The Transformation Team Test
Bloomstorm enabled a senior team to create, for the first time, a way forward to structuring and leading a transformation affecting tens of thousands of people.
A global technology company needed to transform its customer service performance. Many hundreds of change programmes were already in place across the company. It was going to be very difficult to marshal them all in the same direction and with the same sense of collective urgency across tens of thousands of people. This remit fell to a critical transformation team of 14.
The underlying problem was that this business is very action-oriented – no sooner would an problem be identified than people would jump on it and assign it with a deadline to the first person they could find. This person then would then try frantically to understand the underlying issue, work out what success would look like, and then persuade, escalate, wheedle or cajole resources from others in order to meet this task.
As this was happening hundreds of times every week across the company, the result was chaotic mess with part-time resources chasing unclear goals working on multiple activities without clear plans.
The transformation team could not function like this. They needed to establish a clear way forward with good ownership, effective resourcing and clear expectations for delivery and success.
They asked Bloomstorm to help.
Clear Goals, New Standards
The first thing we did was work with the team to help them understand their objectives: to set a direction for action.
We gave them tools to raise the quality of information they used to think about their objectives and their delivery. Becoming more specific and demanding about the information they needed quickly showed that delivering these goals required much more effort than was first envisaged.
Paradoxically, the same thinking also helped with the solution – because they could specify their work requirements much more specifically, it became easier to secure additional resource from others; people are much more willing to help if you can specify in advance precisely what help you need.
Change That Endures
Another issue concerned the endurability of the change. It was likely that any transformation would be shortlived as people reverted to old ways of working once attention shifted elsewhere. With Bloomstorm's help the team created standard ways of ensuring that all transformation programmes had consistent ways of changing the performance environment to make new changes stick.
Finally we got the team to do some breakthrough thinking about exceeding their objectives and creating activities that will make this more probable.
The result was a pragmatic, practical and effective action plan for the team to use to engage others and deliver enduring change.
