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“Attempting to change an organization’s culture is folly, it always fails. People’s behavior (the culture) is a product of the system; when you change the system, people’s behavior changes.”
John Seddon
Business Through People
Strengthen your business through the people
Every journey with a client is about transforming its business through the people. The Enabling Process enables leaders and team members to do things they didn’t do before and achieve goals they didn’t reach earlier.
We enable our clients to focus on the system and the behavior they need to develop. Together, we work to understand how the current system looks like and how culture and results are created from that system.
We help you to clarify roles, responsibilities, capabilities, processes, resources, etc. in the existing system. You will learn about the behavioral gaps you need to close for a successful transformation. Based on this understanding, you can set a clear direction on what need to accomplish and what should be adjusted in the new system.
Over time, your new system will influence new behaviours that will change the culture.
Our Enabling Process
The Process
The enabling process is a concrete and proven way of working. It has three main phases with several smaller steps in each phase. The underlying thinking behind the enabling process is built on the principles of the “think big, start small, and then scale”.
1. Get ready
Understand current state
Management training
Define future state
Select pilot project areas
2. Run the pilot project(s)
Train the pilot team
Pilot team prepares & practices
Conduct and evaluate the
pilot project(s)
3. Cascade and sustain
Train-The-Trainer
Rollout in the organisation
Further intregration &
continue to improve
The Enabling process
1. Get ready
This is the P of the PDCA¹ cycle for scientific thinking. It is the biggest and most critical phase. For a transformation to become successful, it needs to be thoroughly planned and thought through. Many times this is unfortunately overlooked and neglected. From our experience, we know if do the first phase well the rest will follow.
In the Get Ready phase you prepare for success by investing 40% of the total effort and focus for the Enabling Process.
¹ PDCA = plan, do, check and adjust
Understanding the challenge
Why is this important to you? Why focus on this particular methodology? How do you see this in your organization today? What are you trying to achieve?
Those are some of the questions we will ask already in our first conversation because this is where your transformation starts. If we don’t understand the problem you see, we won’t be able to help you in the direction you want to go. To help and guide your organization, we need to know what you see and be onboarded in the direction you want for your organization. A powerful way to create the clarity and consensus needed is to describe the existing system and the gaps using a strategy A3 report.
Onboarding of Management
No matter what level of the organization initiates the first contact, we need to onboard the management team globally or, at minimum, at the local site and ensure they can and want to take the driving seat in this change.
If you are a support function, the line management must get involved and take responsibility for the transformations they want and need to see. Tasks and projects can be delegated, but the responsibility rests in the management line and cannot be passed on without severe damage to the transformation process.
The management team needs to co-develop and consent to the A3 and the current and future state of the cultural transformation they want and need to create. The best way to do that is to “walk the talk” and try it out. If you haven’t tried the banana milkshake yourself, how can you describe it for the rest?
Design the system
When management understands the problem and the current state, it is time to design the system’s future state and decide where the future system will be tested in pilot projects and who will participate in the pilot.
When designing systems, questions like these need to be answered: What roles are needed? What responsibility are they given? How often do we follow up, where do they report, and in what format? What standard meetings are needed? Who decides cancelations and changes? There are numerous questions to consider, depending on how significant the transformation is and how many will be involved from the beginning. Our recommendation is to start small. We are not testing the methodology. We are testing the system you need to get the best out of the method.
At this point, it is good to frame the pilot and decide where or what processes should be involved in the organization. Who needs to be involved in the pilot and the test of this initiative? What are the things you would like to test? How much time is set aside for this, and where will we be able to see the changes?
The Enabling process
2. Run pilot project(s)
This phase is the key to building understanding and testing the methodologies and system in the transformation. At this point, a pilot group of people is introduced to a new way of thinking. Have them practice and understand the need for and use of the method.
This phase covers 20% of the enabling process and is structured after the 10 20 70 learning model.
Train the methodology – 10%
This is the fundamental skill training where a group of employees undergo training in the selected method for the transformation. Here, they will be introduced to essential thinking, which will be discussed and practiced in a practical setting. This is always done in a format where the method is presented, put in the context of your business, and discussed from a valuable and usable context, focusing on standardization of the core behavior needed.
Practice and prepare the pilot – 20%
When people involved in the pilot have been introduced to the methodology and thinking, they must start practicing and building their own experience with it. This requires deliberate practice with a coach from the start. This is crucial for the individual to capture the thinking and new learnings. If they don’t take what they have learned from the training and start to work with it immediately afterward, they will lose the new skill they were about to master. They need to start working and put it to work in their environment and tasks.
This practice period is often 6 – 8 weeks, supported by a coach. Here, they regularly need to return to the practice they were taught in the training and prepare for the pilot project(s). Note that this is not a full-time allocation but is often done in specific timeslots or dedicated days throughout the week.
Run and evaluate the pilot – 70%
After 6 – 8 weeks of practicing, it’s time to test the methodology and system designed earlier in the preparation phase. This is the test period. All the preparations have been done up till now. It’s time to test all the thoughts and elements agreed upon in the design phase. Do we have the time as planned? Are the roles and responsibilities evident, and does the system work the way we designed it?
Every business is unique, and every company has its challenges. That is why we need to test all of this in your environment to see if the plan laid out, in the beginning, will stand the test and solve the challenge that initiated all of this.
As a result of the design phase and the pilot, there will be a pile of experiences and learnings that need to be collected and evaluated. All these learnings and experiences will be input for the future system. Not everything will work out as planned.
The Enabling process
3. Cascade & sustain
This is the last phase in the enabling process, and we estimate it to be 40% of the transformation, but in a way, it never ends. When creating a cultural transformation, the intention is to start something up and
work hard to make it stick and then get out on the other side and see that things have changed and, that the transformation has taken place, and we are facing a new reality.
Build future competencies in-house
When new methodologies are introduced, and new practices are to be kept alive in the future, internal champions need to be built to help the management team keep the transformation alive. There needs to be some subject matter experts who can retain, retrain, and guard the methodology in-house in the business. This is also the in-house champion responsible for onboarding future employees into the thinking and methodology.
Cascade area by area
Given what was learned from the system design and the pilot project(s), it is time to adjust the future setup in the pilot area to go from pilot to daily operations.
The next step will be to plan the start-up of the next area of the organization to go through the transformation process based on the future system and pilot learnings.
Run operations and system
Continue and stick with the new practice, support the organization in doing so, and build the system needed to support and anchor the behavior and changes required to keep the new practice alive.
If this is to be taken to other parts of the organization, remember the personal journey you went through to accomplish the transformation.
The system that was developed ensures that everybody is enabled to use the skills and behavior that create the desired results. In Business Through People, we believe it can’t be shortened or delayed. We must respect the people involved, and we all have to climb the learning and master it ourselves, which is why we call it the enabling journey. It enables the person and allows the business to grow through its people.
“If One Is Truly to Succeed in Leading a person to a Specific Place, One must First and Foremost Take Care to Find Him Where He Is and Begin There”
Søren Kierkegaard
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