Focusing Change To Win – How Can Change Gain Competitive Advantage?

Posted on November 25, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the fifth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on How Can Change Gain Competitive Advantage? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

5. How Can Change Gain Competitive Advantage?

Even after 30 years, the connections between change management and gaining competitive advantage are not well articulated. The disconnects between commitments to change and actual competitive behavior are a major factor in change failure. Getting beyond imitators relies on understanding and measuring behavior that distinguishes competitive behavior from other activities.

As one contributor said

Learning keeps us ahead of the competition by getting us closer to selected customers

to gather competitive intelligence

Focus on the Customer Survey Results - Stats Table
The seriousness of these ratings is underlined by the fact that, many studies show that it costs six times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Acquiring new customers is costly, and in many cases, the money earned on the first sale doesn’t even cover the acquisition costs.

For example in the table to the right, only 70% of contributors say they measure customer satisfaction effectively. Worst still are the low percentages for the benefits of measuring change related to customers (3%) and their feedback when it comes to change success (12%)

These findings have uncomfortable resonance with the lack of customer focus we see in other parts of this report. Change drives these leaders, while customers and competitive advantage are apparent afterthoughts.

We conclude that there are practical ways to avoid these pitfalls. Overall, contributors comment that managing change for competitive success is a continuous, systemic, repetitive and uncertain process. They recommend five areas to improve competitive advantage through change.

Action Points 4: Implementing Change to Gain Competitive Advantage

Market and Competitive Sensing

What do managers do at present to maintain awareness of your competitive environment?
How well do managers use this information to make more competitive decisions?
What should managers do to improve awareness and agility to the competition?

Leading Competitive Change

What changes should managers make to develop a competitive culture?
How are you going to build more leadership capability to bring about successful change?

Integrating Change into Operations
Building Competitive Human Capital

What should managers be doing to link competitive change to day-to-day operations?
What performance metrics are needed to track this integration?
What performance management measures should you be using?
How do you see learning being managed both individually and collectively at present?
What should managers be doing to improve both individual and collective learning?

Developing Competitive Agility

What do managers do to reshape and adjust strategies?
What should be done to manage strategic change and the emergence of threats and opportunities?

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Focusing Change to Win Series – Why Bother Measuring Change?

Posted on November 11, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the forth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on The Why and What of Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

Why Bother Measuring Change?

Most of our contributors do measure change, but 37% either don’t measure change or they don’t know if they do or feel measuring change is too difficult. So, here’s some evidence why this is worth struggling with. For example, learning is the most mentioned benefit of measuring change (27.1%). Yet, if this is so important then why the lack of focus on vehicles like coaching, mentoring and training to capitalize on this learning.[3]

Another striking disconnect is the low numbers of those who see benefits of measuring change’s impact on marketing and customers. This is curious, as our contributors’ most common reason for losing customers is not price but poor quality (92.2%), poor follow-up by sales people (76.5%) and making the wrong assumptions about customers (64.5%). After detailed analysis, it would seem that the relationship between change and competitive advantage is not as clearly visualized as one might think.

In addition, the use of employee metrics including personal performance, resistance to change, improvement to company culture and understanding our purpose, are low compared to satisfaction surveys. Most concerning is the lack of focus on individual behavioral change and tracking pay-related rewards. This is further evidence of little focus on accountability and establishing a requiring environment

Even when metrics are agreed upon, the next challenge is creating greater transparency so that they are used to create and sustain change momentum.

What Questions do Change Metrics Need to Answer?

Overall, there needs to be more focus on developing effective change metrics. The challenge is: How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem solving and decision making?

In Section 4, we distilled contributor questions on what they need change metrics to answer into a questionnaire. We ask readers to go through and rate their current metrics under three sections:

Navigating during a Change
Reviewing a Change
Planning the Next Change

Our contributors suggest establishing a change scorecard with their leadership team and key stakeholders. For example by:

Agreeing on those questions which the team needs to answer
Deciding what current metrics could be put to good use
Assessing during the change process how well they cover the risks of losing customers through poor product or service quality and poor sales follow-up.

And finally……Asking how well your scorecard helps you sell this and subsequent changes?

Action Points 3: Developing More Effective Change

Metrics

Protocol

Three themes were referenced in contributor comments about change metrics and how to test their overall effectiveness.

How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem-solving, and decision-making?

Establish Your Change Scorecard

It is strongly suggested that you go through this process with your leadership team and key stakeholders. (See section 7 for more details.)

Review the table Contributor Questions.
Agree on those questions your team need to answer when you are doing the following:

Navigating a change
Reviewing a change
Planning the next change
- What current metrics could be put to good use?
- How well do they cover the risks of losing customers through poor-quality sales follow-up during the change process?
- How well do they inform you that the organization is reducing assumptions about customers’ view of the change and how the change responds to their needs?
- To what extent do your selected metrics allow you to preempt or least respond quickly to competitors
- How well do these metrics allow you to gauge and track employee stress around the change?
- To what extent will your metrics allow you to respond quickly and effectively to employee stress before it hardens their change resistance?

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If you would like to contact Nick, please fill out the form below:

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