Navigating global change: How to
introduce new tools & processes to a distributed team
A guide to change management with concrete methods for introducing new tools and processes to your global business operations.
Become an expert change-maker: Seamlessly implementing a new process, method, or tool at your company Making a big change to your business can be massively rewarding by streamlining your operations and helping your company sustain growth. But it can also be daunting to face a great change, especially when working with a globally-distributed team that’s accustomed to a certain solution or method. How can you ensure a seamless transition into new processes without losing steam along the way? You’ve most likely done your research and identified that the introduction of a new method or tool is going to support growth, save time, conserve resources, or all of the above. But it’s important to take the right steps to implement this change to keep focus on company priorities in the process. With this guide, you’ll learn how to become an expert changemaker with all the steps needed to launch, manage, and optimize important change on a global scale.
Index 1. What is Change Management?
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• Making a larger cultural shift • Losing steam along the way • Demonstrating the value of change
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2. Building a business case to get stakeholder buy-in • Identifying stakeholders • Making your case • Best practices: Peer learning
3. Planning for change • • • • •
Who initiates change? When is the right time to make a change? Build a flexible and adaptable timeline Release your solution in stages Make time to cascade onboarding
4. Identifying change champions to help on the ground • • • • • •
Reskilling employees Rallying your change champions Make change a part of their jobs Internal promotion goals Template messaging Picking a project management tool to align
5. Rolling out your change • • • •
First impressions count Tools to communicate your rollout Make the platform mandatory Give it time
6. Tracking your progress • • • • •
Evaluate success and align with business goals Connect with your influencers & podium their efforts Send pulse surveys or host a focus group Run re-engagement campaigns Optimize your processes
7. Tracking your progress • • • •
“We already have a solution, why should we change?” “What benefit do we get from this?” “This doesn’t concern my department.” “I don’t like the idea.”
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Chapter 1: What is Change Management?
When it comes to changing a procedure, tool, or method at work, there’s a lot to keep in mind to make it a smooth transition. And the process for helping your team to evolve together is called change management. Change management is an overarching term that encompasses the preparation, initiation, and support of a major change to process within a business. It may seem simple - but there’s a lot that goes into getting everyone on the same page, particularly when working with a global team. In business, change management is essential for growth. It’s called on when a company needs to implement a change to a process, culture, or to introduce new software that will improve operations on a global scale. And there are a number of circumstances that suggest your company is in need of a deliberate change management strategy.
Chapter 1: What is Change Management?
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Making a larger cultural shift
Losing steam along the way
As the main point of contact for change, it’s quite normal to feel isolated or alone. Particularly if the company needs to apply a systemic change in culture to make it work.
Perhaps you’ve recently invested in a new tool and the executive team is excited to roll it out. However, when it comes to implementing it across regions, the tool receives less interest than expected.
In order to get support from the entire company, it’s crucial to properly plan the implementation of your new tool or process and get key stakeholders on board for change from the start.
Chapter 1: What is Change Management?
Next thing you know, the project is dead. Without a system in place to move change forward, new solutions, tools, and processes tend to lose steam before they even reach your teams. new software that will improve operations on a global scale. And there are a number of circumstances that suggest your company is in need of a deliberate change management strategy.
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Demonstrating the value of change It may be clear to you how important change is - but it’s not quite clicking with decisionmakers, management, and team members. If they’re not ready to invest in change (whether that be money or time/effort), then you need to show them why the cost of your new solution will be worth it. With strategic change management, you’re prepared to demonstrate the value of change throughout the process and already have specific structures in place to track ROI and impact.
Chapter 1: What is Change Management?
If you’d like to arm your company for the long road of change ahead, here are the steps to implementing strategic change management:
1. Building a business case to get stakeholder buy-in
2. Planning for change by establishing a flexible and adaptable timeline
3. Identifying champions to spearhead change throughout your workspaces
4. Rolling-out your change in stages
5. Tracking your progress to see your change through to the end Let’s start with strategies for getting key stakeholders on board for change.
