together. We can work on the priorities, focus on the points that matter most and the solutions that meet those competing needs and are more likely to work in practice. This approach, Jacob's approach, gives us a much better chance of delivering a successful design. The methodology, Jacob's was ahead of his time because the methodology is like human-centred design on steroids.
And as we're going through the process, it mobilizes a movement for change. People who've been engaged in the process walk out of the door already starting to deliver against the transformation because they understand the why as well as the how and they have personal agency because they were part of the process of designing it.
Jodie: Yeah, that sounds like a really great technique. Can you give us an example of when you've used this approach successfully and what you learned from it?
Sonia: Yes, I'll stick with the children, young people in out-of-home care. This is a different place and a different time. But we were working because we were worried about health outcomes for children in out-of-home care. So we wanted to look at how we could improve the health system for these young people. This was in a state in Australia. So we thought really carefully about who are all the different stakeholder groups that we should involve, who's in the ecosystem. We took time up front to invite people from each group so that we would have the whole ecosystem in the room.
The methodology is carefully designed to make sure that you hear the voice of each group, what's working, what's not. And also that participants have the chance to work in mixed groups so that they can design solutions together that will work despite competing needs.
Through the two days, we worked through what was working well, what were the gaps, what were the improvements that could be made. And together, we were able to build a comprehensive roadmap for a better health system, delivering better outcomes. We developed some concrete steps for how we would achieve these. And made, I say that with this approach, we use We typically do two years work or 12 months work in two days. We also had some magic moments. And my experience is this is quite typical of this approach.
And I'll give you my example. So one young person who'd been in out of home care and was part of the process said that even though dental services were available to her throughout her time in care, she was never encouraged to take them up. So she didn't. And now she has teeth that she's actually embarrassed by and she doesn't smile. The magic moment right then, the dentist in the room stepped up and not only did they offer to help her personally and they booked her an appointment and said, come on, we'll get those teeth fixed.
You can have a beautiful smile. But they also plotted and planned how they would change the system so that other young people in care would be proactively offered dental services going forward, rather than leaving it to chance as to whether they would get the services or not. So my experience is that when we bring people together like this, motivation for change is amplified. People overcome resistance to change. They become committed to the transformation ahead. They see what is needed and they step forward to make it happen, not just in the immediate, but also in the longer term.
Jodie: Yeah, I can see how that would be really motivating for the people in the room. Like in theory, you might have gone into the day. thinking, oh, well, dental services are available to young people, but not really kind of understanding those challenges or barriers that stop people from accessing them. But what do you need to make a discovery approach, a transformation sprint like this really work?
Sonia: Yeah, it doesn't happen by chance. So you need a really good facilitator or facilitators, because if you want to work at scale, you need more than one and you need the right people in the room. So this means not being lulled into just including the usual suspects. It means properly mapping out your stakeholder ecosystem. Thinking about who those different stakeholder groups are, including the ones that are easy to overlook or not often heard from, the quiet voices in the system. Then you have to proactively go out to find the people you want in the room.
People with real lived experience, creative and different thinkers, and also people who might be a bit more cynical and questioning. So thinking really carefully about the who and going beyond the usual suspects. You want a similar number from each of those groups and enough of them so each group has a strong voice, as well as enough people to work in mixed stakeholder groups too, so you can design compatible solutions. This set of... matters so much and it needs to be done really well and well in advance.
Jodie: I imagine though, even when you've got the right people in the room, it can still be a real challenge to hold space for those different perspectives, especially if you think that some of those voices might be less privileged or less used to being given the space to be heard.
Sonia: Absolutely, absolutely right, Jodie, absolutely right. So that's why you need really good facilitation, facilitation that can hold the space for that deep work, that can create enough safety so that people can speak up and voice their most significant concerns, and holding the space to work through a solution, even when needs are very diverse and competing, which they quite often are. Then from there, you also need the determination and perseverance to deliver. Once you've had the whole ecosystem in the room, you've agreed your direction, you can't just disappear.
You have to come back to them and say, this is what we heard. This is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to do it. This is how we'll hold ourselves accountable. And this is how you'll see us delivering against it and how you can be part of it.
Jodie: Thanks for that, Sonia. That sounds like a really interesting approach. So we're now going to talk about four tips for leaders going through transformation. So Sonia, what are the four things that are going to enable a successful transformation?
