NLP Change Management - John Whitworth

Change Management - Discussion between Michael Beale and John Whitworth of BT, September 2007.

http://www.ppimk.com/nlp-podcast/john.mp3

MICHAEL: Firstly thank you for taking part in this interview. Would you give a brief synopsis of who you are and what you do?

JOHN: Good morning, Mike. I’m John Whitworth. I am the Chief Operating Officer for N3, which is one of the major health (1£B+) programmes inside BT. In my career I’ve worked both within organisations and outside of organisations helping with change.

MICHAEL: Adding to what you’ve said, would you build on the experience that you have as a change agent?

JOHN: Yes, I’ve worked in the investment banking area which is a fast moving and has constantly reinvented technology, business processes, and people’s behaviour. In addition I’ve worked as a change management consultant, leading change projects for major clients. I’ve had a key change role within a leading insurance company. And now currently in BT I’ve done three or four major roles at general management level, which have all had transformation as part of their job description.

MICHAEL: What would you say makes a change project transformational?

JOHN: I think it has to be a long way away from business as usual. It has to be revolutionary. Even though it is evolutionary in a way we get to it, the results should be revolutionary.

MICHAEL: Moving on from that, if you were advising the sponsor of a large project about how to maximise the project’s chances of success, what sort of things would you ask the sponsor to consider?

JOHN: I think the first and the most important thing is to ensure that he gets people committed for the change and the first way of doing that is to have their involvement in understanding what the end result would be. It’s much better to have a shared vision of where you need to be before you start , rather than try and have a single vision and try and get everybody align to it.

MICHAEL: So you get buy-in and a shared vision. Is there anything else that you would get them to consider very carefully upfront?

JOHN: Yes, I think you need to treat it as any other project and I think that’s often forgotten. So for example, you don’t need everybody to be at the same level of support for the change. You need to ensure that you have a core group who are going to drive the change, who are the vision.

But then the other people working on that project, if they’re not where you need them to be in a behavioural sense, you have to move them there. And clearly if you want everybody to be a major-change facilitator it’d be a heck of a job. A lot of change programmes get into trouble because they try and make everybody the champion of the change. Don’t do that. I want these people to be champions of parts of the change, I want these people to be helpers, I want these people just to do these little bits, because that then gives you the jigsaw for success at the end.

MICHAEL: Looking back at your own experience, what do you think are the biggest reasons that change projects fail or don’t get the results that the sponsor wants?

JOHN: I think one of the reasons is people don’t consider the risks and the issues and have clear stepping stones and milestones within them. They effectively change the project as they go forward.

Also if you don’t have that buy in with people as a whole, individuals will view the project from the side and secretly modify where you’re trying to get to – with unpredictable results!

So I guess it’s like the old adage you know, you should plan it and plan it very well, measure twice and cut once in a change project. Don’t end up keep chopping away at it and changing it around.

Read full article: John Whitworth on Change Management