One of the great things about being a consultant is working across a breadth of sectors in organisations with unique cultures who need to deliver change with big impact. We’re invited in to add our expertise to the talented people and teams who are delivering that change. At Marlowe we pride ourselves on sharing and leaving our knowledge within the business, so their capability is developed too.
But why stop there? We thought it would be great to share some of our insights across how change is delivered across different sectors and programmes with you, so you can some of our learnings into your own business.
In the first of our ‘Sharing our insight’ series we start with a transformation planning and mobilisation programme with a utility company.
The ask
In 2024 we worked with a company who approached us because their ownership model was moving to a unique private-public investment approach, and they needed a transformation in how their leaders and employees would need to adjust this change while maintaining day-to-day operations.
Getting to the heart of the challenge
We have the benefit of working with organisations in both the public and private sectors and can confirm that both operate very differently! From governance to financial management to reporting, the organisation would need to learn new skills and a new mindset. We find that it’s quite rare for employees to have worked in both, so we knew that as well as the daily operations it was likely that a culture shift was going to be needed.
Start with questions
At the start of every change programme our first task is to ask questions – it’s vitally important that transformation teams – and any third-party consultants – have a full understanding of the programme, its aims and objectives as well as the impact it will have across the organisation and the people within it. A set of well-defined questions often brings up gaps in the capabilities, competencies, plans, ways of working and resources needed as well as identifying additional opportunities the team may not have considered.
To help our energy client we ran two workshops with the team driving the transformation to ask questions based on the UK government’s excellent ‘7 lenses of transformation’.
With this knowledge, our next step was to educate the client team on transformation and help them to pull together a sequence of activities needed to ensure a successful transformation. We knew they had strong objectives and end goals but plans rarely run smoothly and they needed to be prepared for that. Our change assurance model breaks down the complexities of business transformation and provide practical advice, guidance and prioritisation of issues (and can be used at any stage of a transformation or change programme).
Time to engage wider stakeholders and setting up for success
There is much to consider when delivering transformation, so our next step was to run a ‘Transformation Planning Sprint’ to engage key stakeholders with the plan and the other elements that would make the change a success.
One of the most important of these elements is to develop the vision and narrative. In our recent creating the story for change article we explain why – including why culture is so important. This was supported by a stakeholder engagement plan that guided the client through building the all-important ‘coalition for change’ across the company’s leadership team.
To ensure the building blocks of a successful programme were in place, we also defined the business change landscape and approach, the transformation roadmap and the required transformation team structure and governance.
This enabled the team to have a detailed plan, understand the challenges and opportunities as well as making sure they were set up for success by having the right skills and people in the team to deliver the change. And of course, progress and success needs to be measured, and our governance approach would enable that. We’ll talk about this in more detail in a future article.
Outcomes
As a result of the initial workshops and planning activity, the organisation was able to achieve the shift from transition to transformation and demonstrate to their new owners and incoming private investors that they are an effective, compliant standalone company with a clear roadmap to full maturity.
About Marlowe
Change can be complex but the approach to it doesn’t need to be. At Marlowe we partner with organisations to deliver large scale, complex transformation and change. We deliver business change solutions, change capability, assurance, training, leadership effectiveness and cultural change.
Our focus is on your people to ensure your change is delivered practically, successfully and sustainably. Please contact us if you would like to know more about delivering exceptional business change.