Sonia: There's some really good research from Oxford University. It was led by Professor Andrew White and a former colleague of mine, Adam Canwell. They looked at 4,000 transformations, both successful and unsuccessful. And from that, they drew out some key themes that differentiated successful transformation. So I'll take you through them. The first is leadership alignment and leadership preparation. Your leaders need to be heading in the same direction with a common understanding of what you are trying to achieve.
And they need to be leaning into that transformation. So there has to be deliberate work with the leadership team to prepare them to lead that transformation. And most importantly, to keep leading, not leaving it to chance, able to maintain focus over time. Because too often what we find is that when things go wrong, leaders are very busy people. They get distracted or they move on to the next big thing. And what we know is that successful transformation needs continued attention from an aligned leadership team over time.
Jodie: Okay, so are there any techniques or tools you've used successfully either to get leaders aligned or to keep them aligned?
Sonia: Yes. So as part of that transformation sprint or transformation approach, the leadership team has to be in the room and engaged from the start. In fact, from before the start. And then there needs to be regular ongoing work with them. You can't let them opt out. I always picture people jumping out of an aeroplane, holding arms, linking arms all the way down until the parachutes open. So that's how your leadership team have to be when they're leading a transformation. And you have to bring them together.
Keep bringing them together. And you have to be really deliberate about listening and tapping into the sentiment of your leadership team and the wider workforce. Keep doing it and act on it if you feel that there's that disengagement.
Jodie: One of the challenges I see a lot, and particularly in public sector, is leadership has committed to a transformation. They know they need to do it, but over the course of the transformation, the political reality might shift. There's still a need for the transformation overall, but kind of the driving forces behind it might change. That can make it really hard for leaders to stay aligned. So how do you deal with something like that?
Sonia: Yes. And Jodie, these things happen all the time. There's constant shifts and distractions and unexpected events that pull people away. So and it's true that shifts in policy direction and change of government can lead to a pivot. And this can be very challenging. However, my experience and observation of this approach, the real time strategic approach, transformation sprint, bringing the ecosystem into the room to co-design in an inclusive way. My observation has been that when we do this in this inclusive way, the momentum for transformation tends to transcend political turbulence.
And I've seen a number of times when something that's been co-designed endures because. You're delivering good outcomes. You can provide evidence that it's got value. And so an incoming government or shifting political mood is more likely to run with it because it's working and delivering good outcomes for people rather than change it. It might change the name of it, but very often they'll continue to support it.
Jodie: We had a number of questions from leaders about how to maintain focus on the transformation when you're busy, you've got lots of competing priorities. Any advice on that?
Sonia: Absolutely. It's some simple things. Bake it into the BAU. So make it a regular feature on your leadership team meetings, on your whole team meetings, and also build it into your strategic performance, your strategic plan, your performance metrics frameworks. So that what you're doing is emphasising ownership, responsibility and accountability, which is known as AURA, coined, by the way, by, I heard this the other day from an amazing person who's a former rugby player with the All Blacks, Pep Corrales, who's coined this AURA. Ownership, responsibility, accountability. And it does work.
Jodie: Okay. So you've got your leaders aligned. What's the second tip for a successful transformation?
Sonia: The second is to be deliberate in understanding who are the influences in your organisation system. And again, being deliberate, deliberate, I think, is my word of the day.
Take deliberate steps to bring them on board as part of the transformation process. So you're mobilising a social movement for change, as the research calls it. And there are analytic tools you can use to identify your influences. Influencers don't always have positional authority. They're the people we turn to for advice, who we look to as role models. And so you can use built analytical tools, but you can also... Also use a simple pulse survey or on the ground inquiry to reveal who your influencers are.
Now, a word of warning, don't confuse popular with influencer. They are not necessarily the same thing. And similarly, look beyond your usual go-to people because sometimes our influencers sit outside our line of sight.
Jodie: Yeah, I've seen this used really effectively. An organisation that I was part of going through a major transformation decided that instead of having the leaders continually talking about transformation, they would have kind of change champions in each part of the organisation. And these people were responsible for kind of explaining the change to their own business group, their own teams. And it was actually really successful as someone who was kind of part of the organisation. So getting those messages from someone who I already knew and trusted was kind of a colleague.
And they were able to explain things in a way that was really, really understood the dynamics of our team, understood like the things that we were worried about, rather than just kind of that broad organisational level.