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Chapter 2: Building your business case to get stakeholder buy-in
When we say buy-in, we’re not just referring to the budget. Buy-in also ensures that you get support for the new solution, which will in turn influence acceptance across your global team. It’s common for companies to regret seeking buy-in later in the process. That’s why we believe that building a solid business case and properly communicating it to stakeholders is key.
Chapter 2: Building your business case to get stakeholder buy-in
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Identifying stakeholders People with budget approval rights hold weight, of course - but we implore you to think past the budget to identify all of the stakeholders that will be central to getting the rest of the team on your side.
“You need to get support from the top. In change management, absence of support from up top means your change will not be successful. Support from up top means leading by example.” - Yusuf Okucu, Senior HR Leader at PepsiCo, on being a change leader
This process certainly requires a holistic view of your company, meaning it’s necessary to consider international teams, their geo-locations, languages, management structure, and culture.
Chapter 2: Building your business case to get stakeholder buy-in
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Identifying stakeholders Make a list of the top stakeholders who can help to influence from the top down. Remember to include leaders in multiple regions for your change to reach every office. For example, when it comes to implementing a CSR program into your company culture, there are a few specific stakeholders to keep in mind: • Human resources administration is important as processes need to be synced with the current HR system, volunteering hours need to be captured, and payroll giving needs to be set up. • The Division of Human Rights (DHR) helps to infuse a culture of doing good into your operations. This makes it easier to make time for volunteering and for managers to approve hours. • Management needs to guide teams towards this kind of cultural change, leading by example to demonstrate the importance of the corporate mission.
By taking the time to list out stakeholders that will be affected by change, you’ll be able to anticipate their questions and concerns, giving yourself a leg up when it comes to defending the proposed solution.
Chapter 2: Building your business case to get stakeholder buy-in
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Making your case Once you know who you’d like on your side, it’s time to consider how to get them there. By building a well-organized case, you’ll show stakeholders that you’re serious about the benefits of change. Here are the steps we suggest you take to build an effective business case:
1. Establish a proof of concept: Gather information about the solution, tool, or process that can help build an idea of why it will help your company.
2. Make a performance blueprint: Create a detailed timeline of where your company hopes to be every step of the way. Include ways of tracking the success of your change so that it’s clear when the solution has been properly implemented.
3. Build a budget & cost comparison: This will help you to showcase the benefits in numbers. There’s a chance that your new solution may financially cost more than your current process, so you’ll need to offset that cost in the time your new solution will save. A cost savings guide is a great tool to help you do this, for those that are interested in the numbers.
4. Create value for all: When presenting a potential new solution, ensure you’re creating value for everyone involved. The benefits will be different for the product team versus customer success or marketing. So build a specific case in the name of each team by speaking their language and showing the direct benefit your solution will have on them, their tasks, and their people.
Chapter 2: Building your business case to get stakeholder buy-in
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Buy-in best practice: Peer learning One useful step that is worth taking to ensure buy-in is to speak with other companies who have implemented the same solution or method that you’re hoping to introduce to your team. We suggest that you physically go to the offices of other businesses with executive team members that would be involved in onboarding the change. This will give them the confidence they need to give your solution the green light. “We reached out to execs at these other companies and explained our intent and desire to learn more. If you’re clear on what you’re trying to achieve, with non-compete companies, you’ll be surprised how willing to share businesses are. We met the execs, asked all the questions we could, had round tables, even received a presentation or two,” Yusuf shared.
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Buy-in best practice: Peer learning In order to do this, follow these simple steps:
1. First up, identify companies with common change goals. 2. Ask your account manager at the new provider if they have clients you can speak with to get more information.
3. Ensure they’re non-compete. 4. Look for diversity in your selection of companies. Meet companies of all sizes and industries to get a broad idea of how the solution works in practice.
5. Make sure you can visit (on or offline) companies where you geographically have a presence.
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Buy-in best practice: Peer learning Keep in mind that there isn’t a single organization that implements change perfectly - and it will never be a one-size fits all solution. Particularly because the process of change really never stops; you simply become more advanced with your solution or method as it continues to meet the needs of your company. But what peer learning can provide is a look into possible scenarios and challenges that will come up along the way. And the best way to be prepared for the long-road ahead is to plan for it.
