RECIPE FOR CHANGE
An HR Leader Assembles a Small Team to Author a High-Profile White Paper on Change Management
Challenge
This professional services firm was among the first, in the early 2000’s, to establish a dedicated People + Change division to guide its corporate clients through complex challenges at the heart of business transformation, organizational restructuring and change management. As it began to win and deliver major assignments from clients worldwide, its leaders decided to formalize several facets of its unique methodology and supporting principles in a white paper to educate, inform and guide both its clients and its practitioners. “Our clients are spending millions on initiatives that require people to change their beliefs or behaviors,” the program leader explained. “But very few understand how to ‘make change stick. This treatise will shine a light on that path.”
Action
Over the next several months, I worked as the author on this thought leadership team – and brought a creative, story-telling perspective to concepts that to many of our future audience would otherwise come off as dry and overly technical. “Your company is at the threshold of a complex, large-scale change initiative,” the paper began. “Maybe it’s a post-merger integration. Or an urgent regulatory mandate. Or a massive reorganization around a single ERP instance that absolutely has to coincide with a strategic game-changing shift in the company’s culture.” We set the scene. “Your executive champions are passionate “change agents”. Your award-winning communications team is world class. And you know that the lack of engagement or motivation among mid-level managers to drive change is your single greatest barrier to success. In short, you’ve done your homework. But how do you know if your approach is the one with the greatest chance of success? It’s a crucial question. Are you taking the right strategic approach to change?” The white paper was unusual because it began with a Prologue that represented a composite scenario – a fictitious FCPA-related crisis – with details drawn from real events as well as my imagination. The rest of the paper flowed from there, connecting the vignette with the methodology and its typical outcomes and supported by research, executive quotes and actual case studies.
Impact
This white paper was the first of many. Over the next three years, this program grew to become a critical service in the firm’s multi-billion-dollar book of business, and its leader was recognized by one of the industry’s top media platform as one of the Top 25 Consultants for the year.