Located within the Bristol Temple Quarter, delaware launched its first UK Client Delivery Hub in October 2018.
Our Delivery Hub now employs over 35 analysts who, in addition to providing dedicated project/client resource, are a central component in the delaware strategy to offer a seamless approach to delivery of value-centric and sustainable business outcomes.
One of the key advantages of this programme, in addition to providing exciting opportunities for our people, is that we constantly have access to fresh and innovative perspective of our customers’ needs.
One of our analysts, Julia Vermont, joined our UK business in January 2019 and has been working within delaware’s People & Organisation team on a large-scale SAP SuccessFactors implementation.
In this blog, Julia offers some valuable insight into some of the key change practices required to ensure IT success.
In Thijs Homan’s TEDx AmsterdamED talk about organisational change1, he explains his concepts of ‘onstage’ and ‘offstage’ behaviour. ‘Onstage’ behaviour is the behaviour an employee demonstrates when they receive a presentation from their manager about a change project, and they nod their head,clap, and say it’s a great idea. ‘Offstage’ behaviour is when they subsequently walk to the kitchen and tell Susan what they really think. Employees are constantly talking about things: in Thijs’ words, “there is a continuous process of sense-making going on in informal conversations where people make sense of what has happened in the formal side of the organisation.” This process creates ‘clouds of meaning’ – the orders which emerge spontaneously in an organisation in which individuals come together to perform local social sense-making. Thijs suggests that these clouds of meaning are the most significant influencers of behaviour in organisations. Therefore, it is important to ask: what clouds are there surrounding your change project? If you don’t know, then how can you go about figuring them out? How can you influence ‘offstage’ behaviour?
From my perspective, to influence offstage behaviour and implement change successfully, you have to identify your informal stakeholders – those key ‘offstage’ influencers in your organisation that have a leading role in each ‘cloud of meaning’. By investing time in direct communication with these individuals, you stand a better chance of increasing their positivity towards the project. Once they are on your side, their appreciation and understanding of the project will be authentically communicated back to their peers.
According to Prosci, those projects that address the people side of change are five to six times more successful than those that don’t2. It is therefore key that the program team has the necessary knowledge and tools to effectively carry out all of the above points and more. Delaware’s consultants have countless years of experience working in Change Management and are constantly developing new and innovative strategies to deliver the best change experience for our clients.
1 The inner side of Organizational Change: | Thijs Homan | TEDx AmsterdamED | 2017