“You need to understand your C-suite level’s perspective. And you need to quantify the worst case scenario (with and without money) What happens if things don’t go as planned? If there’s no significant reason not to do it, then what’s stopping us?” - Yusuf Okucu, Senior HR Leader at PepsiCo, on being a change leader
Chapter 2: Building your business case to get stakeholder buy-in
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Chapter 3: Planning for change By now you’ve built your business case and have won project buyin. It’s time to start planning for your change. This may seem like an obvious step; however, it’s certainly not to be overlooked—especially as you’re rolling this tool or process out across different markets. Making a strategic change is an intricate undertaking that requires fluid communication - all of which can be managed by the help of a change leader.
Chapter 3: Planning for change
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Who initiates change? The vital work of making a major structural change to process often falls on the HR team, the Chief Operations Officer (COO), an internal staff or champion, or an external change management consultant. This will, of course, depend on the type of change you’re implementing. Some common examples would be: • A dedicated CSR team would oversee the implementation of a corporate volunteering or giving program into your company culture. • If moving over to a new CRM like Salesforce, companies often have a specialist join the organization. • Companies will hire or train team members to become agile coaches to embed agile methods, practices, values, and mindsets into the company operations.
Chapter 3: Planning for change
For global teams, we find it’s useful to go with the latter, inviting an external change manager who can keep everyone involved on track. While you may feel nervous about sharing confidential information with outside personnel, this allows the leader of change to take an impartial approach. Meaning they can send frequent reminders without fear of putting unnecessary tension on crucial inter-team relationships. This sort of neutral territory that’s created by having an external change leader does wonders for moving forward in the change process. No matter who is responsible for change at your company, we recommend that the initiation and presentation of change comes from C-suite or executive staff to really carry weight. That’s why building a solid business case to get them on the side of change is crucial to the process of change management. But before building your business case, first consider if it’s the right time to make a change.
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When is the right time to make a change? If you’re considering implementing change in your company, but aren’t sure if it’s the right moment, start by asking yourself a few questions:
1. Is our current process manual and time-consuming?
2. Is our current process blocking progress?
3. Can our current process handle our growth goals with agility?
4. Is there a more cost-effective way of doing our current process in terms of budget and team time? If your answers to any or all of the above questions indicate that your business needs a new solution, then now’s a good time to start blocking off your calendar and start on your change transformation journey.
Chapter 3: Planning for change
But don’t just launch a new tool or process at any moment in time. Rather, identify the best timeframe for enacting your change. For example, if you’re implementing a CSR program, make sure to roll it out when employees will be the most engaged. This means avoiding summer months when most people go on holiday. A few things to consider to help identify the best period for your change are: • Hiring sprints • New product or feature launches • Peak and pit sales trends
• Internal events • Public holidays or sales seasonality • Awareness days that trigger the launch of a CSR program • (i.e. Earth Day, Black History Month, etc.) Once you find an ideal moment for your teams to digest such a change, you’re ready to build a worthy business case.
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Build flexible & accountable timelines Timelines give everyone an idea of when they’ll be needed for an action item. These timelines help avoid bottlenecks, enable stakeholders to manage their time better, and give your project a set of KPIs and goals that are time-sensitive. This helps keep things on track particularly with the assistance of an external change leader who can push the process along. However, it’s important that these timelines are flexible —within reason—and are empathetic to unforeseen circumstances. For example, no one could have predicted the effect COVID-19 would have on our workplaces. Projects, systems, and cultures needed to adapt, pivot, or pause for the business to continue operating successfully. Keep notions like this in mind when building your timelines.
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Release your solution in stages Releasing such a large change within an organization can cause workplace trauma if done so all at once. You’re potentially changing workplace habits and culture alongside these tools and processes. Your change needs to be conscious of this and delivered in bitesized chunks. Think about the tool or solution that you plan to introduce. What are the natural stages that you can assign to the implementation process? For example, first present teams with an introductory training, then give them time to engage on their own. Next, set a deadline for teams to implement one part of the solution to their daily processes and continue forward with an established cadence. This sort of “drip-feeding” change can break down the process into practical elements that are much more digestible. So by the time you project everyone to be fully aligned with your new change, the whole team will already feel comfortable. We also suggest you include a feedback phase so that your employees have the opportunity to share impressions, blockers, and workarounds as they move through your change timeline. This will also come in handy later on when it comes to reporting on your progress.
