Mike Dreyer, Partner and Miguel Guevara, Managing PartnerLeaders can improve the success rate of their projects by minding key human elements that enable leaders, engage employees, improve adoption, and sustain the change. Effective leaders are aware not only of the change they are driving but also of changes in other parts of the organization. They are comfortable calling out conflicting priorities with their peers and driving for speedy resolution. When done well, teams improve their agility with change efforts.
“Organizational change is a fact of life and essential for success. Employees need to get comfortable with a greater frequency of change. Put simply, organizations need to develop their “change management muscle” to continually adapt to changing market and work conditions,” says Miguel Guevara, Managing Partner at Ignite Consulting.
In a conversation with Manage HR, Miguel Guevara further illustrates the key human factors to achieving successful organizational change and the services Ignite Consulting offers clients to help them accomplish their business goals.
Based on the challenges faced by businesses embarking on organizational change, could you define the way Ignite Consulting guides clients to work as a team in achieving success?
We have developed a simple and flexible change management framework that helps teams implement the right activities to meet and exceed their project objectives. Our framework comprises seven components tailored to an organization’s change needs so they can focus their resources and hit the ground running.
The first step is to understand the scope of the effort and to align on a change approach that supports the project’s objectives. We explore change impacts in detail and develop plans to enable leaders and stakeholders to help us meet the project goals. We use a variety of channels to communicate and engage with key stakeholders and then prepare employees with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform their jobs. We also develop plans to ensure the project’s benefits endure after go-live.
One of the keys to our success is our ability to adapt to the client’s culture and project needs. Many of us worked at a large consulting company and know we will likely work with an approach preferred by the client or their system integrator. We also use best practices from the Association of Change Management Professionals, Prosci, the Association for Talent Development, and the Project Management Institute.
Ignite is a certified partner of the Predictive Index. This adds another dimension to our consulting services by helping our clients understand the individuals and how their teams communicate, make decisions and act.
How flexible is Ignite Consulting’s change management framework?
Our framework is flexible by design to adapt to the project objectives, needs, and project methodologies (i.e., agile or waterfall). It has worked well for many organizational change efforts, including enterprise transformations, ERP integrations, mergers, and spinoffs. It helps clients ensure their projects are successful by focusing on the right activities to ensure the key human elements in a change effort are addressed.
We assist our clients through traditional consulting services on a full or part-time basis. Our Change Management Framework is available in a toolkit with instructions, templates, and examples. Some clients prefer to use the right tools independently and consult us if they have questions or want to think through their approach. This allows clients to align their change plans with their project’s objectives.
Is there a particular customer success story that you can share with us that details the merits of your approach to change management?
One of our clients is a leading consumer products manufacturer undertaking a multi-year digital transformation program. After prioritizing different areas of their business that would gain from digitalization, the client engaged us to help them set the foundation for a well-supported change effort, engaging the right leaders, influencers, and stakeholders in the company.
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Our proven change management framework adapts to a client’s culture and needs to ensure the team focuses on the right activities to ensure their project is successful
We aided them in navigating past the risk of organizational change; in some cases, getting very granular about risks they needed to manage related to people, processes, or technology impacts. We implemented plans to help affected team members understand new or different ways of working within the digitalized environment and made sure the various teams could sustain the change and realize the benefits of the program in the long run. We started with four large workstreams and expanded our support to additional work for the program and adjacent functions. We are proud of the partnership we have developed with team members and look forward to increasing our shared success.
Finally, what would you say is a key differentiating factor that sets Ignite Consulting apart from other players in the market?
We’re not the typical consulting firm that flies in, gives only big ideas, and flies out. We believe in generating flexible solutions and working with our clients through their journey. We’ve earned the repeat business and respect of numerous market-leading clients, often working on a global scale.
Clients appreciate the fact that we understand their vision and challenges, share their goals, and personally commit to their success. We grow our clients’ change capability and capacity to lead future change success. Lastly, we are friendly, flexible, and collaborative..
