SaskPower

Kelly Oman

In what ways do you foresee emerging developments in Organizational Change Management (OCM) impacting your ability to meet your business requirements effectively?

In my experience, it’s the other way around - the emerging developments in our business and environment are necessitating changes to how we deliver OCM. Most OCM frameworks are designed to guide an organization in making the transition from the current state to a well-defined desired future state. For discrete changes, even when delivered through agile methods with greater flexibility, the principles for OCM are largely the same, and you can establish a regular and repeatable rhythm and cadence.

In industries experiencing high levels of disruption where the environment is evolving and where pivots need to be made quickly, that desired future state is more ambiguous and uncertain. In these circumstances, OCM professionals need to make the shift from service providers to trusted strategic partners. We often act as a thought partner to our clients to help define and articulate the path forward, and OCM services and deliverables are less prescriptive, demanding higher-level competencies to navigate the complexities. As a result, our OCM value proposition is elevated.

"Distribution transformation is a portfolio of dozens of interdependent initiatives spanning more than a decade."

Can you share your experiences from one of the projects that you were recently involved in?

My organization is an electrical utility, and we are undergoing a massive transformation as part of the energy transition involving reimagining all aspects of our business. One change is distribution transformation – transforming our distribution system from a traditional one-way delivery of power to our customers to a modern power grid capable of integrating and managing distributed energy resources. 

Distribution transformation is a portfolio of dozens of interdependent initiatives spanning more than a decade. It involves fundamental changes to our business model, relationships with customers and external stakeholders, how we design and operate the grid, policies, and customer programs, and building a workforce with emerging skills for the energy transition. 

To tackle this, we've adopted a layered approach to change strategy, starting with an overarching multi-year strategy for the portfolio. From there, we have portfolio-level strategies tackling specific challenges, and strategies for individual initiatives. Each integrates and aligns with the others but is discrete enough to provide clarity for the specific change. Adopting this approach has helped us, the initiative team and our stakeholders zoom in to the initiative level to make the change actionable and seem less daunting without losing sight of the big picture.

What are some of the challenges in your business that current services are unable to solve?

To successfully navigate the energy transition, our organization needs to increase our change competencies and capacity. We need to create a workforce that is resilient and change-adept and place proficient change leaders at all levels. We’re collaborating with a network of colleagues and clients across the organization to advance this. 

A change-capable workforce alone won't be enough. As a traditional utility, we're not built for speed and agility. The systems, governance, and processes that have made us successful for the last 95 years will become a barrier to becoming the utility of the future.