Sonia: Yeah, absolutely. That's absolutely spot on, Jodie, and a really good way of engaging people and bringing the stories to life, making it real for people across the organisation. And I had one client who had their influencer group coach the leaders in the organisation about how they could fine tune their message. messaging to bring people along more successfully. It was extremely powerful and effective and it meant that they were able to move really swiftly to implementation and the change stuck well.
Jodie: Okay, so how do you kind of mobilize that social movement for change?
Sonia: One really effective way to mobilize, to create that social movement for change is through personal agency. From the research, we know that the more we give people permission to try out, to experiment, to make the transformation work for them in ways that are best for their context, the more likely people are to get on board and to stay on board. Now, there will be some elements of any transformation that we want everybody to be doing the same things in the same way. However, they are usually few in number.
So being clear about where we give people authority to be creative is really important. The Oxford research calls this disciplined freedom. So people know this we've got to do just this way, but also this is where we can be creative, try things out, explore. And then encouraging people to feed up their solutions, the things that they found work, encourages everyone to take a greater ownership of implementation and also can lead to some really great ideas that hadn't yet been thought of.
Jodie: We had a great question from Joshua submitted. When you encounter sceptical but influential staff members, what approaches have you found successful in kind of bringing people along rather than forcing them into compliance?
Sonia: Yeah, great question, Joshua. Thank you. Get them in. Get them involved. And listen to what they've got to say because there'll be a grain of truth. Or even some bigger grains of truth. So get them involved, bring them in, get them working with you, either on pre-mortem, as in where could this possibly go wrong, or on developing solutions that help us design something that will work.
Jodie: Okay. And what's the third tip?
Sonia: Ah, the third tip is do the work and communicate it well. It's really essential to continually feed back to people. This is what you told us. This is what we said we would do. This is what's happened since. That way people can see sight of implementation impact because, again, from experience in a really big system or large organisation, it's too easy to lose sight of progress. And then people become disillusioned and they step away. So, you know, they think that nothing's happened when in fact it has.
It's just they can't see it from where they're standing. So communicate, communicate, communicate.
Jodie: So you kind of keep. keeping that momentum visible. So, you know, you go into the transformation sprint and don't feel like nothing's happened for 12 months.
Sonia: Yeah, absolutely. And part of that communication, needs to involve good symbols and stories, real evidence of impact. Again, one of the things that I've seen work really well many times is encouraging as many people as possible to tell their stories about what adopting this transformation has meant for them, a little bit like the example that you mentioned earlier, Jodie. So go out of your way to capture these stories and tell them again and again in highly visible ways. One of my clients has recorded stories from their people, stories of transformation, and they have it played on the screens in the lifts for people to watch and listen to as they travel up and down to and from the office.
Another has stories of our transformation slot in each team meeting and town hall with different people telling their stories about what this transformation has meant to them. Another has had posters printed with real team members and a synopsis of their story. So the more we can bring this to life through the stories of our people, doing this, adopting the change, adopting the transformation and how it's improving their lives really, really makes a difference. And this is where your strategic comms team are vital if you use them well.
And if you don't have strategic comms talent internally, buy it in. It really helps you to cut through to action.
Jodie: Yeah, I agree. It's really important. So what kind of one of the. The techniques that I often use is a kind of a conversation tracker. So after we have a workshop or we finish a piece of work, we give stakeholders a kind of simple but like visually appealing output that captures the discussions we've had, anything that's kind of been agreed, decided, designed. And then it's a great tool that people can take back to their team, organisation, their community and share about their experience and get more people involved in talking about the issues that have been discussed.
We had lots of questions from the audience about how to manage the communication side of transformation, mainly relating to how to keep momentum but without overwhelming people or leaning to kind of change fatigue.
Sonia: Those are really good questions and very, very important. So making those communications and that communication process easy to engage with and frequent. So it's at a glance. I call it at a glance. People can just look at it and get it. Posters, stories, data, evidence, everywhere, every day. And in particular really bring to the fore those everyday stories from across the organisation system and reiterating, we heard what you said, we've done this, this is the difference it's made, this is how my life is better at work. Because of this thing that we're doing differently in this transformation. Next, we will be doing this. So that roadmap ahead, things that we've achieved, signalling success, but it's got to be super accessible.
