Case Studies

Case Study One

Making Change real and sustainable through enacting positive people development

State Emergency Services agency
Alan Hudson was retained as a specialist organisation change advisor to help initiate culture change through improved people management processes across the organisation. This was a key opening strategy on the part of an incoming CIO and his IT Executive, in the way they manage the people side of the organisation

The Client
One of Australia’s most respected State Emergency Services organisations. Like most agencies of this nature, the Human Resources focus and people priorities had been on operational services personnel. These were the personnel out there in the community, on the streets, providing highly visible and vital services, often life saving services. These personnel represented over 90% of the workforce.

The agency operated historically on a command and control structure and hierarchy, often modelled on their military forebears. But leaders in the Corporate Support areas recognised the organisation needed to change and adapt to the contemporary challenges and paradoxes facing any government organisation in 2010.

The Challenge
The new CIO came to the agency with a passion and a mission to reinvigorate the IT division with an initial focus on staff morale and internal communications. When he arrived, he found his new IT team had had almost no culture or people development focus. Despite this, staff surveys revealed high morale levels, and an impressively high level of clarity about what the mission and values of the agency were. But they desperately wanted some focus and attention paid to them as individuals.

The Approach
The approach adopted by Change Dimensions was to combine activities designed to support the organisational objectives and values, with people’s expressed desire and motivation for individual change and development. Alan helped put in place an integrated series of change initiatives:

• Culture survey of all IT staff using focus groups and mini questionnaire to identify gaps between the current morale, internal communications, and learning requirements, and what staff wished for and desired as the organisation responded to community and Government driven change

• Psychometric profiling of senior managers which provided them with an evaluation on their strengths, preferences, and self insight to match them with the merging organisation’s direction

• Designing a Work and Development Planning process to support the change, help make the changes ‘stick’, and provide day to day practical tools to support the required transition

• Provide coaching to critical managers requiring additional support and guidance as they navigate their way through the invigorated organisation

The Outcome

• IT staff participated in a comprehensive Learning and Development schedule of activities comprising external management training, in-house technical training, project activity and mentoring

• Staff morale remains high and the IT team is recognised as the ‘star’ branch that other areas want to emulate

• Staff communication and morale surveys indicate increases in key indicators from when the process started two years prior

• Alan is now monitoring returned staff plans for the next financial year and continues to provide advice, support and specialist input to key managers.

• based on success of rollout Change Dimensions are now assisting their client in rolling out the work and development planning initiative to rest of Corporate Support

Case Study Two

Repositioning and behavioural change to enable a Government agency’s HR Team deliver higher value adding services

The Client
The Human Resources Branch - high profile NSW Government agency

The Challenge
To develop a plan and activities to move HR staff from a transactional ‘personnel’ mentality and enable them to provide proactive, strategic people interventions to their internal clients to support the achievement of business goals. This required a fundamental cultural change - together with a development program to help them acquire the skills needed to operate as consultants to their internal clients.

The Approach
Alan was appointed as the external change manager. Our approach encompassed

• Improving the cohesion of the Human Resources senior management team, by involving them in developing the strategy, and design / implementing the change program

• Leadership development - assisting the senior team to lead their staff through the transition, by providing them with personal feedback and coaching on their performance as team leaders.

• Acting as a catalyst to get change projects re- energised

• Running a tailored two-day training program in consultancy skills for all 80 staff, to start to build the skills required for their new roles as Human Resource Advisors

The Outcome

Within 6 months:

• Client feedback showed a marked improvement in the department’s responsiveness, quality of service and willingness to provide additional services.

• Employees reported greater personal confidence and skills to embrace their new roles as consultants.

• Senior managers experienced significant improvements in communication within the team and with other executives
  

2 years on:

• Client feedback had confirmed a complete cultural change and enhanced client service orientation continues to reap benefits

Case Study Three:

Restructure to improve customer responsiveness and project delivery

The Client
Australian Broadcaster

The Challenge
Senior executives sought assistance to help them undertake the reorganisation of the 200 person Technology Group, to enable improved project delivery and customer responsiveness

The Approach
The aim was to maximise staff engagement in the process, ensure that they understood why the restructuring was necessary, and help them to embed the new structure in their daily operations. We did this by taking the following steps:

• Identified staff morale issues and the psychological response to potential changes, through focus groups· Understand the major variations in project outcomes and gaps in key relationships through interviews with key internal customers

• Completed a best practice survey of how comparable organisations structured their technology project functions. This confirmed both a diverse range of organisational structures, with no one-size-fits-all model

• Development of three alternative structures, a business case and the customer implications for each, for consultation with staff

• Facilitation of staff planning workshops: aim was twofold: present these structures for staff discussion, also for senior managers to propose the final adopted structure and to explain how it addressed staff concerns.

The Outcome

• Technology staff accepted the need for restructure and reasons for increased commercial focus.

• Senior management gained an awareness of the problems posed by the current restructuring plan

• Staff identified changes that delivered improved response to customers.

• Total staff engagement and ownership of restructure; a turning point in the change program and expressed greater confidence in the process

• Managers and staff developed a transition plan to implement changes, including a communication strategy for customers, a skills development plan with a strong mentoring focus, and changes to document an approach to capture intellectual and tacit knowledge.
  
  

Case Study Four

How do we engage our senior team in our new leadership charter?

The Client
Leading Financial Services organisation

The Challenge
The leadership group for this leading financial services organisation, a household name in financial services, insurance and investment management. They had developed a new and radical ‘charter’ for how they would lead the organisation. But they wanted, and needed a different way of getting the message home - something innovative, different, and intellectually engaging that would spark their imagination

The Approach
What was required here was something different. Intellectually engaging, thought provoking

• Alan researched (within the business) wrote and scripted “Hypothetica’, a scenario based business simulation involving the entire senior leadership team, over a series of eight workshops

• All sixty of the top team participated in the workshops

• Executives took on senior roles scripted for them and acted out how they would behave as the scenario unfolded

• After extensive debriefings Alan helped write executive user guides and case examples which helped bring home to client executives the everyday practicalities of applying new behavioural strategies in their daily lives as leaders

Outcome

• higher than expected levels of engagement and takeup from leadership group· demonstrable improvement in people leadership styles from whole executive team

• business behaviour around how people were managed, appraised, rewarded all dramatically improved