HRD looks at three organisations who have made brave decisions to transform their people and practices
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KPMG, NSW Health and Bayer are three organisations who are leading the way in best-practice for changing and improving how leaders lead, how employees learn and how businesses innovate.
Firstly, KPMG has embarked on a process to work with employees who are “just below partner level” and have the potential to progress to partner.
That involved putting them on a 12-month developmental pathway to be as well prepared as possible, said Anthony Mitchell, co-founder and chairman of Bendelta - the company that guided the three organisations through these major changes.
“So hopefully they are then selected as partners and are partner-ready on day one when they start that role,” he told HRD.
Another project KPMG has worked on has involved raising the prominence of the people management role for partners and other senior leaders in the firm.
“This is about raising the emphasis on that as part of their job and to equip them with the skills to do a great job of managing people, developing them and so on,” said Mitchell.
The second organisation implementing successful change management is NSW Health, and with 114,000 employees it is one of the biggest employers in the country.
“In fact, it’s so big that within that system there are 21 CEO positions who might have five to 10,000 people reporting to them, in addition to responsibility for all of the government health activities occurring within a geographical region,” said Mitchell.
“So essentially what you are trying to do is say 'as and when those 21 people move on, who is going to replace them'?
“What we have been doing has been working with an initial cohort of 21 people who have been seen as having some of that potential.”
Mitchell said this is not about anointing them for those future roles. It is about saying "these people have potential" and looking at the stretch and development that they need to get them ready for that.
The final organisation which has successfully transformed its people and practices is Bayer.
This goes back to about four years ago to a new CEO coming in and being concerned about the very risk-averse and conservative culture.
“She was saying 'this is not the way we need to be for this kind of fast-paced industry and we need much more entrepreneurship, much more innovation and much more initiative',” he said.
“This involved creating an informal network of change pioneers and getting to the point where you are creating a forest fire of enthusiasm and initiative running through the organisation.
“This has been very successful not only in terms of top line growth for the business, but in terms of winning awards in Australia for being amongst the most innovative companies in the country.”
Mitchell added that what all three companies have all got in common is that although they have all used different levers they are all going about changing the organisational system.
“In all three cases they have changed the organisational system and moved it from a to b,” he said.
“And the difference between a and b is that b is now an organisation which is much better at realising the full potential of the people who work there.
“Ultimately, we have been creating what we call a ‘human potential organisation’, a place in which at an individual and collective level human potential starts to flourish.
“I think this is very significant because the vast majority of organisations are not particularly good human potential organisations.”
Mitchell added that we have still got this "industrial age construct" that pervades the ways in which organisations are designed and actually suppresses the realisation of full potential.
“I think what all three of them have in common is bravery. I think key leaders in those organisations have been prepared to do more than just rearrange deck chairs,” he said.
“They have been willing to use science to look at what works and what doesn’t work. I think their willingness to make carefully managed risks has been central to their success.”
