Sustain and embed change with Mars, VP, Jen Contreras.

In this final post, Jen Contreras, Mars VP of People and Organisation, answers our questions about embedding and sustaining change.

In our webinar hosted by Jonny McCormick, Senior Director at LanciaConsult, we interviewed Jen and learned insights from her experiences in managing change initiatives. If you want to listen in to the recording, you can do that here:

Listen to the webinar recording for the answers in more detail here.

For the read-up on the first and second blog post answers across the change journey with Jen , you can get up to speed here:
Part 1 - Set yourself up for change success‍

Part 2 - Hints, tips, thoughts and ideas for delivering change.

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‍Jonny: When discussing change, we often refer to this linear process: design, deliver, and sustain. However, the actual lived reality and context for an individual experiencing the changes can be pretty challenging to make sense of, particularly in an environment of competing changes where various transformation initiatives crash into one another, and people experiencing them get fatigued because of the volume of change that's going on.  ‍

How does the project or programme team progress in a situation like that? And how do you protect and look after your people in a context like that? 

Jen: My reflection is that change is a really good eco-check space. You can't want to control it and can't expect to be the only gig in town. You should not be tone-deaf to it; ensure that you understand that other things are going on in the universe, and have this awareness because it does change how you might shape your plans.  

So, step 1 is how you gather that data or understand what else is out there—recognising the personal journey of each change. So we always start on day one on this change, but the reality is that you may be on day 20 of the last one, or day 50, and recognising particularly at the line manager level, where they tend to an absorber of lots of those things, how are you looking at those roles and how you enable and support them through that change. How do I think about what they need to be successful? Can I get targeted and specific in who needs the help and what help they need?  

Then, in step 2, how do you create vulnerability and spaces? We've done fireside chats to say it's a safe space. Not everyone has to be okay with this thing. Often, it's questions where people fill in the blanks because they lack information. So where are the information forums that help them go, "So, how does this fit with the other nine things that you asked of me?" We've tried various things, some more successful than others, but there's no one-size-fits-all.  

Jonny: Could you share some examples of what a success Jen? To give people some ideas for what they might be able to experiment with? 

Jen: We call them fireside chats, but ultimately, it's "I will be in this place every month, at this time, and you can ask me whatever you want?" We've created spaces that say, whatever your thoughts, feelings, and questions are, there's a committed space where we'll show up, and you can always ask it. It's been a powerful tool not just to answer the questions and respond to the things, but there's also a recognition that you're being a bit vulnerable and you could be asked anything at that moment, so you're building some leadership currency as well to go "this is hard, and going to do it anyway, and I'm in it with you to help guide you through that journey." 

Once, we had an organisational change in which leaders shared their new organisations with one another. It empowered them to educate the organisation on this new thing and acknowledged them in their new roles and team spaces to say; I want to share with you. It created a shared understanding of this organisational change in a personal way. We did that at the leadership team level, so it wasn't a general change org announcement; it was "I'm talking about my team to you and your team in a personal way. That was powerful.  
 
We're asking the people going through the change to be very courageous. We're putting them in uncertainty, asking them to let go of something that maybe really mattered to them or do something new. We shouldn't lose sight of that.  
 
Jonny: What do you do when the adoption and embedding of the change look different from what you thought or predicted?  

Jen: Hopefully, you've kept the change team intact to nurture through that and haven't been too quick to let go, high-five, and move on to the next thing. So that's the first insight: be mindful that you're often getting started on the journey in many ways when you go live.  

I've heard authors talk about how you write the book you write, but how the world sees it and what they make of it is entirely different from the book you thought you wrote. Change is, in many ways, the same; you lay these plans, set the intentions, sold this vision, and then what people make of that, you only know once it goes out in the world. It's essential you have those feedback loops to understand what they're making of that change, what blanks they're filling in, and what got lost in interpretation. It's like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. It's about ensuring you can listen and hear, directing you to where to go because the organisation takes hold of it, and it's no longer just yours.  
 
Look for the bright spots because you will see phenomenal examples of where the organisation takes hold and leaders and associates shine. Celebrate those because, at least here, competition can be a powerful motivator. Celebrate people who have taken it on and adapted and excelled. And don't walk away too quickly because it takes a bit of space. Returning to the metrics or measures of success and when you expect to see those will tell you if you're on track, off track, or right where you thought you'd be. So, how do you give yourself some markers or assumptions that give you some indicators of that?  

Want more tips and tools to help you manage the challenges in business change?

Check out the LanciaConsult Change Hub - a place dedicated to sharing tips, tools, and guidance on the challenges in change that senior leaders face today. Take me to the Change Hub.