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“Just like any change, people don’t like it, so drip-feeding the change can help settle the anxiety and make people understand that it’s not that bad after all.” - Sebastian Ibarra, People Operations Advisor (HRBP) at Kodify Media Group
Make time to cascade onboarding Cascading information through your company hierarchy is the best way to meet people where they are. It’s not always the case that everyone needs a holistic view of what your new solution will bring to the company. In fact, giving too much information can overwhelm busy teams. So in many cases, they only need to know how it directly affects them. However, writing tailored use cases for a team of thousands is simply impractical. An easier way to present your solution that speaks directly to each person’s day-to-day activities and role within the company is by cascading information via leadership, management, and regional HR teams. By going this route, your senior employees can tailor messaging to those they’re responsible for, making communication and transitions more seamless.
Chapter 3: Planning for change
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Chapter 4: Identifying champions to spearhead change throughout your workspaces
Your stakeholders are more than just management and C-suite staff. Every company has influencers or staff members who are natural leaders. They’re the kind of people that others look up to, who can heavily influence how something is received by not only their team - but the larger workforce. You will need these people as your change management champions to help encourage and push people towards change. The goal is to get them inside early and have them plant positive seeds among their peers so people are ready when the time for change comes. At a larger organization, it may be useful to bring in outside project managers or consultants at this stage to help build a center of excellence. As they integrate into the culture of the team, you may even consider converting them into full-time employees. Chapter 4: Identifying champions to spearhead change throughout your workspaces
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Reskilling employees Another way of investing in your champions is by taking time to reskill employees. Think about the best person to implement change from each department, then give them the skills they need to do so. Let’s get into the specifics of what this reskilling process can look like by examining what PepsiCo did to reskill their employees under Yusuf’s command. Yusuf stated, “At PepsiCo, we decided to go with one function first, it holds 1,000 people across Europe. We hired agile coaches externally; a handful to reskill champions in this function. We also made sure all of our senior managers (and up) went through an agile management program. A community of practice was established. After a year we had 150 people that had gone through this program. In this community, you bring real topics to the table to learn from agile and apply them to real Pepsico geo-locations and teams. It ensures our champions are continually being educated on what agile means. After this, you need to coach your coaches so they’re no longer relying on you. Once you’ve got through that first transformation round, you can rely on internal coaches with organization-specific problems, rather than external lessons.” Whether you’re implementing a culture or a tool, leveraging champions who already have the skills to deploy your new solution will make the change feel more natural for everyone involved.
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Rallying your change champions In our work helping global companies reach their employees where they are by engaging them in volunteering and giving opportunities, we use the champions model to get employees excited about spreading goodness around the world. By building a network of ambassadors that are passionate about making a positive impact, companies use the leadership skills and positivity of champions to encourage others to take action in the name of the company on the ground. The crucial part of the process is to establish a cadence of contact so that you can keep the momentum going. One effective way to do this is to organize stand-ups where each champion can share their progress to get the energy up. This is something that international on-demand service, Glovo, does when organizing their global volunteer weeks to reach employees across offices around the world. They find that their champion standups help to build a sense of urgency, create a space for sharing best practices, and generate an infectious excitement over the volunteering program. If you’d like to learn more about how they’ve introduced global volunteer weeks into their company culture, check out this case study
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Make change a part of their jobs
Internal promotion goals
If you’re finding it difficult to keep your champions focused on change, consider making it a part of their job.
To make sure your champions hit specific communication targets, it’s useful to define internal promotion goals. In order to do this, you need to build an idea of what successful internal communication of your solution would look like.
Take an idea inspired by Google: 20% of your time (1/5 days a week) is dedicated to innovation that you enjoy. Instead require your champions to dedicate 20% of their time per week to driving change. When you have passionate people, they end up prioritizing their own workload to be able to make this happen. This is something that Glovo also does with their volunteer ambassadors. By assigning one person in each country who is expected to spend 15% of their time on organizing volunteer events, they garner significantly more participation and engagement across offices. Of course, a lot of this comes down to how change is being communicated internally. Here are a few more useful tactics you can use to increase internal promotion.
Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to get you on the right track: • Who is your audience? Are you reaching desk or non-desk workers? What formats work for both? • Do you hope to have a certain amount of the workforce actively using your new solution in the first few weeks/months? • Perhaps your new solution needs to be on team standup agendas for a month? • Is there a certain amount of emails, Microsoft Teams updates, or Slack messages that will showcase your solution is winning ample screen time?
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Template messaging Help you and your champions communicate your solution more succinctly. Create a 50-word, 100-word, and 200-word pitch that people can rinse and repeat to communicate the change. Here’s an example of a template you can share with champions to inspire other team members to get on board with a CSR program: This year, we’re putting a focus on promoting sustainability all levels of the company. By using a CSR platform, we’re able to connect with one another on all matters related to doing good. From organizing volunteer activities to making donations to local charities to challenging one another to make small, personal changes to minimize our environmental impact, everyone has the tools to contribute to our company’s sustainability goals. Include an FAQ sheet that can be shared with champions from the start so that they can more accurately respond to questions. A pros and cons one-pager is also a great resource to circulate with your solution’s messaging.
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Picking a project management tool to align To ensure that your team stays on track, it’s useful to pick a project management tool that can help all involved stakeholders connect in one place and stay aligned throughout the process. On a platform like Asana or ClickUp, all departments have a broad vision of where the company is in the process with constant updates passing through over time. Some things to keep in mind when picking your tool:
- All of us have our own preferences when it comes to staying organized so pick a tool that allows for multiple views of the current status in the form of lists, calendars, boards, and more.
- Find a solution that provides templates for understanding how to best use it to your advantage.
- Tagging and communication functionalities are important for staying on track and drawing attention to gaps.
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Picking a project management tool to align The benefit of using a project management tool is that everyone can easily track each other’s progress. Plus, your communication model will be saved to be reused in the future.
“Find your senior product champions! There will always be managers who are more excited about the new product/ tool than others; use them to your advantage. These employees are more than happy to influence the ones around them in a positive manner, and they will always be on your side!“ - Sebastian Ibarra, People Operations Advisor (HRBP) at Kodify Media Group
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Chapter 5: Rolling out change With a plan in place, you’re now ready to start rolling out your new solution. This is potentially the most crucial part of your change management timeline, and you need to ensure you do it well the first time around. Here are a few things to keep in mind along the way.
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First impressions count The first moment of exposure for team members is critical. Your presentation of the new solution needs to be articulate, thought-out, and positive. Plus, it needs to be niche. Remember to tailor it as best as possible to each team and region, while speaking to their needs, cultures, and even their language. A few things to keep in mind when introducing the solution to teams: • Highlight the USPs of your new process or tool. • Highlight the faults in the current process. • Localize the presentation to each market. • Present live but offer a follow-up for those that can’t attend. • Provide multiple presentations that work across time zones. • Manage calendar invites and use multiple notifications in the run-up. • Co-present with a regional manager or process champion who is really excited about the solution. • Include a Q&A, and plenty of time for it, at the end of the presentation. • Make sure everyone knows who they can turn to with remaining concerns.
But the process doesn’t stop at your first presentation. There are a few tools and templates out there that you can use to ensure introducing your solution to the company runs smoothly.
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Tools to communicate your rollout Pitch Pitch is a great SaaS tool that enables businesses to build and present stunning decks collaboratively. It’s especially a good resource if you’re working across timezones, short on design resources, or building presentations that don’t come naturally to you—they have some great templates to work from.
Zendesk This is a great customer service software you can flip to care for your employees and their queries. Easily redirect them to articles and short training videos where they can get answers to their questions.
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Tools to communicate your rollout Slack Your new resource should have an integration to Slack or whatever communication tool your company uses. Make sure you hash out this integration before you release it company-wide. It’s also a good idea to start a related channel that can deal with any conversations around the solution.
ZipMessage ZipMessage is the go-to platform for asynchronous video communication. Like Loom, the platform allows users to screen record with video, voiceonly, or text-only. Unlike Loom, the platform allows you to host these asynchronous conversations—sort of like a chatbox. It’s a great tool for troubleshooting publicly or privately and can seriously help with change success and onboarding.
