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The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change
Creating Agile, High-Performing Workplaces
Siobhan McHale
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mchalesiobhan
https://www.facebook.com/siobhan.mchale.37
https://www.siobhanmchale.com
https://twitter.com/siobhanmchale2
AGENT
Michael Snell
Michael Snell Literary Agency
P.O. Box 1206, Truro, MA 02666-1206
Phone: (508) 349-371
Email: [email protected]
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Siobhan McHaleThe Culture Insider
Siobhan McHale (pronounced Shi-Vaun, Gaelic for Joan) has worked across four
continents helping thousands of leaders to create more agile and productive
workplaces. Unlike the academics, consultants and journalists who are writing about
workplace culture, Siobhan has been on the “inside” as the executive in charge of
change in a series of large, multi-national organizations. One of these inside jobs was
a radical seven-year change initiative at ANZ Bank that transformed it into one of the
highest performing and most globally admired banks in the world. Professor John
Kotter used the work as a Harvard Business School case study designed to teach
MBA students about managing change. Oh, the English sheepdog in the photo? That’s
Digby, the brand ambassador for Dulux Group, where Siobhan currently serves as the
Head of Human Resources.
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PROPOSAL CONTENTS
HOW THE INSIDER LEARNED THE SECRETS TO CULTURE CHANGE.......5WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING...............................................................................7THE BOOK................................................................................................................9THE AUDIENCE.....................................................................................................12THE COMPETITION..............................................................................................14THE AUTHOR........................................................................................................17THE AUTHOR’S PROMOTIONAL PLATFORM AND PLAN...........................22BOOK CONTENTS.................................................................................................38CHAPTER SUMMARIES.......................................................................................40SAMPLE CHAPTER...............................................................................................56Engage Everyone: Mobilizing The People Who Do the Work...............................56
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HOW THE INSIDER LEARNED THE SECRETS TO CULTURE CHANGE
I was standing in a taxi rank on a -14°C degree night at Chicago’s O’Hare
International airport, my eyelashes beginning to freeze. Eager to reach the St. Charles,
Illinois training center for the global management-consulting firm Accenture, I found
myself at a cross roads in my life. At the tender age of 33, I had spent the last decade
jetting across the United States, Europe, Australia and Asia helping leaders to
transform their workplace cultures. Yes, I loved my job, but I had recently begun to
sense that something was missing from my experience. As a consultant, I whisked in
and out of clients’ offices, but I never felt as if I had put all of my own skin in the
game. I yearned to trade Ms Outsider for Ms Insider and put my own hands on
applying the change tools I had developed over the past decade.
Waiting for a cab in the razor-sharp wind blasting off Lake Michigan, I felt the
desire to transform a culture from the inside catch fire. “Time to take a career U turn,
Siobhan!” Over the next two decades I joined a series of large, international
companies as the executive in charge of business transformation. This insider role
afforded me a unique perspective on all that I had learned from the Harvard
professors, McKinsey consultants and Wall Street journalists who had written on the
subject. No longer a student and spectator, I was eyebrow-deep in the swirling storm
of culture change, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with leaders who were actually
making business transformation happen.
I’ll never forget one of my most challenging insider jobs, ANZ Bank, which I
helped transform from the worst performing bank in Australia to one of the highest
performing financial institutions in the world. When I came aboard, I found that
ANZ’s executive team members knew that they needed to do something to turn
around low employee morale, widespread customer dissatisfaction, and sagging
revenues and profits, but every restructuring initiative they tried only made matters
worse.
My own investigations revealed what was really going on in the organization:
It had lost the trust of the community. A complete lack of transparency on its fees and
all-too-frequent branch closures had earned the bank a reputation as a cold-hearted
institution obsessed with bottom-line performance. How ironic that an obsession with
the bottom-line had severely damaged the bottom line! Needless to say, ANZ’s
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32,000 employees shared the community’s view of their employer. Loyalty and trust
had all but evaporated.
