Change Strategy

Executive summary

Change Strategy

The pace of business is accelerating, and companies must change in response. Yet 50-75% of change programs fail. Companies that implement change effectively give themselves a significant competitive edge by focusing on the factors that are essential to success: ensuring Executional Certainty; establishing effective sponsorship, governance, and a program management office (PMO); enabling the extended leadership team; and engaging the broader organization. Companies need a comprehensive, systematic approach to implementing change that focuses on the components that matter most.

Most companies understand that the ability to deliver bold change is increasingly critical to competitive advantage. That means more comprehensive—and more frequent—change programs. Many boards have appointed CEOs and senior executives with that explicit mandate, and almost all leaders recognize the need to take even successful enterprises to new levels of performance. But organizational change initiatives have a very low success rate and executives need to understand the stumbling blocks that cause transformation efforts to fail. Per some leading global surveys, two factors have increasingly become recognized as the leading causes of failed change initiatives a) A lack of clearly defined milestones and objectives to gauge progress; and b) A lack of, or insufficient commitment, by senior management. Success requires overcoming these challenges head-on, through a comprehensive and structured change effort that includes the right mix of processes, governance, metrics, and behaviors. Moreover, building superior and lasting change capabilities has become a competitive advantage. Companies that are ready, willing, and able to face the challenges of change initiatives are better equipped to manage new changes over time. A lack of clearly defined milestones and a lack of or insufficient commitment by senior management have increasingly become recognized as the leading causes of failed change initiatives.

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Service Methodology

Methods used in successful change projects are all based on one fundamental insight: that major change will not happen easily for a long list of challenges as mentioned above. To be effective, a method designed to alter strategies, reengineer processes, or improve quality must address these challenges.

Therefore, for a change program to be successful following steps need to be undertaken: Creating a sense of urgency – driven by the management of the company, this is primarily the step where ‘tone’ is set at the top based on data which would be identifying major opportunities or potential challenges; Creating a guiding coalition/ team – it is important for the management then to identify a team of people with full autonomy and responsibility to make that change happen under the guidance of the management; Developing a vision and strategy for change – under this step that team through a workshop or a series of workshops identifies / defines the broad strategy / vision for change – depending on the scope of change this could either be to increase efficiency at a process level or entering / capturing new markets; Communicating the change vision – this is probably the most important step in the journey to’ change’ whereby, depending on the type of change (business, department/ function or process) the vision and strategy are effectively communicated to wider organization; Implementation road map and allocation of resources – a detailed implementation roadmap is prepared and ‘rigor tested’ to ensure that all the ‘key implementation steps’, risks, costs, performance indicators and timelines are agreed and implementation responsibilities fixed; Project management, ongoing reviews and celebration of small successes – Implementation is project managed using the ‘implementation life cycle methodology’ and periodic reviews are undertaken to ensure that all tasks are going as planned, costs are being managed to budget and risks are managed pro-actively. This will ensure that the ‘change team’ delivers as tasked; Project closure, learning and communication – project closure meetings are a key to developing a culture of change in the organization. Here not only are the successes, the near misses and learnings discussed by the project team, ongoing challenges are also discussed and new projects outlined. This ensures that ‘managing change’ becomes an ongoing process and becomes the DNA of the organization.

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Service Options

Companies can elect whether they just require Appleton Greene for advice and support with the Bronze Client Service, for research and performance analysis with the Silver Client Service, for facilitating departmental workshops with the Gold Client Service, or for complete process planning, development, implementation, management and review, with the Platinum Client Service. Ultimately, there is a service to suit every situation and every budget and clients can elect to either upgrade or downgrade from one service to another as and when required, providing complete flexibility in order to ensure that the right level of support is available over a sustainable period of time, enabling the organization to compensate for any prescriptive or emergent changes relating to: Customer Service; E-business; Finance; Globalization; Human Resources; Information Technology; Legal; Management; Marketing; or Production.

