Sarah Ehrnschwender – Principal Danyele Harris-Thompson, a Change and Transformation Senior Manager, leads the Organizational Change Management practice for Kao Americas and EMEA. In chatting about the organization’s current business and technology transformation, Danyele shared the intentionality invested in considering each end user’s journey through such a massive transformation, as well as the must-have travel companions: patience and grace. From communication inspiration to watching for engagement signals, Danyele dives into her team’s best practices for ensuring the transformation is a collaborative effort across regions.
We’re in the middle of a large-scale business and technology transformation spanning our Americas and EMEA regions. It’s a 17-month initiative, so it’s a bit of a marathon with a large audience. The transformation touches many of the core processes and systems that support how we operate and ultimately deliver to our customers and consumers. It’s a big undertaking for us, with significant change across the organization.
We have several hundred people on our core team, and thousands will be impacted by this change. Some of the understanding is shared, and some of it is unique. This whole journey can’t necessarily look the same for everyone.
We’re really focused on setting up communication channels, not only for our core team members and those impacted, but also for our broader organization. A transformation of this scale requires significant time, resources, and focus, and that can influence the pace and prioritization of other work across the organization. Even for those who aren’t working on this transformation, we want them to understand what’s happening, why their colleagues may have less capacity for other initiatives, and how this transformation fits alongside our broader strategic priorities.
One channel is directed at the broader organization. It covers the project status, the timelines, and the change agents within the business who can answer questions. It’s a little lighter, and I try to give it a ‘dearest reader’ vibe to keep it fun. Our core team receives more frequent, much more detailed communications.
We want to give everyone a shared understanding of the higher-level journey, and then a click down into what it means within their function, team, or pillar. That keeps people aware of what we’re doing without overwhelming them with information that distracts from what they should care about.
We’re all moving through this transformation together, but we’re not all in the same boat. The same transformation is going to look a little bit different for everyone. We’re trying to account for what being involved, being engaged, and being informed feels like for these different audiences.
We’re still early in this journey, even though it doesn’t feel early, and we still have a year to go. As we move through the phases, I’ve tried to highlight what we want to see from our end users at this point in the transformation. We want them to understand their why, why we’re doing this change, and at least from a high level, how it’s going to impact their day-to-day work.
We’re asking: ‘are we hitting those markers?’ We’re also thinking about our exit criteria from an end-user perspective, like we do from a tech perspective. Before we move to the next phase of the project and confidently move our teams forward, from a people position, ‘what’s our exit criteria from this phase of work? Do they understand the why? Do they understand what it looks like within their functions? Do they know their points of contact across the business? Can they say yes to those things?’
We have a team of several hundred people who are working on this initiative. Another big signal for me is if there’s ever a point when they are not as engaged. When they’re not asking all the questions, when they’re not coming to the meetings and contributing to the discussion, when they’re not reaching out to our change leads, which they do often and I appreciate. I watch for: ‘Are they getting disengaged? Are there fewer questions? Are they not pushing back on some of the things that are coming from our design team? Are they curious about who will be involved in testing and when they’ll have an opportunity to see the system?’
If not, that for me could signal a lack of concern, or they’ve gotten distracted and busy with other things, which would be really hard from an adoption perspective. We haven’t reached the point where we’re going to need the most from them. When we move into testing, training, go-live, and post go-live, we’ll need them highly engaged. So that’s one of the bigger signals: ‘Are they staying present with the team? Are they still challenging? Are they still asking questions? Are they still showing up and contributing?’
This change is not only hitting all functions and all regions in unique ways, but it’s also very cross-functional. We have thousands of impacted end users. Many people’s work will be impacted by changes in functions other than their own. We have to make sure they’re aware of, and being trained on, things that may feel like they’re part of another pillar but still affect their day-to-day.
We have set up a robust network of around 60 change agents representing all the functions and regions being impacted. They’re the eyes and ears with their teams, serving as a bridge between the project delivery team and the end users who we don’t always get to talk with directly, and helping us address questions and concerns.
When we present change impacts and talk about start, stop, continue, and what future work will look like, we’re giving people the cross-functional picture. It’s not just ‘here’s what changes will look like for your day-to-day.’ It’s also ‘here’s what changes will look like for their day-to-day.’ People want to know that we’re looking at the full cross-functional piece and talking with people across teams.
We’re also adding transparency to what’s happening across the project. We share the meeting schedule so people can join a meeting they should be a part of that’s not on their calendar or flag anyone who’s missing. We don’t want to miss any of those collaboration opportunities while designing and building this cross-functional solution.
That is going to have gains as you get down the road, closer to go-live. If we build the solution without cross-functional collaboration, it won’t be well received. We need people to see that their perspectives have been considered and that the solution reflects how work actually happens across teams, functions, and regions.
Number one is the collaboration that we’ve talked about. However, for a transformation of this duration and size, the biggest mindset we’re all trying to hold is to give each other grace. It’s patience with each other. This is a long journey, and we know there will be moments of high emotions and frustration.
There will be times when someone says, ‘I don’t have more hours’ or ‘I should’ve been in this meeting.’ We have a lot of conversations and meetings happening. Anything like that is oversight. It’s not intentionally leaving people out of conversations. So, we have to stay patient with each other as we move through this journey.
Our senior leaders have reinforced that message from the kickoff: ‘give each other grace as we move through this project and have patience with the process.’ From a change management perspective, we’re often the team that end users will come to as a primary point of contact. They want to know everything, and we don’t know everything right now. Part of our role is creating enough trust that people believe they’ll get the answers when they’re available. We can promise that we’re trying our best, that the project team is working hard to get those answers, and that we’ll share information with end users as we learn it. So, pack your patience, and also pack grace with each other.
We recently shared a snapshot with end users of what their world might look like. Our team put a lot of work into painting enough of a picture of the change based on what we know today, and that has been well received.
I’m also proud of the full team. There are a lot of people involved in this project, and everyone is working really well as a unit across different time zones and regions. We’re trying to be very intentional about how we engage with our global end-user groups. I think about our team members in Australia. I don’t want to just give them a recording and say, ‘email your questions’ just because our working hours don’t align. We have separate meetings during their time zone to share, go through the same presentations and content, and give them a chance to ask their questions live.
People are making true sacrifices of their time. Being across four different time zones isn’t easy. Everyone is working really well together, and I’m proud of our collective team for doing that.
Remember that even if everyone has the same start and end points, we’re not all moving through the journey with the same mindset, same clarity, or understanding. Some people will ask the same questions repeatedly. You have to be willing to repeat that information or share it with them a bit differently.
From a regional perspective, what I say and communicate in the U.S. is not going to translate in the same way to our audiences in Australia or Germany. Think about the end users and the audiences. Put yourself in multiple seats. It’s not just putting on the “end user’s” hat. It’s putting on end user one’s hat, end user two’s hat, end user 10’s hat. Consider how this journey may feel, look, and sound to them, and adjust to them instead of forcing them to adjust to one path.
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