By Tracie Crook
Chief operating officer at McCarthy Tétrault LLP
YPO member since 2009
If you can scan the agendas of senior executives, “organizational transformation” would be a priority item in most corner offices. Whether adapting their company’s core purpose to shifting customer tastes or re-engineering costly processes to fend off new competitors, executives across the globe are battling a blizzard of organizational change projects.
The unfortunate reality is that most of these ambitious programs fail to achieve the desired results. Or they fizzle out within the early phases.
Since I have been called a leader of change — I managed complex transformation projects in the legal, financial and telecommunications sectors — I am frequently asked why so many change initiatives flounder. My answer in brief: In most cases, the underlying transformation plan was sound, but change failed in the implementation. Successful execution comes down to strong leaders with a rare mix of soft skills to build trust, relationships and teams — plus the resilience to stick with a vision, long after the going gets tough.
Appreciate psychology of change
Although I am sometimes introduced as an agent of change, that term might suggest that effective transformation is the result of a fancy title or secret formula. Many subtle factors actually drive successful change, including ones rooted in psychology, such as understanding why some people fear change and others embrace it.
Leaders of change understand that transformation can be very polarizing. Some individuals will fear loss of control while others will see opportunity. Thus, change leaders must read and understand the various needs of their people and then build a vision upon collaboration and communication across the entire team.
Inspiring change at a 150-year-old institution
These are lessons I brought to McCarthy Tétrault. As a Canadian law firm that delivers integrated business law, litigation services, tax law, real property law, and labor and employment law nationally and globally, McCarthy Tétrault recognized it was time to transform their operations and create a world-class delivery team for the future.
Like many established law firms, McCarthy Tétrault faced new competitive pressures as global law conglomerates and professional services firms began to woo corporate clients. Increasingly, cost-sensitive companies built their own in-house counsels to lower their legal bills, while demanding fixed fees and clear deliverables from the legal firms they retain.
On paper, the firm’s transformation required efficiency, such as enhancing technologies, reducing costs and adopting a new service delivery model. Between the lines, program success hinged on first building engagement among more than 200 partners and 900 employees. Partners needed to understand how client expectations had evolved. Support staff, meanwhile, had to embrace operational change, headcount reductions and role transitions to better serve both internal and external clients.
Today, four years later, McCarthy Tétrault receives inquiries from law firms across North America about how they can experience similar transformation. They marvel at our results, such as our increased profitability, a 20 percent reduction in headcount and millions in annual cost savings. Besides these financial and productivity gains, we steadily improved our employee engagement scores and enhanced our employee programs.
The biggest factor in our success was our people-focused approach to change leadership. Our in-depth, two-year engaged change roadmap to guide the transformation was based on many months of intensive interviews, in which we listened closely to McCarthy Tétrault people. Beyond formal employee engagement surveys, I walked the halls and sought out people at all levels who really understood the firm’s issues. This process helped build trust, relationships and a spirit of collaboration, which proved critical when the change implementation got rolling.
Building a blueprint for change: 7 key steps
Although every industry, company and transformation is unique, I found there are typically seven key steps embedded in a successful change program. Each one links closely to leadership, communication and team building.
Assess the organization’s current state. Seemingly obvious, but many leaders embark on transformation with a pre-conceived view of what needs to be done. A personal, in-depth assessment of your company — rather than just a consultant’s report — provides a true pulse of what is going on and where change should focus.
Establish a vision for the desired state. Without a very clear vision of where you want to go, people by nature will want to continue doing things as they did in the past. To be able to deliver on any new objectives, people must understand the vision.
Build a strong team to drive change and manage the business. Put together a group of real team players who believe in the vision. It is not enough to have the best individual performers since they can actually undermine the change, so you must make tough choices to create a truly effective team.
Create a communications plan to promote benefits and opportunities. It’s amazing how many leaders fail to prioritize communication, either because they assume everyone understands the vision, or they become too busy to focus on communications. Change momentum hinges on communication.
Define accountability and hold people responsible. Pushback is inevitable when change is difficult or risk escalates. It is essential to articulate individual and team deliverables and consequences, and to define what actions will be taken to get back on track.
Accept that perfection will not always occur. To counterbalance the tough tone in the previous point, help your team understand that, while mistakes and setbacks may occur, you will support or defend them through the challenges, if they do their best to support the plan and move in the right direction. This will build genuine trust and overcome resistance.
Celebrate successes along the way. With intense project timelines and a continuous chain of deliverables, leaders typically forget to celebrate the milestones, both large and small. Build specific celebrations into your change plan to acknowledge the contributions and successes of your people.
Balancing soft skills and resilience
The aforementioned steps are a curious mix of “listening and nurturing” and “pushing ahead forcefully.” Effective change leaders recognize that quiet leadership is critical. By listening and responding to fundamental human needs, they can build real partnerships and acceptance of change.
Resilience is equally important in the change management equation as leaders may experience pushback from the team, which can cause transformation to fall apart. It is tough to stand by a plan; however, by first applying good people skills (such as listening, empathizing and building relationships with team members), change leaders will gain an accurate pulse of how much change the organization can handle. This will give a leader confidence to keep his or her foot on the gas or the ability to see the signs that a course modification is required.
How are you positioned to lead change?
I am frequently asked how well today’s new generation of leaders is equipped to manage change. These younger chief executives have seen traditional business models topple, are the first generation to build their careers on connected technologies, and repeatedly have heard about the value of emotional intelligence and authentic leadership.
Without a doubt, today’s younger leaders have incredible strengths, including an eagerness to face change, spot new disruptive forces and identify opportunities. While this fearlessness and passion to innovate is impressive, they will face the same hurdles as past generations in terms of how to execute great ideas effectively.
The best leaders of change develop great teams. They utilize softer people skills to spark communication, collaboration and trust. Combined with determination and resilience, these skills help the team overcome unavoidable ups and downs. By honing these fundamental change management skills, more transformation programs will meet their goals, and propel their leaders and organizations onto even bigger and bolder ambitions.
Tracie Crook is chief operating officer at McCarthy Tétrault LLP, a leading national law firm based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and a member of Young Presidents’ Organization since 2009. Crook helped the 150-year-old institution achieve its highly successful culture, service model and operational transformation program. She has extensive experience helping diverse organizations unite their people, transform corporate cultures and drive technology innovation, collaboration and efficiency.
This article first published in the November 2015 issue of Ignite magazine.