Tell me about the state of play at IAG and your role in addressing this.
IAG was at the forefront of rolling out large transformational change programs over a relatively short space of time. For our leaders, the impact on our people and customers was very clear.
Within this environment, there was a genuine need to understand the accumulative effects of change, audience impacts, and timings. This information would enable leaders to prepare for and effectively deliver and embed change.
We began investigating platforms to efficiently capture change impact data that was easy to use and relatively inexpensive, with automated reporting. The Change Compass met these requirements.
How did you introduce this to the organisation?
In the context of the change environment at IAG, we wanted to capture a true reflection of the volume and complexity of change impacting each business area to enable meaningful dialogue with leaders about how to effectively deliver and lead through the change.
By appointing heatmap coordinators within each business unit, we drove accountability for input and maintenance within business units. This underpinned the notion that each team was responsible for leading their change while maintaining the quality of the data.
This enabled teams to present a holistic change view to key leadership groups within governance forums.
What has been your journey so far?
We’ve been using the Change Compass for over a year and we’re constantly evolving how we use and manage the tool to drive decisions and actionable insights.
We’ve worked hard over the last year to demonstrate the value to the business when it may have easily been perceived as adding more work to reporting cycles.
With data now enabling leaders to show a heatmap for both employees and customers; leverage insights; and drive governance conversations between Business Performance, HR, Communications, Change and Program Delivery teams we are building great momentum.
These conversations help guide decision making and build a network of key teams who are clear on how this work contributes to IAG strategy while driving change management, engagement, communications, and initiative sequencing.
What value have you seen so far?
While we are still at the front-end of how to utilise the Change Compass fully, we’re starting to see benefits.
There are many conversations focused on how we can keep the data current and relevant. This enables Business Units to start using the information to improve how they are delivering change, not just at the initiative level but at a wider business portfolio level.
The Compass is starting to form a useful proxy to bring together professional disciplines in governance conversations and decisions.
One of the emerging themes across IAG is the need for us to be much more effective at how we deliver change into the business in a way that recognises the capacity of the people to accept change – the Change Compass helps guide this thinking.
What’s next?
Having established the rhythms and routines, we are now focused on how governance sessions and key groups leverage data and insights beyond the heatmap.
We want to enable leaders to use the Change Compass to help inform how they lead their team through change – by using the data to implement specific mitigations and ultimately deliver more effective and sustainable change.
