Each year October brings my mom and daughter's favorite holiday, Halloween. It's the time of year when we celebrate the end of summer, dress up in spooky costumes and embrace the things that scare us.
This year, Halloween reminds me what scared me most this year: writing my new book.
If you are familiar with my first book with my co-author, Patty Stolpman, you know that we wrote it to share our change management methodology. We refer to some stories about change and provide a set of checklists. It's factual and unemotional, though we included some humor.
When I started working on Make Change Happen: A Leader's Guide in Times of Constant Change, my editor pushed me to get personal. To tell stories about changes that have been done to me, and changes I led. To tell the unvarnished truth about how people respond to and lead change, and to share my feelings: the good, the bad, and the ugly.
As an engineer and business professional, this was frightening to me!
I'm not comfortable telling the world how it felt when managers and executives drove change in ways that were hard on their people. I tend to tell trusted friends about the times when people were disrespectful and unprofessional, but I don't write about it.
What surprised me is the personal stories, warts and all, are what my beta readers loved the most!
Beta Reader Feedback
"The stories are AWESOME! Any way to add even more?"
"Your use of personal examples throughout is stellar!"
"This is a book that should be read by a broad group of corporate executives to understand how their behavior impacts the success of change initiatives!"
Sneak Peak Excerpt from Chapter 7: We’re All in the Change Boat Together; Some People Are Facing the Wrong Way, Some Refuse to Wear Lifejackets, and Others Thought We Were Going to the Movies
Aimee was the best sponsor I ever had, but she did not understand change management nor the power of a picture to help everyone see her vision in the same way.
Aimee is the Director of Technical Accounting for the largest private company in the world. Aimee was clear about the objective of the finance transformation I was hired to lead for 17 countries in the western hemisphere. Though there was technology being implemented for this global finance change, what was most important for Aimee was to be able to produce a report within 18 months to meet the regulatory change. If the technology was not ready in 18 months, that was OK. The global process and system could go live after the regulatory deadline, as long as Aimee could produce the report she needed.
Rosana was my change, communication, and education counterpart to lead this transformation in the Americas. Rosana speaks English, Portuguese, and Portunhol - a hybrid of Spanish and Portuguese used in countries where Spanish speakers and Portuguese speakers are in close contact, such as between Brazil and its Spanish-speaking neighbors Uruguay and Paraguay. I speak English and was re-learning Spanish, so Rosana and I could communicate our implementation plan with all of the people impacted by the regulatory change.
Neither Rosana nor I are accountants, but we both know how to lead complex organizational and technology changes.
Rosana and I agreed that we needed to draw the end-to-end process to show how this regulatory change and the new roles being hired into the company would fit within the existing finance processes.
Aimee said no.
Do not waste your time on drawing this picture.
Focus on the plan: capture the data we need and develop the training materials so all countries will comply with the new process.
Whenever people within an organization hear about a change impacting a department that they work with, these people can leap to incorrect assumptions that someone else is about to disrupt their business operations, and there was no exception here.
Finance provides services to many other areas of the company: Procurement, Plant Operations, Compliance, Risk Management, Treasury, HR, senior leadership. Teams upstream and downstream of the changes heard there was a transformation happening in Finance and mistakenly thought we were about to delay and disrupt their work without consulting them.
Misperceptions and rumors are always worse than reality, and rumors about this Finance change spread quickly.
Meetings with upset teams filled our calendars and took precious time away from the transformation timeline. People stopped us in the corridors and expressed their concerns.
Department leaders called my manager and complained that I was creating bottlenecks and destroying their customer commitment timelines.
Plant executives who make decisions whether to buy or lease buildings when they need to expand their operations thought we were second guessing their authority.
Procurement who negotiate and sign the company’s contracts, scheduled emergency meetings with their executives to forcefully tell Rosana and me about their tight timelines and why we couldn’t make changes to their contract process.
Invoice receivers who make sure payments go out in a timely manner per negotiated contracts complained to my manager that I had not involved them in my project.
None of those teams nor their processes were changing as a result of this transformation.
Finance was not taking over their departments, nor interrupting their processes nor their timelines to provide products to customers. So much time was wasted on unnecessary meetings and unnecessary fear caused by not having a picture to show the only process changing was within Finance.
Even if your vision is clear to you, others may understand it differently.
Despite what Aimee said, Rosana and I decided we had to draw the end-to-end picture.
We met with the same teams who were upset about all the changes they thought we were making to disrupt their work.
Rosana drew the picture showing exactly what was changing and what was not. In that picture, we showed:
Plant Executives: there was no change to their process of making business decisions whether to buy or lease a building.
Procurement: there were no changes to their processes. Once we learned that some countries used Purchase Orders and some did not, we included those two paths in the picture for Procurement, to make it clear that regardless of which way they finalized their contracts, the new Finance process did not change. Finance continued to accept their purchase terms and documentation.
Invoice Receivers: there were no changes to the invoice receivers process from the first invoice received and paid, through the final invoice paid and the contract ended.
We added the new accountant role, showing what needed to be sent to individuals, and developed the exception process if the data was incomplete.
In business, contracts can change over time. Within our change team, we figured out the process in the event a contract was re-negotiated or cancelled prior to the original contract end date. This way the end-to-end picture showed all of the upstream and downstream teams, as well as the new accountants, what might prompt the need for another interaction between the departments.
In the final end-to-end process picture, Rosana added a light bulb symbol 💡 to indicate where the step was new, along with the link to the training she developed so everyone knew where to go to learn how to do this step.
Aimee loved the end-to-end process we developed for her finance transformation!
Despite telling us not to create it, once Aimee saw how clear the picture was and how well it dispelled the myths that Finance was changing other departments’ processes, she adopted the picture globally.
All of the regions where the transformation was happening used our picture to ensure consistency, and to help people understand what the change meant within the company.
Beyond that transformation, Aimee continues to refer to the picture Rosana and I created as the “gold standard” to get everyone aligned on one vision.
What's Coming Next?
Stay tuned for next month's newsletter where I will give you an update on my book revision process and how you can help me start building our community of change leaders.
In the meantime, if you know someone who will benefit from this book, please share my link to they can join our community!
Michelle Smeby is Transformation Leader at wHolistic Change, Inc., with 25 years of experience leading sustainable business and technology transformations. She has led global changes in 70 countries spanning 5 continents and 17 time zones.
As a public speaker, Michelle regularly presents at professional conferences on overcoming resistance to change, leadership, and change agent skills.
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