Over the course of the next seven years I worked with ANZ’s leaders to
implement a radical transformation, creating a new operating model and structure that
put the customers at the heart of everything the bank did. We reframed the roles of
employees to motivate them to lead and inspire each other. They began to embrace the
idea of turning the bank into a more human and caring place to work and do business.
They learned to become more emotionally intelligent about building more fruitful
relationships with each other and with their customers. A community-volunteering
program gradually regained the trust of local communities. At the same time, the
company’s leaders held employees accountable for delivering on performance
imperatives (that good old bottom line).
In the end, ANZ went from the lowest performing financial institution in the
country to the number one bank globally on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.
Profits had more than doubled and the share price had almost tripled. ANZ was now
winning awards for leadership, employee engagement, and customer service. The firm
had become a magnet for talent, receiving over 10,000 applications annually for its
250 graduate places. Employees loved working at ANZ. Customers loved doing
business there. All of this success led to a fateful phone call from Harvard Business
School Professor John Kotter, who developed the story into a case study on effective
change management.
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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYINGProfessor John Kotter, change management guru on the culture change journey at ANZ bank (called Breakout), which was led by Siobhan McHale.
“Breakout did not communicate a list of the bank’s values and tell people to get on board. It worked the other way around— asking employees what they deeply value— and then helped them to make those values come alive at work…The program remains relevant because it is aligned to the vision of the company’s leaders and the broader objectives of the bank— it was not just another training program that the HR department thought was relevant.”
McKinsey Partners Scott Keller & Colin Price in their book Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage commenting on the culture change program at ANZ bank, which was led by Siobhan McHale.
“ANZ was the worst performer of (Australia’s) big four banks regarded as the highest risk bank investment by the market, and in strategic disarray. The transformation…has turned ANZ from the industry’s lame duck into a highly polished moneymaking machine with an eye to its customer needs.
ANZ’s experience provides a vivid insight into how to make the transition from the intensive work and constant upheaval of transformation to a period of continuous improvement.”
Harvard Business Review article by McKinsey consultants Carolyn Dewar and Scott Keller on the culture change program at ANZ bank, which was led by Siobhan McHale
“Senior executives tend to think about corporate culture as a topic that’s hard to measure and hard to change. As a result, many choose not to invest in it despite all the evidence that, when skillfully managed, culture can be a powerful and enduring source of competitive advantage. ANZ Bank offers an example: a decade ago, the bank embarked on an effort described as a “unique plan of eschewing traditional growth strategies and recasting the culture of the bank to lift efficiency and earnings. …A full ten years after those initial efforts, ANZ has sustained its results: its profit after tax has grown at a cumulative average growth rate of 15 percent, putting it well ahead of its industry. What does it take to get results like these?”
John McFarlane, currently Chairman of Barclays Bank, London, talking about the culture change at ANZ bank, when he was CEO and Siobhan McHale was the leader of culture change.
“In 1999 we set about transforming ANZ from a traditional banking type culture into a modern, vibrant organization through a program we called Breakout. It’s a program, which emphasizes leadership, diversity, coaching and development and creates a shared vision of an exciting organization.
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We realized the program had to be an ‘inside out’ journey. In other words, it’s the individual who transforms, and in turn, the organization. Achieving this would not only build a more positive culture, but improve our competitive advantage.
The progress has really been quite stunning. That progress is reflected in our consistently strong financial performance, the strategic improvement in our market position and a radical rise in staff satisfaction, up from 49% in 1997 to 85% in 2004. In the 1990s, the community hated the banks and today, while I wouldn’t say they necessarily like the banks, I think the feeling in the community for ANZ is in a much more neutral space than it was in those days.”
Diane Smith Gander, Chairman Transfield Services talking about the change work at the international infrastructure firm Transfield Services, which was led by Siobhan McHale.