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Make the platform mandatory Wary about making change mandatory? You don’t want employees to feel as though they never had a choice in the first place. But to some extent, this may be the case. It’s not scalable or productive to bring an entire workforce in on a business operations decision. Your tool or process has been considered alongside a lot of research. You’ve proven its value in all manners of ways. For the business to benefit from it fully, you need everyone to use it. Hopefully, you’ve won over enough internal stakeholders by now that you’re not met with a great deal of pushback if you need to make your process mandatory. Particularly if you’re looking at performance management; it takes buy-in from every player to create a high performance culture in which everyone is held accountable. Of course, for all of the convincing and gradual change you need to implement, you’re still asking people to change old habits. No matter how grand your solution is, and whether they know it or not, not all will want to embrace it. Give them access to resources and support, making sure they know who to turn to with their frustrations - whether it be a change champion, team leads, or elsewhere.
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Give it time Change doesn’t happen overnight, and success certainly doesn’t. Give your change time to be adopted and to showcase success. Of course, this will look different depending on what you’re implementing and how big your workforce is. Ensure that stakeholders and C-suite staff know that they may not see an immediate lift in pros quickly. Your process or tool could take months, even years, to be fully adopted. Remain patient and stay on track.
“Resistance of change is part of change. Create a playbook for how we react to resistance. How can you listen and learn from this feedback?” - Yusuf Okucu, Senior HR Leader at PepsiCo
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Chapter 6: Tracking your progress to see your change through to the end The worst thing you can do when implementing a major change is leaving your new process to fall flat. Stay committed to the cause by setting goals, tracking your progress, and seeing change through to the end.
Chapter 6: Tracking your progress to see your change through to the end
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Evaluate success and align with business goals
Connect with your influencers & podium their efforts
Success comes in many forms. But thanks to change management, you’ve already identified what success will look like. Evaluate your KPIs. Are you on track to success? Are you behind? How do these goals and progress align with your business growth goals?
Regular standups across departments are key to your change success. This is definitely the case in the first few weeks of implementation. We find that a 10-minute meeting every day for the first two weeks is best. Following that, you can lower it to twice per week and then monthly check-ins.
Set tangible targets around user engagement, for example. Watch how this grows over time and make adjustments to your communication if you’re not seeing the engagement you expected. Once you’ve identified success, report on it to those that need to know. Be sure to spot pain points and state how you plan to address them.
These sessions allow you to gather ear-to-the-ground feedback while keeping your change top of mind for influencers. Then, make these champions as public as possible, sharing their particular transformational journeys so others feel inspired. This also gets them feeling invested in the cause, as more people recognize them from their individual efforts.
Chapter 6: Tracking your progress to see your change through to the end
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Send pulse surveys or host a focus group Pulse surveys and focus groups are a fantastic way to quantify employee sentiment towards your new process or tool. They have a high completion rate, can meet the employees where they are, and provide your team with insightful data that will affect the continuation of your rollout. Ask a mix of concrete and open-ended questions such as: • How are you perceiving change? • On a scale of 1-10, how clear are you on this new process? • I am happy with how this change is affecting my team: strongly disagree -> strongly agree. Then make your results transparently available for executives and change agents. Pulse surveys and focus groups can productively and proactively help your team review engagement and deal with any blockers that may arise.
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Run re-engagement campaigns
Optimize your processes
You won’t have this kind of data (yet), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be working to keep employees engaged with your product or process. Flesh out ways you can run re-engagement campaigns to keep change unique and regular. Give it the same priority you would if it were a customer campaign.
When bringing in a new solution, there are likely a number of internal processes that will be affected along the way. Make sure to look at other areas that will need to change to accommodate the new software or solution.
These can be anything from calendar invites or email flows to something grander like sponsored meetings. For sponsored meetings, change-makers borrow the first or last 5-10 minutes of another team’s meeting to present the initiative.
Remember to always remain agile. What seemed like a great, well-researched idea at the time may no longer serve you later down the line. In your change management, be open to, well, change.
