Op model and adoption
Ashleigh HamblingAccount Executive, SerendataEngagement activity naturally ramps up during operating model programmes. More leadership sessions, more comms activity, more supporting documentation around roles and responsibilities, more local conversations happening across teams.
Organisations have learned their lesson about paying attention to how behaviours change at times of such significant transformation (and the culture impact this has).
The change often lands differently across different business units, workstreams or teams.
I’m sure you’ve seen it happen ... one group feels bought in and excited. Somewhere else there’s rumblings and rumours. People aren’t sure what they’re owning. Teams chats are pinging and no one is sure of how decisions are made day to day.
If you’re blessed with some good managers, you’ll see their teams adapt fairly well. If you have managers who are feeling unsure themselves, you can bet their temas aren’t going to have an easy ride either. This kind of inconsistency creates operational drag.
Without clear visibility of where or why resistance is happening, Heads of Change (or similar roles) will struggle to resource and support the portfolio in the right places.
We’re seeing organisations focus more heavily on
- manager alignment
- increasing operational readiness activity
- more structured feedback loops across the business
- more emphasis on identifying where confusion, resistance and overload is building, before it starts impacting delivery.
Better structured change management data will help transformation leaders to make stronger delivery decisions based on;
The organisations getting ahead seem to be creating much more structure and visibility around the people side of transformation.
Particularly around, readiness, engagement accountability, audience-level risk and understanding how change is landing across the organisation in real time.
Because once operational friction becomes visible at leadership level, teams are often already in reactive mode. And by that point, transformation leaders are usually working with far less room to intervene effectively.