Establishing a Change Management capability within a newly incorporated Joint Venture

To design this dedicated international partnership organisation, three organisations have come together These companies each have significant differences in terms of culture, approach and methodologies. With every decision needing to be made trilaterally, this required high levels of partnership, listening and diplomacy to facilitate discussions and support decision-making.

While there was some recognition of the value Change Management could bring, maturity levels were still low and Change Management was not well developed as a capability within the partner organisations. As a result, significant effort was required to help the wider audience understand how applying Change Management could benefit the organisation in both standing up the Joint Venture to begin with, as well as applying the capability in programmes and projects once these are underway.

The business risk of not applying Change Management was in fact already beginning to materialise. Little consideration was being given to the need to engage people throughout the design and incorporation process, resulting in many of the potential future workforce not understanding the scale of the opportunity available to them and not having access to the information needed to make significant personal decisions about their work choices.

Information was held by disparate functions and working groups, each looking at their own section of the jigsaw puzzle. Encouraging more joined-up conversation and thinking helped to show these groups that they could solve problems more effectively as a collective and present information in a more integrated way.

Leadership figures were also failing to recognise their role in leading through change and helping others to navigate the messy middle stages of business transformation.

Our initial remit was to consider how we could apply Change Management to the activities around standing up the Programme Management function of the joint venture. Specifically, this included defining the behaviours we would want to embed to create a successful and high-performing team, identifying the training needs for everyone joining the function and building engagement across the complex trilateral stakeholder environment.

A few months into the assignment, recognising the need for much greater join-up between the many groups involved in standing up the company, we also started to chair an informal Change Community of Practice among the Systems team. The remit of this group initially has been to develop and maintain an integrated plan across people, communications and change. In particular, we have looked at how to create a single Joint Venture onboarding and secondment experience, as well as how to manage uncertainty for the large group of people who will remain within the internal principal industrial partner element of the broader multinational programme. This group might not be moving to the UK Headquarters, but still have an integral role to play, so it is important they are not left behind or neglected while the spotlight is on the joint venture company.

During the second half of the assignment, we were asked to design a change management framework and capability structure for the newly incorporated organisation. Change Management is not fully understood as a discipline yet – particularly by our Partner Company colleagues – so we found that focusing on adoption as a key concept has helped to drive up levels of understanding. As with many assignments, part of the role has included promoting the benefits of change management.

Towards the end of the assignment, we handed over responsibilities to some permanent resources. This provided the opportunity to take them through the work that has been started and hopefully get them in a good place to take it forwards. Helping to develop in-house capability is another key focus area for driving up understanding and creating the strong foundations for Change Management.

While the position of Change Management within the new Joint Venture organisation is not yet fully certain, real progress has been made in showing how these activities can lead and guide people through change. There really is a huge host of opportunities where Change Management can help to achieve the shared organisational objectives. And thankfully this is beginning to be more broadly recognised.

Change priorities remain the need for better join-up and to reduce siloed working, improving the clarity and consistency of messaging throughout, and creating opportunities for visible sponsorship so that the new leadership team are well positioned to actively lead people through the many further changes ahead. As these priorities become understood and supported by greater numbers of people within the organisation, the chances of success increase.

We leave the organisation with a burgeoning Change Management capability and maturity. While there are still many steps left in developing this to its full potential, the chances of success are higher as more people buy into the benefits of achieving this. The numbers who contribute towards this goal have increased, showing that in-house capability and understanding have grown as well.

By creating a simple Change Management framework, we have highlighted the areas which will bring greatest benefit to the organisation. Rather than developing complex templates or documentation, we have focussed on the change levers which will lead to improved business and programme outcomes. We have also highlighted the roles involved in leading change to show that this is a responsibility that several different groups should carry.

Looking at the Programme Management function specifically, the team and leadership now have a clearer route to onboarding and developing its people and sees the importance of these people-focussed activities alongside the need to create processes and templates. Establishing a team with a shared sense of purpose and a shared set of target behaviours will ultimately lead to more effective working practices and improved delivery. This contributes towards longer-term efficiency benefits for the end-customer.

This multinational initiative is a great example of a programme where we have delivered all three aspects of our service model – project and programme management (PPM), governance and control (PMO) and Change Management. These services complement each other and, when applied collectively, can amplify the positive outcomes which would be achieved by any one of the services alone.

Project One value Add

• Change Management expertise to enhance the existing client capability
• Impartial and collaborative approach to bring people together and drive consensus
• Working client-side as an embedded and trusted team member
• Driving momentum in an environment where deadlines are often missed due to slow decision-making
• Championing the importance of people in achieving success