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Service Mission

Change Management service will help companies ensure that the probability of success of their ‘change agenda’ increases significantly, with the use of a very well-articulated process. This process is rigorous enough to help companies assess measurable impact and risks & rewards as they go through this journey of change. The ambition of this service is for companies to move away from being reactive to change and to become pro-active to change by institutionalizing a culture of ‘leading change’ and not ‘Managing Change’. An good example of this is a multi-billion $ finance change program that was initiated by one of the leading financial services companies in the world. The objective of the program was to move from archaic and often disjointed finance processes to a slick and smart business support function. This entailed a complete overhaul of the three elements of people, process and systems at a global scale.

The program was initiated at a global scale and four years into it and after spending close to USD 150 Mio, the company realized that the project was actually failing given that they had made incorrect choices of leadership for the program and had grossly underestimated the impact/ scale of change. Realizing this the senior management jolted the system by creating a ‘sense of urgency’ among the ranks and re-vamped the entire team, while scaling down the spend to a focused pilot in its North American operations. By doing this, they dramatically increased the probability of change by bringing a sense of urgency and scaling back their global ambitions till the time the ‘pilot’ was successful. This was a ‘game changer’ the company successfully rolled out the program Globally and managed change incrementally and on a ‘business case’ basis. As they moved away from the approach of throwing money at a ‘big’ change idea to a well-articulated and manageable change program, they were able to establish a globally cohesive ‘finance function’ at optimal cost. The function today has change from being a ‘compliance’ function to a ‘business partner’ in decision making.

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Service objectives

The following list represents the Key Service Objectives (KSO) for the Appleton Greene Change Strategy service.

1. Establishing Urgency
   Large number of change projects fail because of complacency within the organisations. It is for the senior management of the organisation or function to identify this nuance and start creating a sense of urgency. This is often done by creating a ‘crisis’ and openly talking about it and its impact on the wider function or organisation examples of this should be to allow incurring a significant loss for a quarter based on current level of performance, re-vamp the incentive program by setting goals to external performance benchmarks comparable with past performance, stop senior management ‘happy talk, and start showing the ‘honest picture’ and by using consultants to assess current level of performance objectively. Once a ‘sense of urgency’ is created, change agenda can easily be drawn and significant barriers be removed.
2. Creating Coalitions
   This is one of the most fundamental steps in the process of ‘leading effective change’. Under this objective a careful selection of coalition is done (in other words, a change team is established) and enabled. This is dependent on the type of change and its probable impact example being if change is for enabling a particular IT system used by a function, it is imperative to select senior people with both functional and IT expertise to be overseen by a manager who can ‘lead change’. What is also important here is to establish a break from normal organisational hierarchies and provide adequate visibility to the project.
3. Focused Vision
   Once the team is formed, it is important for the change lead to establish a focused vision and strategy for the change agenda. This should ideally be deliberated and articulated by the change team and seek buy-in from all the stakeholders. Once established, a proper communication strategy should be prepared to relay consistent and cohesive messaging across the organisation – this is to ensure that everybody knows why and what is being done and also to provide enough visibility to the change team, such that they can overcome the ‘resistance to change’ within the organisation. Ideally at this stage a broad implementation plan along with broad timelines should also be established and shared.
4. Implementation Plan
   A detailed implementation plan is then prepared and stress tested with the change lead and team. This is to ensure that the entire vision/ strategy of change is broken down into manageable projects and business cases/ budgets are prepared and keep performance indicators are established. As we go along the journey of change, delta in the key performance indicators is measured to ensure that the program is ‘on track’ and risks are continuously identified and managed. To ensure that the implementation plan is complete in all respects, stress test is performed by independently deliberating the same and studying all the inter- dependencies. Plan is divided into smaller deliverables to ensure that continuous ‘wins’ are delivered that leads to a larger change.
5. Project Management
   Last but not the least it is extremely important to establish an effective project management capability. This will ensure that the project progress is monitored, stakeholder communication managed, risks identified pro-actively and corrective actions taken. There are several tools that can be used to manage the Program Management Office and will depend on the size and scale of the change projects.

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Testimonials

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Azure Power

“Mr. Chopra delivered an overall savings of over US40 mio by aggregating items to be procured, entering into strategic contracts using economies of scale. The entire supply chain process for solar industry in India is now modelled around demand aggregation both for material and key services driving significant cost savings for developers.”

