The dynamic nature of businesses today, together with the COVID-19 threat is forcing organizations to change in unprecedented ways. An ambiguous business environment means that organizations must manage the transformation remotely, in a world where typically 70% of major transformation initiatives fail1. This proves stressful and challenging for change managers.

By harnessing the power of digital platforms to enhance traditional methodologies, managers can convert change capability into a competitive advantage. In this two-part blog, we focus on how Infosys MicroChangeTM can help change managers win by following 5 key steps. We begin by understanding how change-practitioners can set up for change and engage stakeholders remotely.

Steps to drive Hi-touch MicroChangeTM remotely:

 

Setting up for Change

The Infosys digital change management (DCM) platform enables change managers to set up the program digitally and onboard various stakeholder groups within a remote set up, as follows:

  1. Leveraging the digital change management (DCM) platform: Infosys DCM2 is the first cloud and mobile solution designed to be accessible anytime, anywhere, and on any device. The platform can facilitate a culture of learning and collaboration for the employees as well as enable the leaders to derive strategic insights to track the adoption of new solutions. Recently, the Infosys DCM platform successfully helped a leading global CPG company with a large and complex transformation in product traceability, across the European region, thereby allowing remote and virtual organizational change management (OCM).
  2. Recognizing the 3 pillars of implementing remote change:
  3. Studying the change impact: Studying the impact of change forms the basis of a change management approach. Here are innovative ways to do this in the new normal.

a) Reinvent fit-gap workshop:  As a change practitioner, we understand that a fit-gap workshop is crucial to assessing the impacts of change. Infosys Panaya and Capsule can expedite this activity. The findings from these tools will help the change team to identify and focus their efforts on the functional and process domains where most of the change is anticipated.

b) Develop a persona journey map: Businesses can develop distinct audience groups or personas, and develop content with details of the anticipated change particular to those groups. The change team can work with business owners to populate the personas with representatives of the project teams. This persona- relevant content and associated tasks can be set up on the DCM platform.

 

Engaging the stakeholders

  1. Connect frequently:  Not meeting stakeholders can become a threat to the project over the course of time. Regular online meetings and calls with various user groups getting onboarded to the program can mitigate this. The use of video is advised to bring a sense of partnership. The DCM Platform can create cohorts or various discussion forums to build a strong virtual network.
  2. Establish a continuous communication channel:  There is no such thing as ‘excess communication’ in the new normal but it is critical to reinvent the modes of communication and divert from traditional methods. Methods such a ‘virtual coffee catch-ups’, ‘interactive media’, etc. can increase awareness among the team. The communication repository of the DCM solution can be used by the change practitioner to convey important messages to the target group without creating an email overload.
  3. Gather feedback to realign and reinvent:  Here the change network plays an important role. Dipstick surveys help us to understand the sources of issues in advance and we can proactively manage the resistance through appropriate interventions. Change practitioners can Conduct market cadence calls with regional key stakeholders to govern the regional requirements and nuances. The intra-social networking platforms like Yammer groups or DCM cohorts can gather inputs from the stakeholders to understand the challenges and the interventions required.
  4.  Set up a strong reward and recognition framework: Organize appreciation week to engage the users where they can appreciate one another. This will help to build an internal partnership among the various teams involved. The leaderboard feature of Infosys DCM is a fresh approach to recognizing the commitment of the individual or nudging them to achieve the next target.
  5. Focus on the question ‘what’s in it for me?’: While employees navigate through the new normal, a complex business transformation would be too much for them to accept and advocate. Therefore, it is crucial that change leaders focus on bringing the benefits of the change and how that will help users in the future. Run a communication campaign series with each focusing on a key feature of the business process and how it will benefit different roles or stakeholder groups.

As organizations settle into the new normal, the key to successfully managing the organizational change in the virtual world is to look beyond the traditional approach and work towards a paradigm shift to MicroChange™ methodology empowered by digital tools.

In the next part of this series, we will take a look at how organizations can build capability and drive the adoption journey while ensuring the change is sustainable.

Want to learn more? Reach out to our regional leaders:

 

 References:

  1. Business Case for Managing Change, 2007. CEB Corporate Leadership Council.
  2. Infosys Wingspan. Retrieved  May 25, 2020 from https://www.infosys.com/products-and platforms/wingspan/documents/infosys-wingspan.pdf
Harish Gudi

Harish Gudi

Partner and head of consulting offerings, India

Harish is a partner and head of consulting offerings for India. He has over 24 years of experience and has played several roles in Infosys: IT services, business development, head of services delivery for CPG, retail, and supply chain. He leads a consulting team with offerings that are focused on business analytics, innovation, digital, automation, and design thinking. These offerings are delivered across various geographies and industries globally. Harish is part of the core leadership team driving the Infosys live enterprise initiative.

Jayalakshmi Subramanian

Jayalakshmi Subramanian

Sr. Principal, Infosys Consulting

Jaya is a Senior Principal Consultant at Infosys Consulting T&O practice. She has experience of 20+ years across the Retail & CPG domain. She is a Prosci® certified change practitioner with strong domain knowledge and skills, covering functional areas including sales, branding and marketing, field force enablement, social media and trade promotions management. She has been a program manager and an OCM specialist for the last 10 years of her career. She is also lead Design Thinker and seasoned market research professional. Jaya has led large global multi-country change management programs for complex implementations such as SAP APO, Service Now and Mobility solutions. She is the lead for driving the Live Enterprise digital transformation change management initiatives for Infosys.

Diana M.S

Diana M.S

Principal Consultant, Infosys Consulting

Diana is a Principal Consultant at Infosys Consulting’s talent and organization practice with an experience of over 13 years across retail and CPG industries. she is a Prosci® certified change practitioner with strong process and domain knowledge. She has been working extensively on large scale transformation programs leading the organization change globally across diverse cultures and stakeholders. She has worked on organizational change management programs related to complex technical solution rollouts like SAP/IBP. Her core expertise lies in the areas of adoption, metrics-driven change management, designing and activating the change interventions, nudges and digital change management.

Srishti Sharma

Srishti Sharma

Consultant, Infosys Consulting

Srishti is a Consultant at Infosys Consulting’s talent and organization practice. She has more than 4 years of global experience specializing in large-scale end-to-end enterprise-wide transformation change initiatives across the CPG industry. Her relevant experience includes stakeholder management, communication strategy development, capability design and development, adoption, and change governance. She has worked on large complex business transformation like SAP APO and IBP by extensively designing and driving change interventions to improve the adoption and personalizing the change for stakeholders.

Sakshi Tyagi

Sakshi Tyagi

Consultant, Infosys Consulting

Sakshi Tyagi is a Consultant at the talent and organization practice at Infosys Consulting and has over 3 years of experience encompassing hands on industry experience in organizational change management, training management, knowledge management and digital transformation. She has worked with leading pharmaceutical, retail and CPG companies helping them with their global transformation programs through driving change interventions, training management and adoption strategies. She holds her PGDHRM from XLRI, Jamshedpur.

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