“If Transfield Services’ past financial year could be summed up in one word – I believe that word would be transformational. We have posted a strong result of $67 million net profit after tax pre-amortization. This was in the middle of our guidance range. An important indicator of business health, underlying EBITDA, was up seven per cent on the prior period to $217 million. This result was despite another tough year in many of the sectors we serve, and despite ongoing necessary fundamental changes inside the Company at all levels.”
Richard Barrett (culture guru) about the culture change work at ANZ bank, which was led by Siobhan McHale.
“ANZ takes relationship building to a level rarely seen in business, to generate extraordinary results and a virtually unassailable leadership position. ANZ’s accomplishment is one of the best examples of sustained cultural transformation in the world. They set a new standard altogether for this industry, and their innovation is a harbinger for other organizations wishing to enjoy long term, sustainable competitive advantage. That took vision and guts.”
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THE BOOKSeveral years ago I was recruited to another “insider” job, as the executive in
charge of change at a global infrastructure firm, we’ll call BuildPro. I had been
appointed to help turn around the company’s flagging fortunes and to assist in
stopping the steep decline in the share price. While BuildPro had enjoyed a period of
rapid growth, it now languished in a serious financial slump that threatened its very
existence.
During my first week on the job I met with members of the executive team in
order to investigate what was going on and get a deeper understanding of the
situation. These conversations convinced me that although BuidPro’s leaders knew
they needed to become more agile in a business environment that was changing at
almost light speed, they didn’t know how to get it off on the right foot. A series of
new processes and systems had not gotten the job done. Now what? That’s when they
turned to me as a last-ditch savior.
Leaders everywhere know that they must make some major shifts or risk
extinction in an increasingly volatile marketplace. Mega changes, such as the
increasingly rapid pace of technological breakthroughs and disruptions, a hyper-
connected world, the digital revolution, the growth of the urban consumer class, and
an ageing workforce are conspiring to reshape our global economies in unprecedented
ways. How are leaders coping with the unprecedented pace of change?
Not very well – the research reveals that 70% of all attempts to bring about
workplace change fail to deliver the expected benefits. Why? Recent McKinsey
research sheds some light on this question. “While many companies are striving to
become agile, only four percent of survey respondents have completed an
organization-wide transformation, the latest research finds. The No. 1 problem they
cite is culture.”
Leaders implement technical fixes but fail to address the deeply
embedded, underlying patterns in the culture. BuildPro was a classic example. The
executives knew they desperately needed to shift to a more commercial and higher
performing culture, but the change was happening at a glacial pace. The executives at
BuildPro are not alone and clearly, the conventional approaches to managing culture
change in our organizations are not getting the results we need.
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After a lot of hard work and no end of patience and perseverance, we did get
the results we needed at BuildPro. That experience, along with two and a half decades
spent researching, analyzing, and practicing new ideas in the field led me to write this
book. In The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change I share the knowledge I have
gained over many years as a culture insider as I addressed firsthand the fundamental
factors that make or break any effort to transform a company into an engine for
success. The book offers a step-by-step guide any organization can use to build an
agile and higher-performing workplace that can ultimately dominate the competition.
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change introduces a simple but powerful
change model that captures the essence of the book’s change program:
THE CHANGE ACCELERATOR
The Change Accelerator gives readers the inside knowledge on the four steps
leaders need to take to fast track culture change with less turmoil in the business.
Deeply exploring this model that I used at the ANZ, BuildPro and other turnaround
stories the book teaches the effective, productive techniques I’ve perfected over the
years as a culture insider and often shatters the prevailing myths about transformation.
