#001 Tom Marsicano | Change in a production environment

Tim Creasey, intro voice or played clip · [01:08]And so I'm going to tell you a story about the Easter Bunny. It's what I call the Easter Bunny paradox, and your religious affiliation matters not to me for two reasons. One, you know of the Easter Bunny, right? And two, you know it's not real, right? Okay. So bear with me, and I'm going to connect it back to value management. It's about eight years ago, my wife and I are sitting on the couch, it's around Easter, and I look at her, and I say, when you were a kid, And you envisioned the real Easter bunny, the real one. How big was it? Think about that. And she goes, well, it was about six feet tall. And I start scoffingly laughing at her, right? This is my partner in life, and she is so wrong about how big the Easter bunny was, because we all know, well, I know the Easter bunny is about the size of a golden retriever on its hind legs, about four feet tall. And so being a researcher, I started emailing everybody in my contact list, and luckily none of you were in the contact list at the time. But I started asking them, how big was your Easter bunny? And some people came back, like some people, you know, six foot, like was her answer, that was kind of the most normal. Some people came back like ten foot tall, like nightmare inducing Sasquatch bunny, right? Some people said it, said it was like this big, like the size of an actual bunny. and then a few people got the right answer, which is about four feet tall. Now, being the good researcher, the second email went back to him and said, well, did it walk or did it hop, and what color was it? And that's when people started replying, unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsub, right? Stop asking me about the Easter bunny, but here's the interesting thing. None of us have ever seen the real Easter bunny. Cause it's not real. But we all had something pop into our head when we thought about what the real, how big the real Easter Bunny was. So I tell the story in the Change Management space because when you go out and say Change Management, you have no idea what's going to pop in that person's head. They might think communication and training, they might think, oh, you must mean managing hardware, software version control. Oh, what do we do for our project when scope changes? You have no idea what pops into their head.

Petro du Pisani, host · [05:42]Hey, so Tom, I know that you started out with change management in the financial and IT sectors. Today, I would like to explore how to use change management in a production environment, which is where I'm from. How would the change management approach differ between the financial IT sectors and a more production-based environment like mining, oil, gas, or manufacturing?

Tom Marsicano, guest · [06:03]Yeah, if you think of the industries, you know, each industry has its own drivers, some, the same as others, but, what, what we've seen is that, what is driving organizations and their development changes over time. I understand that, in mining, there is always the underlying drivers of, safety and tons. get those two right within a constraints of cost and market, forces, and we're halfway there. In a service industry, like banks, for example, it's about providing a total experience for the customer that builds loyalty and share of wallet. That sounds very different, but go under the covers and look at the way a bank runs its call center operation, for example, and possibly how a mine runs its ore extraction processes, and you may find very similar drivers there. Both are driven to increase efficiency, quality, and consistency. So, for example, in the call center, everything is measured down to the second, because those seconds are a wasting asset, and saving ten seconds per phone call while keeping the quality of service high in an environment where there are tens of thousands of phone calls being handled every day equates to quite a big efficiency improvement. I'm no mining expert, but when I recently observed a huge open cast mine operating, I could see the same focus on getting, the flow of the ore right in each step of the process. So introducing changes in both environments is likely to, receive similar kinds of responses. The threat of change to disrupt their efficiencies will be met with resistance, so we shouldn't be surprised by that. It's surprising, though, to see how similar the resistance is, even if the way it's expressed and the technical terms are different. It's always about building the same five key elements with people to get them to change. So the good news is that a good change manager in one industry can actually do quite well in another because the principles are the same, just the techno talk is different.

Tom Marsicano, guest · [08:25]Yeah. So, you know, when you look at these cultures from the outside, you see different appearances. People look different, and they seem to act differently. And the importance of culture in managing change has come to the fore in recent years. There's a growing realization that the prevailing culture in an affected area drives different approaches. I think the change management practice hasn't yet mastered, this, and is one of the big themes we talk about on our website. I say this because you're likely to find multiple cultures operating simultaneously in any area. There's the culture driven by the leader, but there is also the culture of the organization at large, and that this group is part of. And of course, there's always the underlying culture of the society that the organization is part of. I see this a lot when we work in multinationals, for example, especially those, that have been around a long time. What we see is, that the prevailing culture is not one of these, it's actually a mix of all. So each location is unique. So in one of our clients, the, the same business unit in the same insurance company, but in different locations, will have different cultures. In a change that involved changing the way people worked in this environment, that included office layout, pace of work, the collaboration techniques, and even the etiquette amongst the, amongst the workers, the deployment of this in Mexico, for example, was very different from the colleagues just a thousand kilometers away in the USA. You see the same in Europe, but also in Africa, and so we go. Have you not seen this in mining?