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Manufacturing

“Successful growth on a global scale is determined by the quality of strategic partnering or strategic alliance management. Appleton Greene has been a real find in terms of corporate training services because their flexibility and international coverage makes them a valuable asset to have.”

A quotation taken from a client reference within the Manufacturing industry.

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HSBC

“Mr. Chopra was a part of the Global Change Management Team which delivered a new Finance Centre of Excellence by aggregating and migrating similar global processes under one roof. Processes were then re-engineered thereby delivering a two tier savings, first around labor arbitrage and other by making the processes more efficient – overall saving of approximately 15% was delivered.”

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Consultancy

“It is definitely a major advantage that Appleton Greene is able to provide tangible products to their clients. It is easy for clients to identify with their services, they can see them, understand them and engage with them. Appleton Greene tenaciously sticks to what they know and do best, corporate training. This ensures that there is never any conflict of interests.”

A quotation taken from a client reference within the Consultancy industry.

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More detailed achievements, references and testimonials are confidentially available to clients upon request.

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Industries

This service is primarily available to the following industry sectors:

Energy

The United States is a leader in the production and supply of energy, and is one of the world’s largest energy consumers. U.S. energy companies produce oil, natural gas, renewable fuels, as well as electricity from clean energy sources such as wind, solar, and nuclear power. U.S. energy companies further transmit, distribute, and store energy through complex infrastructure networks that are supported by emerging products and services such as smart grid technologies. Growing consumer demand and world class innovation – combined with a competitive workforce and supply chain capable of building, installing, and servicing all energy technologies – make the United States one of the world’s most attractive markets with total investment in the U.S. energy sector at $280 billion.

The United States is home to a thriving renewable energy industry, with globally competitive firms in all technology subsectors, including the wind, solar, geothermal, hydropower, biomass, and biofuels sectors. Today, the United States produces more geothermal energy than any other country (2,542MW); more biomass power than any other country (14,278 MW); enjoys the second largest wind industry (82,735 MW); the third largest hydropower industry (80,244 MW); and the fourth largest solar industry (41,825 MW). The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) projects that by 2030, the share of renewables in the total U.S. energy mix could reach 27 percent (including almost 50 percent of electricity generation). This would mean an increase from 134 GW of renewable energy in 2010 to over 700 GW in just two decades. Even with less optimistic scenarios, the capacity is expected to double by 2030. On this trajectory, the United States already had the second highest new investment in the world in 2016, with nearly 23GW of added renewable energy capacity and $100 billion in clean energy transactions according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In 2016, while clean energy investments continued to slump in Europe and Brazil, the United States accounted for 20 percent of the world’s total new renewable energy investment.

With access to abundant natural resources, the pellet and ethanol industries are also increasing their capacity – particularly to serve overseas markets. America’s ethanol industry is the largest and most efficient in the world, incorporating technological innovations to produce over 15 billion gallons of ethanol annually. In addition, the industry is expanding to new markets. During 2016, the U.S. ethanol industry exported an estimated 1 billion gallons of ethanol – around 7 percent of its total production – to markets around the world. Investment opportunities also exist for the development of advanced biofuels utilizing new technologies and feedstocks, particularly in the aviation sector. U.S. wood pellet manufacturers can now produce over 13 million metric tons of pellets annually. Much of the production has been added in recent years to export to Europe. In 2016, over 4.7 million metric tons were exported and new pellet mills have been brought online to meet the growing demand.

For the first time in nearly two decades, the United States produced more oil domestically than it imported from foreign sources, and the United States is now the number-one natural gas producer in the world. Despite low prices for crude oil and natural gas, the United States remains a major source of growth in oil and gas exploration and development, especially in shale and ultra deep-water resources. U.S. companies are safely and responsibly developing our energy resources while advancing cleaner forms of energy, such as natural gas. U.S. companies have developed advanced and cost-competitive techniques for extracting hydrocarbons from shale and hard to reach offshore oil and gas deposits, altering the U.S. oil and gas sector and the domestic energy landscape. These techniques