I hope my insights will inspire business leaders to roll up their sleeves and get to work
on implementing game-changing culture initiatives. The inside scoop on culture
transformation includes how to:
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Discover the anatomy of workplace culture
Deliver faster change results with less organizational noise
Diagnose the current state of any workplace
Overcome resistance by identifying and addressing the big assumptions about
change
Design interventions that will turbo charge change efforts
Keep pressing the change accelerator over the longer term
Make agility a constant cultural trait
Maintain high energy levels on the unending change journey
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THE AUDIENCE
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change targets the corporate training market
where Managing Transitions (by William Bridges) and Walking the Talk (by
Carolyn Taylor), have sold half a million and 2 million copies respectively. A 2016
Harvard Business Review article by Beer, Finnstroem, and Schrader estimated that
American companies alone spend a whopping $160 billion annually on employee
training and education. Add to this corporate training market the executives,
consultants, students, and general business book readers who want to learn more
about corporate culture, and you end up a huge potential audience for The Insider’s
Guide To Culture Change.
The book will attract the interest of the author’s tribe of Human Resources
(HR) professionals who hold the purse strings for corporate training budgets. The
author has forged thousands of connections with senior HR professionals across the
USA who will not only buy the book for themselves but can place bulk orders for
managers across their organizations.
Siobhan has won credibility within the HR community because she has
worked in the trenches shoulder to shoulder with them. She is one of them, not just
another consultant trying to sell them the latest culture cure. As the Head of HR at
Dulux Group, an Australian-based, international consumer goods company, she has
developed a deep understanding of the global HR community that grapple daily with
all of the thorny issues surrounding culture change. They know conventional
approaches often fall short of expectations, and they’d love to find a new approach
that makes change happen faster less painfully, and more productively.
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change offers the fresh thinking and useful
tools they know they need. And it comes from someone with a hard-won track record
of doing it in the actual trenches of change.
The broad audience for the book includes:
HR professionals responsible for designing and developing corporate
training and who need to equip bosses (at all levels) with the tools to
manage change more effectively. The Society for Human Resource
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Management estimates that there are 500,000 HR professionals in the
USA today.
Bosses (at all levels) grappling with how to create productive work
environments and adjust to the disruptive forces that slam into their
businesses every day. Supervisors, middle managers, senior executives
and business owners will read this book as a source of proven ways to
deal with change and create agile workplace cultures that can dominate
the competition.
Management consultants who advise leaders about making change
happen in this rapidly shifting global business environment. According
to Stasticia.com there were over 600,000 management consultants
employed in the USA in 2016.
Students in the disciplines of human resources, management or
strategy eager to learn more about organizational change. These
aspiring business leaders want to get their careers off on the right track.
According to Quora.com there are over 250,000 students enrolled in
MBA programs annually in the USA.
Employees working in an environment of culture change may read
this book in order to understand how they can cope with and influence
the change happening in their workplace.
General readers curious to learn more about the most pressing
business problems on the day.
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THE COMPETITION Books on the subjects of corporate culture and change management have
attracted the interest of business people around the world. Avid readers will add The
Insider’s Guide To Culture Change to a bookshelf that includes:
Walking the Talk: Building A Culture For Success by Carolyn Taylor
(Random House) International edition, 2005. This book has sold over 2
million copies and been translated into twenty different languages. Taylor
presents a view that culture consists of the values and behaviors that exist in
the workplace and offers readers an eight-step change process to manage
change. An independent management consultant, Taylor works outside the
organizational systems she studies.
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change presents the groundbreaking view
that deeply embedded patterns (or unwritten rules) in the workplace lie at the
heart of culture. In order to change the culture, you must shift these
collectively held underlying patterns. McHale writes from an “insider”
perspective, having actually created successful change in large, complex
organizations.
Organizational Culture And Leadership by Edgar H. Schein (Jossey-Bass
Wiley) 4th edition, 2010. Edgar Schein, one of the leading academics in the
area of organizational culture, wrote this acclaimed best seller, regarded by
many as one of the most influential management books of all time. Schein
also worked as an “outsider”, studying organizational systems from afar and
drawing on interviews with leaders to develop his theories.
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change provides a much less theoretical and
academic approach to the subject, relying not only on McHale’s research and
academic training, but on her first-hand experience leading change in
companies around the world.
