Skills and experience

Sam: Most importantly, you need clear communication of the outcomes and why this transformation is happening and what it means to individuals. Securing buy in will go a long way to helping your organisation accept the change. You need to help them understand that change is about making their lives easier in the long term, but in the short to medium term, it may be more difficult. You need to look at the overall change impact by role an organisational unit, especially if there are multiple concurrent change programmes. Non programme roles such as change champions and super users will help with the transition. Too often change champions are nominated or volunteer and just expected to know what to do. Investing in identifying the right people to take on these roles and developing their skills will be instrumental before, during and after transformation for long term success. Capacity to absorb the change starts with understanding to be successful in landing the change your organisation needs to have the required skills. Training is a fundamental part of this to prepare your people for change. The scale of this is too often underestimated. Absorbing change can't solely be driven by the transmission team. It needs dedicated business ownership and planning from the outset to be successful.

Richard: The first step is to honestly assess the current skills and capacity of your business against what you will need to deliver transformation. It's very easy to underestimate the time and experience needed. Once you've got this information, you need to identify what capability that you should build versus what you should buy in from third parties or the contractor market. Key facts in your decision making will be the level of in-house control needed during delivery, and then the retained skills required once the transformation is complete. When selecting external partners, there are really two key areas. Consider cultural fit alongside the size and maturity of the potential partner. Culture's really important as this should be the start of a long-term relationship, not a one-off transaction. When it comes to size and maturity, you're looking for the 'Goldilocks' zone. They must be large enough to scale to meet your needs, but small enough to really care about your business.

Kofi: Everyone should be working towards the same goal, and that goal should be communicated from the top down to all stakeholders. Engagement from leadership will energise the team. Having diverse groups of individuals with different backgrounds and capabilities will help you to address issues from a variety of perspectives. Definitely empower the individuals who are part of your team. Make sure that they have the ability to make decisions on their own. Everyone should have the ability to share their perspectives, and it should be delivery through consensus, meaning everyone should participate in the decision making where necessary. We should highlight the successes of individuals on the programme and also show them their rewards and compensation.

Dave: Unfortunately, there's no easy answer to this one. The difficulty of making the right people available to lead and deliver transformational change is probably only matched by just how critical it is. You often need to free up the people who are least available while keeping the business running at the same time. Now that might involve using temporary contract cover for someone's day job, or it might involve restructuring operational responsibilities for a period of time. You have to apply the same creativity that you would if someone was out long-term sick, for example, or went on maternity leave. 

Abi: Your leadership team are experts in running your business, but not necessarily in transforming it. Large-scale transformation is not part of business as usual, so it's important to recognise that business leaders could need support and training to help them effectively champion the transformation and lead long-term when it's complete. Business leaders should not only understand the end goal of transformation, but also what each step along the journey will look and feel like. For example, some people might be worried about finding defects during a testing phase, even though the point of testing is to find faults. Manage expectations by explaining the purpose and process of each step. Bring it to life through the experiences of others and the team. Leaders should talk about the business outcomes which will be delivered instead of just IT benefits or initiatives which often mean nothing to business.