Best Advice for Leading Change in Your Organization

"You are the 3rd leader to take over this team in the last couple of years and they know how to outlast you. You won't be able affect change and you are destined to suffer the same fate as those that came before you"

Does this sound familiar? Have you been on the receiving end of this statement or have you ever been the one delivering it? This was the tough love message one of my managers delivered to me as we embarked on a paradigm shift for the team I had just taken over.

As the story goes...

I joined Insight in 2007 and my position at the time was a Director in the service delivery organization. I had a team of about 30 folks with a lot of varied certifications who did everything from answer sales peoples questions on computer manufacturer part numbers/products to complex configurations for data centers. When I started my position I asked my boss what the biggest challenge was for the team and how I could help solve it? He came back with...

"I don't know the ROI on what the team is doing. I don't know if I need 10 of them or 110. I don't know if I added headcount how much more revenue we would drive for the company or even what skillsets we would bet on if we decided to add more. Lastly, we don't have any SLAs and I don't know if we are turning things around and satisfying the sales teams or our end customers"

So thus began the journey of "Sales411" where we redesigned and reimagined how support to sales and our customers would be managed, delivered, tracked and measured. The team and I weren't the first one's to try and make it happen - we were just the first one's to succeed in setting it up. It was an amazing journey and I am still in awe of all we were able to accomplish. I think a lot of our success was due to leveraging what was already available to us and demonstrating small wins along the way. For example:

• Triage: We established a triage group and equipped them with Cisco call center. They were the front end and key to our ability to get calls to the right resources the first time. We also created a Wiki where the triage group could work through a decision tree for consistent call routing, log answers to common questions and capture key product updates or information so everyone could benefit equally from someone else's knowledge

• Call Logging: Insight used SAP for it's CRM so we created opportunities attached to customers for every call that we received. This way a sales rep or engineering could easily track the history and SLAs of quotes or questions that customers had.

• KPIs: With call center queuing we had # of calls, peak times of day, average call wait times and call resolution times. This way we could staff for success. We also could track average deal size and close rates.

• Governance: We met with the teams and executive team on a monthly basis to review the outcomes on the new model. This buy in and governance was key as we were able to show early wins and continuous improvement and success. Where we found things needed Help - we could identify it early and get buy in and support.

Culture Can Eat Strategy for Lunch

So....from the retelling of the story you might be lulled into thinking that this was a walk in the park... dead easy...what the heck does this have to do with your opening quote? Well... nothing is ever as simple as it sounds and what looks good on paper is harder than you can imagine to actually execute on.

Let's go back to where I began...I was the 3rd leader in a couple of years to come along. The team had heard this ALL before and many had been with the company 15 years or more. They had "tried" to implement something like this many times over the years and it had always failed and fallen flat. So they felt they had earned the right to say "I told you so".

What made the difference this time you might ask? PEOPLE... PEOPLE made the difference. The tools, processes and capabilities were always there but it took buy in from the team to get it over the finish line.

Here is what we learned:

• YOU have to identify the most VOCAL and INFLUENCIAL "Nay Sayers" and make them a part of the solution. We knew we didn't know everything and that in order for it all to work we had to LISTEN to the feedback of those doing the job day to day. We needed THEM to tell each other it could work or that it was working...not anyone in "leadership"

• YOU have to be willing to walk a mile in their shoes. As we built the processes, systems, tools and measurements EVERY ONE of us kicked the tires on what we were designing. My mantra was...if I can do it...anyone can! So there were a lot of days when we heard "logging a ticket took too long" or "the Wiki didn't have enough information" or "the call routing was too hard to follow" that I "manned (or personed) the phones" to do it myself. To see leadership in the trench sends a powerful message to the team

• YOU have to demonstrate wins along the way. From increasing average deal size and closing more business to call volumes going up dramatically from less than 50 a day to a couple of hundred a day with minimal increase in resources. We were able to balance shifts to manage peak times and have triage handle most of the questions without needing an engineers involvement. The engineers spent more time doing complex quoting and the triage handled repeatable questions so the team's overall satisfaction went up. We also increased sales and customer satisfaction as our turnaround times improved and our accuracy increased. These metrics gave the team confidence and pride that what we were doing was working

• YOU have to find time for team building. We did a lot a team activities throughout the process so we could have some fun along the way. Sure tensions were high, the stress was palpable and personalities clashed as we made the paradigm shift but we always found ways to pull together. Those that weren't "on the bus" were held accountable by those who were "part of the solution" and either came on board or "found their happiness somewhere else". Our most memorable tradition was hosting an epic Thanksgiving Feast" for everyone in our building.

• YOU have to be prepared to be vulnerable and authentic in your approach. I'd like to think that a big part of how the team was able to pull together was that I was "real" with them every step of the way. We had "adult" conversations about the impact of the change, how it was affecting all of us and the consequences if we were not successful as well as the opportunities if we were. I had their back and they had mine which was hard earned on both sides.

In Closing...

I am immensely proud of that team and ALL THEY accomplished. We learned a lot about each other and about cultural change along the way. When I finally moved to another role and handed the reigns to the managers I was leaving behind....I knew that they "had it"...I had worked myself out of a job....just as it should be.

My best advice...

"Enlist the nay sayers... the one's who say it can't be done for they are the ones who will ultimately make you or break you or if you are lucky... a little bit of both"

Leadership Questions of the Week for YOU:

• Do YOU have an example of a paradigm shift that was successful or that failed? What did you learn from it? Was getting the team to be part of achieving the vision the biggest challenge you faced?

• What advice do YOU have for getting a team "on the bus"? Do any of the learnings about stand out for you? Are there any you would add or change?

• Would YOU agree that getting the "nay sayers" to be part of the solution is the most important way for a team to be successful in any big change? If not - what is YOUR best advice?

• When a team has outlasted a string of other leaders... does it make it more or less difficult to achieve results? How would YOU have approached the situation differently?

Thanks for reading….and remember…YOU make a difference!

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