Jodie: Yeah, I can see how people can get change fatigue from too much kind of data and official messages, but stories really appeal to people, right? And then they're going to get sick of hearing that.
Sonia: And they just, what you run the risk of there is people just rolling their eyes and going, oh, here we go again. And they stop listening, eyes glaze. You've got to keep it fresh.
Jodie: Tip of the day. Okay, so the fourth element was about looking ahead to predict the kind of the really crunchy, tricky moments that are going into a transformation journey. And then managing those carefully in advance and continuing to sense and make sense of how people in the organization or ecosystem are feeling. Exactly how do you pick what are going to be the hard parts?
Sonia: I'm going to take us right back to the beginning of the conversation today, because this is why the diagnosis up front is so important. And it's such a risk to try and rush through it and not do it well. When we do our diagnosis really well, we can predict what the hard parts will be. Some of those will be personal to our workforce or people in our ecosystem. be pertinent or quite unique to our context. Others are entirely predictable. So if you know there's a certain time of year that's difficult for your organisation or business, end of financial year or in a political context, you know, public estimate hearings or budget setting or a change of government, we know that people are going to be constrained for time and under pressure during those periods. We can predict that transformation is going to add to that pressure and probably slow down or stumble at that point. So that pre-mortem, thinking about those things in advance and predicting them, how could this possibly go wrong, where and how, and then thinking ahead to mitigate against it can go a long way.
Jodie: Yeah, that's great. I've actually talked about a pre-mortem before as a technique that I use often in kind of strategic planning. It's one of my favourite things. So some of our regular webinar listeners will have heard about that before. So, okay, so we've identified the hard parts. Then what?
Sonia: Then you take action and where you can involve people in the process of thinking about what do we need to shift and how do we need to shift. Connecting in with people on the ground. I quite often take and have supported people to do this, what I call a diagonal slice of the whole organisation. So a reference group where every team. at every level is represented. So you can touch the sides of the organisation or the system really easily. And we keep connecting in with them and get their ideas, develop solutions together, and also encourage them to take that back into their bit of the organisational system.
Really important, this is this sensing and sense-making. So sensing that things are tricky, sense-making about why that is, and then you have to do stuff. So that might mean mobilising resources, providing more training and capability, shifting systems and processes. It really varies depending on what the issues are. And often people just need a bit more support. So making sure that your people feel really well supported in whatever ways appropriate is crucial.
Jodie: Yeah, I suppose you can kind of time the cadence of your work and implementation around what people need and when they need it.
Sonia: Absolutely. And one of my observations is that often it's as simple as varying the pace and just say, this is a crunchy time for all of us. So we're going to just slow down a little bit here and we'll ramp up again next month or, you know, next week.
Jodie: Thanks, Sonia. So we've covered quite a lot today. If there's one thing you think that a leader should take away from this session, what would it be?
Sonia: Well, it. It is really pay attention to those key pillars that we've talked through today. Invest in diagnosis so that you understand what's really going on. Work out who your influences are and think about how you'll engage them. Listen to your cynics and dissenters because they always have something to teach you. Understand the social dynamics of the organisation system and how these might help or hinder your transformation. Prepare your leaders and keep them leaning in. Remember, jumping out of the aeroplane together.
Then get stuff done and broadcast it. And finally, be kind to yourself and others as you go through the transformation journey. This isn't always easy work and we need nurture along the way.
Jodie: Yeah, I really like that as a tip about being kind to yourself, because I think as leaders, we can often be quite hard on ourselves when things aren't kind of going the way we think they're going to. And a transformation is always going to have something that doesn't go that way, right?
Sonia: Yeah, absolutely.
Jodie: Okay, so we've got some time now for questions from the audience. And a question from Alicia, how do you lead through transformation when you don't have all the answers?
Sonia: Well, I think all of us who lead through transformation don't always have all the answers. And so being more comfortable with that is really important, particularly Now, as we live through uncertain times and we have to be more adaptive in our approach to transformation than ever before. However, that does not mean we do not need a plan. We do need to, it's important to have a plan, to set direction, to have a roadmap, to share with others so they know what to expect, where we're heading and how we'll get there.
And one of the things that's really important is to be prepared to hold this lightly. To be sensitive to changes in the environment, to be open to change, to review more frequently. And now, in the current environment, we're finding that organisations are having to review their plans more frequently than ever before. It's not the kind of, oh, we'll do a plan for 12, three years, we'll review it 12 monthly. People are now reviewing their plans quarterly, at least, if not more regularly, depending on the area that you're in.