Petro du Pisani, host · [10:07]Oh, definitely. I mean, I've worked across the globe as well, and the culture in Brazil is very, very different to, for instance, the culture in Canada or Australia. In Brazil, I see a very hierarchical structure. So you'll see if the manager says one thing, then everybody will follow. Whereas if you work in a, a country like Australia, it is much more collaborative, and everybody has to buy in. So it's quite a different way of having to apply change management.

Tom Marsicano, guest · [10:52]Yeah, I think it would be difficult to single out one challenge throughout. But what I have seen is the difficulty management has in balancing the priority. Of production against the disruption of the change itself. They are squeezed on both ends, you know. On the one hand, they've got to achieve the production targets, but also lead your people through the change, because that's what the C-suite wants. This, these sort of challenges, cut across all levels of management, actually. So the resistance to change is significant. The change absorbs resources, of course. Doing change absorbs resources, there's no doubt about it, and, you know, it's more than money. The scarcest of all these resources, of course, is, management focus, and the change demands a lot of that. So in an environment where there is only just enough to keep the production going, When I find more to concentrate on the change becomes the kind of question that you would, you hear them ask themselves. Perhaps the easier option is to defer the change as long as possible or do as little as possible, and that's, that's the kind of challenge that we see in production environments.

Petro du Pisani, host · [12:00]Yeah, I can see where you're coming from. I mean, if a manager is just barely trying to keep in mind making money, to bring any change into that environment, it just dilutes his focus. Not

Tom Marsicano, guest · [12:09]dilutes the focus, yeah. And they, and if they're already, you know, if as a result of, previous efficiency drives, we're pushing everyone to the limit, then the next change is going to push us over the limit, and we start to experience something we call change saturation, which sort of happens when the next change that we try to effect in that environment just causes, things to go negative, people to resist, and the change actually doesn't take, take hold.

Tom Marsicano, guest · [18:40]I think in the environment that we're talking about, these sort of heavy production environments, the most effective that I've seen, especially, you know, in these sort of situations, one of the big ones is removing the barriers. You know, people have barriers to changing. These can vary from time obstacles, you know, I just don't have the time to do this new stuff, or, maybe even changing the measures, the way in which we measure people, because, you know, if I'm measured this way, and then I'm going to behave, you know, to, to achieve those measures. So find out what these are and work very hard with management to get them out of the way would be the, the right thing to do there. I recently read an article about building, you know, those agile organizations, and there again, a suggestions that the tactics that we need to use is tactics that focus on getting these obstacles out the way so people can change. Another good one is explaining the consequences of not changing. It's the kind of so what, which is really important to, to a lot of people. But what will happen to me, you know, if I don't change? I need to know that. How will I affect my team if I don't change? How will my colleagues react to me if I don't support them? Getting this really clear helps me decide where I stand and what I still need to do to change. People ultimately choose to change. We can't really force them. You try to force somebody to change, the next thing we're going to get is compliance. You're not really going to get the quality. They may do something when we're watching, but that's not really what we want. Last, but I think probably the most powerful of all, is listening. It's strange, but I mean really listen to, to what people have got to say. It's amazing how often you, you find different teams performing their work in slightly different ways. So change looks different to different groups, to different people. And listening to their objections and their concerns about the change can help us tweak the solution to work better for them, but it also helps them work out their real concerns. Also, listening shows that you care, and often that is really what people are looking for during, times of, of change.

Tom Marsicano, guest · [21:15]Oh, yes. you know, we must do this. I don't think it's an option. You know, people are whole beings. The more we can integrate, the better. So, you know, I'm thinking of a case where a railway operator was implementing a change in the way they tracked and controlled their rolling stock. They needed to find out, they needed to have, in fact, an effective way for their workers to communicate with each other about where this rolling stock was. So they integrated, using, messaging systems running on their cell phones to send messages to, to one another. You know, sending messages on cell phones, everybody does it. So, you know, easy to just have an app that does exactly the same thing, but you're just applying it in a, in a very specific way. The other day I had to visit, my client at Sasol. To facilitate my safety, I downloaded an app on my phone and underwent a short training session before arriving at the building. So I would be aware of what to do, you know, in the building and how to, how to, you know, be safe, if you like. The smart thing that was, that, that really impressed me about this was that, when I completed this, little app, if you like, on the system, the system knew I had done that. So when I arrived at the building, I didn't, they didn't waste any of my time in reminding me of that stuff. They knew I had already done that. You know, for me, that's kind of smart use of technology that got me to change, and I didn't even realize it. Found it quite, quite, interesting and quite pleasing.