Sponsored meetings are best supported if the sponsors (your team) add value to their sponsorship, like meeting snacks. Or, in the case of a distributed team, a virtual team gift that everyone will benefit from.
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Chapter 7: Common change challenges and how to overcome them with advice from change leaders To help you approach common challenges in the change-making process, we spoke with change leaders who have experience rolling out new solutions, tools, and processes across global companies.
Chapter 7: Common change challenges and how to overcome them with advice from change leaders
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1. “We’re already using [current solution], why should we change?” At this point, it’s good to lay out the groundwork with a pros and cons list, comparing the new solution to your current one. You may need to do this for multiple current solutions if teams across different regions have developed their own processes or have alternative communication cultures. Put the time into this, and make sure you tailor your comparisons as this is the core way you’ll win these doubters over. Yusuf Okucu, Senior HR Lead at PepsiCo, explains a specific situation he encountered while implementing agile at Vistaprint, and how he overcame it: “You’ll need to meet your people where they are. Change is not a one-size-fits-all thing. You can have great intent and guiding principles that are the same, like offering better value to customers. That doesn’t change depending on where teams are in the world. However, t heir processes and cultures will. (...) At Vistaprint in Berlin, the team preferred a physical visualization board to the digital board we were trying to implement with agile production development. We set a freedom framework to allow the team and all teams to meet our change principles with the tools they have and prefer.”
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2. “What benefit do we get if we use this?” When this comes up, don’t be afraid to rely on your champions to explain the value of your new solution. Sebastian Ibarra, People Operations Advisor (HRBP) at Kodify Media Group, found this helpful when implementing a performance management process across their global team. “To encourage one element of the program, the praise system, we incentivize people with quarterly gift cards and, on an annual basis, employees can win a trip to an office of their choice! (LA, Montreal or Barcelona.)” If you can lay down some tangible benefits for process champions, you’ll be surprised by the rapid uptake you’ll see in your change management process and final product.
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3. “This doesn’t concern my department.“ Yusuf stumbled across this kind of pushback within his work at PepsiCo. He stated, “Some teams didn’t think it referred to them, or pushed back and said this is not how we do things here. Leave the ‘how’ to the teams locally. The outcomes are non-negotiable but the how is negotiable. We gave people the means and resources to get to the desired outcomes. It’s a good idea to run a post-mortem, where you list everything that could go wrong in a project. From extremes to very likely. Then you plan against those things. What do you do in these moments? This will better prepare you for push back.” Remember, this can’t be seen as a HR program, it needs to be delivered by your execs and leaders.
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4. “I don’t like the idea.“ It’s normal to receive emotional pushback along the way. But the important part is identifying what’s behind the reaction to help your employees move forward. Is it fear of change? Are they feeling overwhelmed by their workload and now the added stress of changing processes at the same time? Maybe they simply prefer the old method. When someone expresses their dislike for the idea, take some time to get more information as to why, then address the core issue. Yusuf has his own way of overcoming emotional pushback. “It’s easy to deal with rational pushback and have debates based on insights. Emotional feedback is another thing. That doesn’t come from data. Don’t rationalize emotional feedback. You need to identify it, take a step back and ask: ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’ Take a more empathetic approach. Things can always go back.”
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Are you ready to make a change? We hope these insights have you feeling ready to manage your own change. But keep in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for your process. You cannot go into it with one set idea, nor presume that things will go according to plan. Be agile enough to respond to change, listen, and learn from it. This means using a flexible approach that takes into account your entire teams’ needs alongside your change goals. Be globally relevant, while remaining locally minded. Remember, change is a discipline; we underestimate the expertise that’s needed with change. It requires knowledge and effort, and is not to be underestimated. Of course, part of it is figuring it out as you go - but there are a number of practical techniques and tactics for implementing change that will make all of the difference.
And if you’re looking for support in rolling out a global CSR program, Alaya by Benevity is an effective platform for embedding purpose into your company culture. With features that help companies reach employees where they are, there’s no simpler way to ingrain your company’s CSR mission into the everyday lives of remote teams. Learn more about how global companies are engaging their employees in goodness through corporate volunteering, giving, and more with Alaya by Benevity.
Have questions? We’re here to help.
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