HR Driving Change: reflections on a daring project with visual tools

The challenge

I will describe a real project that I am carrying out in this period connected with the organizational change

and the human resources development in an SME operating in the ICT field.

These are the characterizing elements:

•  Solid company, recognized in its territory

•  Still owned by the founders after forty years of life

•  Close to the generational transition

•  Operating in a more turbulent environment than ever

The project has as objectives:

•  encourage sustainable growth of the organization, make it "future proof" and independent from  the guidance of historical entrepreneurs

•  make the company attractive for professional profiles that are highly coveted on the market

•  structure the human resource management governance

For myself, who leads a small consulting firm, such an ambitious project is a great challenge (but also,

potentially, a nightmare).

The top management requires the change, but it is difficult to leave the logic and tools used for decades

and the "we have always done so" resounds in the company.

Although there is great human respect for workers in the company, it is difficult to use innovative working

methods.

There is a short-term orientation to thinking.  The project must obviously be carried out while the company works, and the SMEs do not have many

resources (of time and money to invest in these projects).    The selection

Specifically, approaches and two typical tools of Design Thinking were used.  Principles:

•  Maximum involvement: it was decided to build, at least partially, the strategy with a mixed Top- Down and Bottom-Up approach asking people, even operational ones, to provide contributions;

•  Small bets: in the preliminary phase we wanted to involve a limited number of people within a pilot  project and then let them act as "radiators of change".

Visual tools:

•  Lego® Serious Play® Workshop - this facilitation method that uses Lego® bricks with a metaphorical  approach, not only allows you to see the result of what is being done (in 3D) but permits to by-pass  some brakes related to the rationality allowing a constructive participation in the identification of  solutions;

•  Creation of “atypical personas” for an organizational analysis - on average, in an organizational  analysis, the professional figures are used as a cluster and therefore the employment contract is used  as a reference; here we tried to shift the focus on the "psychological contract" between company  and personnel and then analyze everything in terms of mutual expectations and use these clusters.

Application

What has been done - what is being done:

1. A short questionnaire submitted to all company staff to summarily investigate the main expectations

that workers have towards the company in relation to the way they work, relations and growth within  the organization;

2. Workshop with the Lego® Serious Play® Workshop methodology (described above) aimed at the

heads of the Organizational Unit to create a Business and Management model through which a  representation of these models was requested in the AS IS and TO BE version;

3. Workshop with the Lego® Serious Play® Workshop methodology aimed at members of the pilot

project in which we asked:

o Possibly change the organization's AS IS vision;  o Building the road between AS IS and TO BE;  o Define the actors who could support this growth and change (definition of the Personas in

relation to mutual expectations.

Now, with a more traditional approach, talks are being conducted with all the staff in order to be able to

deepen everything that emerged in the workshops and go into detail on the individual expectations.    Intuition and approach

The choice to use a non-traditional approach and visual tools related to Design Thinking was made to

avoid getting stuck in resistance to change.

The risk, given the context described above, was that of "hoping for different results by always doing the

same things".

The traditional approach based on in-depth study and then implementation did not seem suitable.  Start with an analysis of the environment and strategy (with Top Management), the structure and staff

(mainly with Middle Management) and the organizational climate (with the whole company), and then  move on to an implementation seemed unsuitable for the big change challenge.

Quick wins are needed to enable change and find trustworthy followers.  The strong involvement and theuse of disruptive tools seem to be appreciated: the project is still ongoing

and therefore it is not possible to make an in-depth evaluation of the choice made.

