My plan for the client was simple. "Hire me". My promise was simple. "Your hired gun is actually a figment of your imagination". My commitment was to a change process that would always be transparent. "I need no budget, no office space, no status, no tools nor amenities - I do need an electronic whiteboard, a table, some chairs, and a partitioned area in a high- traffic hallway".
My response to his demand that he see a profit on every change project. "I will charge the full cost of myself and staff [including super, amenities, holiday loadings, pay before taxes, accommodation, travel, etc] to every project and each of them will return a profit of not less than 10 percent on those total costs" [over 3 years we never got nearly as low as 10 percent]. What is your plan to resolve Industrial Relations disputes and win the cooperation of Unions. "There will be no disputes". [I was brash and naive as this was a promise I could never hope to keep in the IR space otherwise all went to plan]. Explain your contingency plan for failure along the way. "I have none". [In the event of any looming failure over the 3 years of change I deployed some of the lessons I had learnt at NASA - they learnt a lot from Apollo 13].
The core of my idea was simple. I would establish a small group [ideally 3 to 5 people]. All these folks would be "volunteers" to my group [I called this little mob the "Strategic Change and Implementation Group" or SCIG]. I found no volunteers. So my first "volunteer" was actually a person on the "dead man walking list" of redundant staff around the place. He like everyone else I worked with in SCIG was a gem [all any of them ever needed was gentle buffing and polishing to bring their sparkle back]. We sat together when he finally signed on and he asked me what he could do and I told him to find something that interested him. We discussed a few options. An hour later he had saved my client more than the total costs of running SCIG [with five full-time volunteers] for 2 years. My client could not believe our progress. But things only ever got better from there.
My method for recruiting SCIG volunteers was simple. I looked through the lists of those on the redundancy lists [both male and female]. I sat a few of them down and told them that I was a crazy man and thus somewhat of an acquired taste. I asked them what they did outside of work - that was the key to finding real talent. I gave them a 3 day trial with me and SCIG. If they decided they wanted to stay then they stayed. I only had one person who was not a good fit for SCIG - he and I agreed after his trail period that he was a bad fit for us and so I upheld my promise to him and found him a job within a week. In our second year we had 12 staff in SCIG and this was way way too many but the pressures on my client were such that we both agreed to carry this burden. It was an amazing site when the twelve of us were assembled facing a whiteboard just off to the side in a high-traffic hallway. There was no room to move. And each of them [as was SCIG practice from day one] had to beg, steal, or borrow the tools of their trade [computers, stationary, etc].
Day one the head of the Union introduced himself to me in a lift. When he heard my name he actually took a quick step back. "Oh so you are the Guru who is going to save us from ourselves, eh? I will be in touch.... soon". I was gobsmacked and said nothing. Six months later when he started calling me "comrade" I feared I had gone too far in my heartfelt efforts to be transparent with him and his colleagues". The Unions got it. They worked hard to help SCIG bring about any change that would assist their members.
I worked 7 days a week. I rarely went home - I was on a leave of absence from my life. I was only ever paid for 3 days per week [my initial offer to my client]. However. It was a standing joke that I did nothing around the place [remember I was a figment of their imagination] and yet got paid more than the big boss. I was talked about in all the nooks, crannies, and alcoves of the organisation right around the globe. My nickname was Darth Vader. I thought that was appropriate because I intended to father all the Luke Skywalker clones the place could muster. After 18 months on the job the resistance faded. Except for one person. She was a gifted person but she performed a job that was being reframed by technology at the speed of light. She took my client to court. She had detailed notes on every conversation I had ever had with her [I actually liked her and so I spoke to her a lot about a whole range of things because she was super intelligent and was a logical thinker]. All her words were twisted "this-way-and-that" until I must say I started to agree with her opinion that I was Darth Vader [I began to think she had spied the very essence of the evil that lies within me].
About two months in I arranged a two day "information dump" between SCIG [now 3 staff plus me] and the formal Change Management Section of the organisation [they had between 40 and 50 people working full time on stuff]. Day one put SCIG on the mat. We told them everything we had ever thought about doing, currently were doing, and would begin doing tomorrow. Day two they were a no show. When I asked the boss of their mob why they bailed on us he was less than frank with me. "We have too much that is deemed commercial-in-confidence or secret to be open and transparent with SCIG and so we decided it was in both our best interests to leave it at that". SCIG staff were furious. "They played us for fools! They win - we lose! This is so typical of what happens around this place!" I had a different take on it all. I told SCIG members that the formal change crew had nothing we needed, that they had stalled, and I predicted that they would be disbanded within 3 months [this was pure speculation on my part based on my perceptions of the difference between inside-out and outside-in change processes]. A month later they were done, gone, finished. One member of their team joined SCIG.
Everyday I got a SCIG person [they were always in early] to come to the front desk and sign me in as a visitor [I was "the outsider" not "the insider", I was the layman not the Guru]. In fact I had access to everything and the authority to demand, and to command [I guess], a lot. I did demand a lot of each and every SCIG person but I never ever commanded anyone to do anything. SCIG ran moot, after moot, after moot as preparation for the spokesperson who would carry our latest proposal to the Executive. Preparation, preparation, and more preparation was our mantra. It worked. The guiding rules for these intensive prep sessions were three - equity, accountability, and transparency.
SCIG mapped out the DNA for a new place. It was basic but it was solid. Thereafter we let the culture completely take over and mutate that core DNA in this or that fashion. We always claimed that the culture is [and was] "the way things are done around here". If the outside environs do not change then it is senseless to change the culture of a place. But if and when the outside environs [and context] does change then swift intervention is needed to a culture that is fast becoming obsolete.
How obsolete was the culture in this place? It was ancient. What was at the very top of all the lagging sets of conventions and workplace practices? It was the "mind tapes" that staff [excluding members of SCIG but including the Executive] had running 24/7 inside their heads. So we had to import [from the outside-in] a whole new set of "mind tapes". We did that.
The day I disbanded SCIG I told my client that it was time for him to get a "new outsider" and to do this type of thing all over again.
Richard.
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