Virgin Australia

Isabella Manning

Introduction – Guiding Questions

● The speed, scale and complexity of change across all industries continues to accelerate and since the pandemic most companies are in a constant state of transformation.

● According to a recent study by McKinsey, 82% of business leaders across Asia say that transformation is an imperative for future success.

● But what proportion of those leaders (and their teams) have sufficient change and transformational capability to deliver on these imperatives? And, how do we build-up the organisational fire-power to not only “withstand” the constancy of fast and furious change and transformation, but to deliver it in a way that becomes an unparalleled source of value and competitive advantage?

Body – Proposed Recommendations

When we recognise that it’s not organisations that change, it’s the people, the goal becomes about making it easier for all people within an organisation to change with less or no distress and to adopt new ways of working, faster and more efficiently, than the competition. My tips on how to do this for executives and strategic HR practitioners:

1. Get the basics right. Ensure your organisation has a simple Change and Transformation Framework enriched with a self-serve tools for easy application and a standardised way of measuring change complexity that allows leaders and practitioners to “right-size” effort.

2. Rethink enterprise-wide capabilities to ensure that power-skills such as change management, adaptive leadership, change sponsorship, transformation management and effective project delivery, as well as higher-order cognitive processes such as ‘curiosity and re-thinking’, are broadly honed and embedded within all levels of the organisation, and baked-into core-competencies, from emerging leaders right through to the executive layer.

3. The power-skills and core competencies need to be integrated from cradle-to-the-grave, across recruitment (e.g. Position Descriptions and Job Advertisements), talent management, career development and performance management processes and systems. Integrating into corporate values, e.g. “we embrace learning, change and innovation” is an important anchor point and will help curate an environment that is open to change.

4. Rethink the role of expert practitioners (e.g. Organisational Change Management Practitioners and Transformation Managers) who should play an important role in defining what good looks like, facilitating (e.g. cross-functional ideation, problem solving and lessons-learned workshops), providing meaningful data and insights to aid effective change and transformation planning and decision-making and continuously building enterprise capability to uplift change health and look for ways to help leaders accelerate progress.

5. Grow-your-own change and transformation muscle by designing and delivering curriculum around these capability sets, tailored to different audiences across the organisation. From experience, face-to-face, cross-functional, interactive and problem-solving style sessions are most powerful at gaining maximum buy-in and knowledge retention. From the many courses and masterclasses, I have run over the years, participants find these practical ‘how-to’ and scenario-based multi-skilling sessions extremely valuable. For optimal results, course content should emphasise mindsets and first-principles not just process and tools. For leaders, introducing a layer of meta-analysis and self-reflection is powerful in unlocking further “immunity to change”.

Achieving the above may take between 12-24 months with the right executive sponsorship and visionary change leader. If I’ve missed anything you think is vital, please reach out to me (I’m always learning). In the meantime,…. how is your organisation building it’s fire-power to leverage the near-constant change and transformation a source of competitive advantage?