And be comfortable to let something go. Or to shift your approach.
Jodie: Yeah, I often think it's also really good just to be transparent about not knowing everything.
Sonia: Yes, yes, absolutely. That's right. And we are uncertain.
Jodie: Yeah.
Sonia: So.
Jodie: Okay, so we've got a question from Rochelle. How do you get your leadership team to own a transformation rather than kind of just having input or exploring what change might mean?
Sonia: Yeah, that's a great question. And it is about getting them involved before the start, right from the beginning. And as I mentioned earlier about really baking it into your way of working. So you're regularly talking about it in your leadership team meetings, in your general meetings, in your measure what matters. So, you know, it's in your performance plan and you're regularly reporting against it. Those that aura, ownership, responsibility, accountability. Thanks, Pep.
Jodie: Yeah, I think it's really important also to have all of your leaders having something that they're involved in or responsible for the transformation, you know, a real commitment that they're of something that they're going to do and they're part of the organisation, even when they aren't leading.
Sonia: And I'll just add something there as well, because also if you design that, that co-design process means that they actually are invested. It's not something that's been imposed. It's something that they've shaped. And I think that makes a huge difference.
Jodie: Yeah. Okay. So we've got a question from Derek. What strategies have you used in the past to recruit or activate change leaders to support a transformation?
Sonia: Yeah, so that understanding your influences, but also engaging the wider organisation and communication. And I think there's two bits to this. There's knowing who your change leaders might be and thinking outside the box in terms of who they are. So you're thinking about who are influencers. So map those and bring them in. So that diagonal slice model that I mentioned earlier, where you actually are very deliberate about saying, these are the people, we want people in every team. One organisation I worked with recently, they asked for volunteers, large national organisation.
They asked for volunteers, they wanted 150, they got 200. And then they engaged those volunteers in leading a local change process, keeping people connected to the transformation as it rolled out, and also thinking about what sort of, and tapping into the workforce immediately around them to think about potential solution.
Jodie: Okay, so we've nearly reached the end of our...
Sonia: By the way, Derek, the more you get, the better.
Jodie: So we've nearly reached the end of today's time, but we're happy to stick around for a few more questions. But if you do have to leave, thanks so much for joining us. We appreciate it. But for those who can stay on, it seems like we've got a lot of questions. So a question from Pradeep. From a delivery perspective, how do you align and mobilize everything? So kind of the transformation resources, budget spending, pace of transformation program, goals, milestones.
Sonia: Pradeep, great question. And Jodie, by the way, please feel free to jump in on any of these questions. I know you do a lot of work. work in this space. So I think that goes back to that kind of plan up front, Pradeep. And you do need to, all of the things you've listed there, the resources, the budget, the pace are critically important and need to be thought through as part of your initial plan. And then be prepared to adjust. One of the things that we see where organisations quite often fall down is challenges around resource fluidity.
So the ability to move resources to where they... Are going to be needed because very often in organisations, sadly, we kind of quite often see our resources as our own and kind of hide them under the bed. So creating a culture and mindset which says we're the custodian of resources on behalf of the organisation and the system and being comfortable about bringing those in and realigning them is critically important.
Jodie: We've got a great one here from Leah about leadership alignment. So if your leaders aren't aligned, should you not move forward until you get them aligned? Or kind of how do you make sure there's this kind of continuous alignment checking in?
Sonia: Well, the continuous alignment check-in is really important, Leah, even if people start aligned, because, as I mentioned earlier, leaders very often are busy and they can get distracted. So that continuous check-in is absolutely spot on. And if you don't... have an aligned team, I do think you need to think about how and how you can create support for the transformation in a different way. And if you have got some people who are not on board, what are they going to do? And who are you going to bring around you to lead the transformation?
That is a risky space.
Jodie: And another question from Leah. So how do you avoid your kind of influences just being popular? And how do you work around people who are kind of barriers?
Sonia: Yeah, another great question, Leah. Thank you. So that's where the pulse check and the kind of being analytic about this is really important. So don't just go on, oh, you know, Leah, I see you, Jodie, I see you. Go beyond that, go beneath it and do some pulse checks with your workforce about who would they, who do they turn to for advice? Who do they go to for support? Who do they look to as role models? And go across the organisation to understand those. And also, you can also ask the question, who is it who is influential but not noticed?
