What does digital transformation mean to you?
Nina Muhleisen, Founder at Three6 sat down with Tamara Hildebrandt, our Culture & Change Lead to share some thoughts on all things digital transformation and change and wasn’t it an absolute treat!
Nina:
Hi Tamara and welcome to Three6! You’ve been working with Three6 now for about six months in a variety of different projects. Let’s start off with telling people what you are passionate about?
Tamara:
So I’m passionate about change. I’ve been working in change for a long time, but it’s not just about change management, it’s about the impact I have on people and people’s experience at work. I watched Spotswood with Anthony Hopkins many, many years ago and with The Efficiency Experts and other names for the movie depending on where you live – It was all about what you do, and how you improve a business is important, but the impact you have on people is as important and engaging people along the way means that you’ll get the most benefits out of the continuous improvement activities that you have in your business. So definitely passionate about people!
Nina:
Perfect. So why did you join Three6?
Tamara:
I joined Three6, well firstly, we’ve worked together before, inspired by you, love working with you. But also inspired by the fact that I like working on problems and solving problems and not just that but you’re a boutique consultancy so therefore it’s about not just coming in, offering a solution and leaving, it’s about building the capability of the people within our clients and that’s something that really resonates with me.
Nina:
So with that, you’ve come and joined as you said, a boutique consultancy company. Why would you think that a company or organisations would use our consultancy as opposed to one of the big four? What are some of the things that you’ve been inspired to join us for? What’s that differentiating purpose?
Tamara:
I think one of them, the key reason is the fact that we are focused on long term benefits. So it’s not a short term benefit, just solving your immediate problem. We want to provide you with the skills and capabilities that will help you in the long term so that when we walk out the door, you can take the tools, you can take the learnings and you can apply them in different instances. And often when we’re working with clients, we’re talking about tools in the context you wouldn’t normally use them just so they can start to see that these actually have an application across various instances and circumstances. I’m really passionate about that because I think we can get so tunnel-visioned and focused on this tool here being used for this purpose and it becomes quite clinical. But when we start to think more broadly, we get benefits across the board and start to see a real capability uplift.
Nina:
So we then talk about digital transformation and digital transformation again is one of the buzzwords at the moment that is everywhere and then we look at the change impact on it. What’s your opinion or your thoughts on digital transformation? So what does digital transformation mean to you?
Tamara:
It means different things to different clients. I’m realizing that the more that I work with different organisations and start to see how they’re structuring their digital programs – that it’s quite diverse. I think from a change perspective, it’s quite unique because usually, you have a front runner. So if it’s a cultural transformation, it’s people that take the front run or if you work within a telecommunications (organisation) and you’re revamping your mobile offering or something to that effect and you’re transforming that business, it’s that business and then they work with other businesses to support them.
Digital touches everyone. It impacts everyone and it’s significant for everyone because it’s not just the technology, it’s the people, the processes, etc, the capabilities that you’re introducing and it also offers that complexity around if it requires such a different operating model and a different way of working, how do you transition that at the same time as trying to keep your business running in the same pattern that it is today? So I think it’s quite…it’s exciting. I’m smiling because it’s quite exciting. But it is a challenge for both change practitioners and you know, program leads and organisations sponsors.
Nina:
Absolutely. So we’ve had this conversation many times around digital transformation and there are – and the work that we went to with MIT as well – there are many different pathways that you can go to for digital transformation that impact both the employees and customers in different ways, and it’s about what pathway do you choose and how do you get there. But at the end of the day, it’s about the adoption of that technology and I mean, we’ve seen it time and time again where a new system is put in and it just replaces the old system, but there’s actually no change in behaviours which defeats the entire purpose of what we’re doing. What are therefore some of the changes that you’re seeing? What does change 2.0 look like in an agile, fast-paced environment with changing ecosystems?
Tamara:
I think we talked before in terms of tools – that we get focused on a specific tool for a specific use and it’s the same with change, we need to make sure that we have diverse toolkits. So if you use ADKAR which I love and I use ADKAR, I can’t come in and just say, well, I’m going to follow ADKAR (so) I need to create awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. I need to look at it and say well, holistically, what are some of the change theories or what are some of the change practices and what’s the evidence? It’s evidence-based approaches to change, and then also looking at what will fit the business. So that cultural piece, that cultural lens – what do I know about their culture? If they’re a collaborative culture, how do I bring them together and start to talk about some of the transformation activities and start to get them engaged in the vision and talk about the why and identify with the purpose of the transformation themselves? So it’s not something the organisations is doing, but something I am doing, it’s making sure that you’re using various approaches and not looking at a tactical change piece, but more a strategic change piece.
Nina:
So we’re changing the view then from being individual changes so, for example, we’re implementing a system or you know, we’re upgrading…or our ops teams are changing, etc. To now looking at how all of these pieces fit together. Is that correct?
Tamara:
That’s exactly correct and we’ve started to talk about it ourselves as an employee experience. So rather than looking at coming in and driving a change leadership or a change experience, looking at how we’re leading our organisations and we’re creating an employee experience and we’re aligning some of the change leadership requirements into our overall leadership approach.
Nina:
That’s going to be really, really difficult to get every single person in an organisation around that same purpose or that same mindset around change. What are some of your tips on how to get that done? How do you do that?
Tamara:
If it’s all anchored to your strategy, your vision, your purpose, then at least you’re all kind of aligned in the same direction – and I think this is where the engagement piece really comes into play. So it’s around your information networks, your support networks, and your influencing networks. Making sure that you’re using those networks appropriately. So your information network, you’re going out to find out or what’s actually happening within the business that I am introducing this change into, what are the leadership pieces that have been implemented to date, what are the past changes? How have they been rolled out and making sure that you’re aligning your new approaches with approaches that have worked in the past? If they haven’t worked, please don’t pick them up and use them again, you’re doomed for failure. But it’s just consistency and it’s not that tunnel vision of just looking at – I’ve got a task, here’s what I need to implement. How does it fit into the whole?
Nina:
What has been some of your biggest learning curves going from project-based change to larger transformational changes?
Tamara:
Don’t underestimate the complexity. Especially with digital, so even working on those business unit based transformations or even cultural transformation, so more softer pieces. Digital has the complexity of requiring you to do a lot, and approach many different changes.
So your process, your technology, your people, it’s all-encompassing. So don’t underestimate the complexities. Also don’t underestimate the importance of culture, changing those behaviours, changing the capabilities and making sure that your values and your behaviours are aligned to the way that you need to work in the future as you start to roll out and deploy your digital transformation.