cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

The applicationsbehaviours and attitudes that customer-facing staff (and those back-officestaff supporting them) needed to exhibit. Key areas included the ability togenerate interest, to establish credibility, to have clarity of communicationand to be proactive to customer needs.The reorientation of the company to this particular strategy includedthe generation of a new set of company values. These values were not justa list of slogans but were translated into behavioural statements. Thesestatements defined the preferred way of operating in the business andindeed also became part of the recruitment process.The values were not only ‘nice-to-have’ or ‘motherhood and apple pie’,but were designed to align people within the organization to the companystrategy and the preferred behaviours. So for example a value of ‘treatpeople well’ was translated into making people feel they are your numberone priority, and treating all customers and each other with respect. Thevalue of ‘say it as it is’ was translated into talking to customers andcolleagues in a straightforward manner. These behaviours could be verifiedby observation or customer feedback. They could also be learnt.Of course to get to the stage where front-line staff behaved in accordancewith company strategy required other enabling actions, whichwere drawn from best practice and appropriate models of individual,team and organizational change.Getting startedThe whole change started with a comprehensive strategy review and thegeneration of a programme plan with specific projects covering areassuch as brand development, systems development, business lead generationand defining the customer experience. This was kick-started by thesenior management team with some input from relevant stakeholders.However, initially it was a ‘top-down’ process which drew a lot from themachine metaphor. Using Kotter’s terminology a sense of urgency wascreated (‘with the market as it is we cannot carry on as we have beendoing’) and an overarching vision developed.The next layer of managers below the senior management team wereenlisted to form part of the guiding collation. A change managementteam was formed, tasked with managing the transition from both a taskand people perspective, with sponsorship from and direct reporting lineinto the senior management team. Quite soon however the changespicked up their own momentum.272