A Messier Approach To Change Can Have a Better Outcome (CSPI Part V)
View some of Marci’s recent work at The Sales Operations Blog or catch her tweets at marcireynolds12
I was recently involved in a large business transformation project where we identified changes in the sales organization that we felt would strengthen our value proposition and help us gain market share. This included changes to roles, org structure, sales territories, compensation plans, how we used CRM.. and much more.
For a number of months the transformation was managed as “a project” and many of the key stakeholders and senior sales leaders were members of different cross-functional implementation teams. It looked good on paper, but something was missing. We were moving forward but there was a definite lack of engagement.
We brainstormed what to do differently and ultimately decided to downplay the project approach and turn the transformation work into simply- our “day to day”. We took some of the key stakeholders and converted them from team members to leaders in charge of a segment of transformation planning and implementation. We downplayed project structure.. and played up leadership.
Within a few weeks we saw the transformation move in a new direction. Engagement was up, more decisions were getting made and we saw less multi-tasking and blackberry reading during key meetings. There were some bumps along the road as not everyone is cut out to lead change initiatives, but we still got the work done, most of it on time.
A key phrase during this time was “business cadence”. The objective was to turn the changes we desired into a new business cadence or flow.. the new way to run our "day to day" business.
As someone who likes to have a plan and a project this was a good learning experience. Sometimes less structure and a messier approach is much more effective. To implement deep and lasting change you must have the full engagement of leadership and key stakeholders.
For a number of months the transformation was managed as “a project” and many of the key stakeholders and senior sales leaders were members of different cross-functional implementation teams. It looked good on paper, but something was missing. We were moving forward but there was a definite lack of engagement.
We brainstormed what to do differently and ultimately decided to downplay the project approach and turn the transformation work into simply- our “day to day”. We took some of the key stakeholders and converted them from team members to leaders in charge of a segment of transformation planning and implementation. We downplayed project structure.. and played up leadership.
Within a few weeks we saw the transformation move in a new direction. Engagement was up, more decisions were getting made and we saw less multi-tasking and blackberry reading during key meetings. There were some bumps along the road as not everyone is cut out to lead change initiatives, but we still got the work done, most of it on time.
A key phrase during this time was “business cadence”. The objective was to turn the changes we desired into a new business cadence or flow.. the new way to run our "day to day" business.
As someone who likes to have a plan and a project this was a good learning experience. Sometimes less structure and a messier approach is much more effective. To implement deep and lasting change you must have the full engagement of leadership and key stakeholders.