Jodie: Yeah, yeah. And I think you were right before when you talked about needing to get a lot of them, you know, because each of those 200 volunteers that you talked about, they're probably not all going to be effective, right? But if half of them are, then you've done a right thing. Really good job.
Sonia: Absolutely. And also what you've done is you've created a 200 strong, you've mobilized a 200 strong kind of force for change by being there.
Jodie: Yeah. Okay, so another question from Pradeep. What would be, is there anything different about a digital transformation?
Sonia: Oh, that's a good question. So I think that from my experience of kind of large scale digital transformations, then the key thing here is one about making sure that it actually does what it's needed. So don't, you know, that it's engineered in the right way to deliver results for people. And again, that's where that upfront diagnosis and co-design upfront. So you've got really good practical things that are going to work. And then also that notion of trying things out. And I'll take this from the kind of our tech friends, fail fast and fix it so that you're actually, again, really sensing, sense making and able to adjust quickly.
And also then those stories of success, people trying stuff out and being able to talk about how the transformation has assisted them rather than got in the way. Because people quite often are scared of digital.
Jodie: Yeah.
Sonia: Whereas the more that we can talk about how it's helping and give people that experience, the better. And encourage people to play.
Jodie: Yeah, I think the one thing, the one tip I would give about a digital transformation is not to focus too much on the tool. Like obviously the digital tools are really important, but the surrounding transformation, the people being ready, the culture is equally as important and often not given as much attention.
Sonia: Yeah, pay more attention to the people than the computers, the tech.
Jodie: So a question from Wayne, how do you motivate leaders during the planning phase, especially when they're likely to be the ones who will have to operationalise the change and may oppose the idea of kind of more work on their plate?
Sonia: Yeah, great question, Wayne. So this is where if you're engaging in a transformation, you have to create the space and support for your leaders to lean in and keep leaning in. So that resource fluidity, the mobilisation of resource, the building of capability, maybe having to bring in a bit of extra capability for a while. All of that matters so that people feel that they're really well supported. As we, you know, we can't often say when we turn up the heat, we have to strengthen the holding environment.
So you have to strengthen the holding environment for them so they know that they will be supported and also celebrate success along the way. Don't wait till the end. Small successes celebrated frequently.
Jodie: A question from Derek. What's your advice? for when leaders opt to limit communication out of concern that kind of progress isn't meeting expectations?
Sonia: I would take a different tack there, Derek, because what I would say is this is a time to get back together and be transparent and say, look, this is interesting. This isn't quite working the way that we want it to. Let's come together and think about what we can do differently. And very often people at all levels and from the ground up will have really good ideas about small, smart fixes or big fixes that can really help you to cut through to action. So don't hide it, address it.
Jodie: Yeah, and I think often when people hear nothing, they assume something that might be far worse than what you're actually, your lack of progress is. Absolutely.
Sonia: We make up stories. We make up stories about intent. And yeah, you're right, Jodie, very often they're bad stories, not good stories.
Jodie: So a question from Kate, how does this kind of highly collaborative approach to transformation and co-design deal with the reality that some change leaders may be personally and kind of negatively impacted? So downsizing, restructures, those kind of things.
Sonia: Yeah. Yeah. And again, with sensitivity is Kate, obviously. But I've used this to redesign an organisation. Like one organisation that was a leading large, very large. 57,000 people. And I had to take out 60% of the budget.
And we use this redesign process in a really collaborative way. We did it in a slightly different way because we did the kind of core. But then what we did as well was engage smaller groups of people all the way through the organization to talk about their ideas for efficiency. And if they were going to redesign and had to reduce by this much, how would they do it? And we came up with some amazing solutions. And delivered well and with great and with people feeling really engaged and treated with dignity and respect.
So, yeah, it was hard, but I'm so glad we chose to do it that way.
Jodie: Okay, that's probably a good place to wrap up. Thank you so much for staying and Sonia for answering all of the questions. I really hope people enjoyed the session. We're always happy to continue the conversation. So if today's webinar has sparked any ideas, please do get in touch because we'd love to chat. And thanks again. We really appreciate you joining us and we look forward to seeing you at the next one. Have a great rest of your day.
Sonia: Bye.
