Assessing The Organization's Change Capability

The Client's Challenge

AGL was undertaking a wholesale transformation of the electricity part of the business. Formed from six separate businesses, every role, process and even business rule was being changed. No one in the business, including the management team, had any real experience in such large-scale change.

TOP was used to discover as much what was not happening as assessing what was happening. The management team had set out a Vision, Mission and change agenda with many projects underway. Here we looked at the status and shortcomings of the overall program and any likely pitfalls.

Scope

All areas of the organisation including

• Electricity retailing, trading and customer management
• Distribution (asset) management and Field services
• Corporate services.

Approach

• All projects were reviewed to discover the degree of contribution to the stated direction and intent.

• Workshops were conducted with groups of staff from different areas of the organization to ascertain their understanding of what was going on, their requirements, expectations and concerns.

• All the management team were interviewed and surveyed as to their expectations and concerns.

• A series of surveys were completed by staff at different levels of the organization so as to get a cross-section of views as to the organization’s capability to deliver the program.

• The change management processes that existed were reviewed and compared against the TOP Change framework to determine their appropriateness and effectiveness..

The Results

• 89 ‘un-approved’ projects were found to be active and were stopped pending formal specification and approval

• The Vision, Mission and change agenda were found to be poorly understood and actually de-motivating requiring a ‘re-launch’ of the program in more meaningful, staff-aligned language

• Additional processes and controls were introduced so that the approved projects could be actioned successfully, achieve the outcomes intended and centrally monitored and coordinated to avoid change overload

• The management team were trained in ‘how to lead a change program’ and project governance, increasing their involvement, understanding and belief in the program.

The Payoff

A situation of hectic action with little visible output was transformed into a staged, managed and controlled program.

Individual projects were actioned within a set of ‘guiding principles’ to ensure the strategic intent of the organization’s strategy was met

The resultant introduction of the supporting SAP system was achieved on time, 10% under budget and delivered all of the planned benefits.