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Leading Change by John P. Kotter (Harvard Business School Press) 1st
edition 1996. Many experts consider Kotter the leading academic in the area of
organizational change management. His book has sold more than 1 million
copies and has been translated into ten languages. It offers the professor’s
popular eight-stage process for managing workplace change.
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change focuses specifically on culture
change, rather than change management in general. McHale builds her unique
step-by-step change process on first-hand experience and offers breakthrough
thinking on how to accelerate culture change.
Change The Culture, Change The Game by Roger Connors and Tom Smith,
(Portfolio) 2nd edition, 2012. Highly successful management consultants
Connors and Smith based their New York Times bestseller on The Results
Pyramid, a model that shows leaders how to install greater accountability in
the workplace.
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change adds many more workplace beliefs
and behaviors to the process of engineering culture change, emphasizing the
fact no one patented formula works for all organizations. Change initiatives
must address each organization’s unique underlying patterns.
Managing Transitions: Making The Most Of Change by William Bridges
(Da Capo Lifelong Books) 3rd Edition, 2009. Bridges discusses all of the
transitions people experience in their lives (including marriages, divorces,
family births, deaths, relocations, career changes, and retirement). He offers an
accessible, three-stage process for thinking about these changes. The book has
sold more than half-a-million copies worldwide.
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change deals specifically with managing
workplace change, although it accepts the fact that changes at work can and do
affect people’s personal lives.
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Beyond Performance. How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive
Advantage by Scott Keller and Colin Price. Wiley, 2001. Written by two
McKinsey consultants, this book presents ‘five frames’ that influence
achieving the dual objectives of high performance and organizational health.
The book draws on McKinsey research and targets consultants rather than
business leaders.
The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change aims its advice at people working
inside organizations, though outside management consultants will also find it
useful in their work.
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THE AUTHOR
Siobhan McHale was sitting in her office at the ANZ bank headquarters in
Melbourne, Australia when a call came through from John Kotter, the renowned
Professor of Leadership at the Harvard Business School. For decades, Kotter had been
the premier voice on how organizations successfully manage change and was
internationally regarded as the foremost authority on the topic. Siobhan had read all
of Kotter’s books on change management and greatly admired his work. Why on earth
would this distinguished professor be calling her?
Well, it turned out that Kotter was looking for compelling global stories about
successful change to feature as case studies in his Harvard MBA class. Word of the
remarkable culture transformation at the ANZ bank in Australia had filtered through
to the Professor, who longed to learn more about the work. As the leader of a seven-
year-long change initiative, Siobhan had helped guide the lowest performing financial
institution in the country into one of the highest performing banks in the world. Kotter
was eager to find out more about journey. Long story short, after Siobhan wrote up
the case study, Professor Kotter selected it as a prime example of engineering a
successful transformation.
Other consultants and professors have also written about Siobhan’s service at
the ANZ bank. Two McKinsey partners, Scott Keller and Colin Price, included the
bank’s story in their book Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build
Ultimate Competitive Advantage. Richard Barrett, the internationally recognized
thought leader on organizational culture, also featured the ANZ bank case study in his
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book Building A Values-Driven Organization: A Whole System Approach To
Cultural Transformation. A myriad of consultants who heard about the change
jumped on the bandwagon. They, as well as academics and journalists, have written
about Siobhan’s work, which she has decided to share with the world because only
she knows the full inside story about fixing a dysfunctional culture.
The remarkable change at ANZ did not happen by chance. McHale had spent
the previous decade as a ‘culture doctor’ helping thousands of leaders across four
continents to create more vibrant, more productive work environments. She began her
career as a management consultant at PricewaterHouse Coopers in London. In this
capacity she crisscrossed Europe, helping clients perform successful culture
transformations. In 1994 Siobhan grew tired of the long, wet English winters and
moved to Australia, where she continued her work as a culture change advisor with
the international, Chicago-based, consulting firm Accenture. While at Accenture she
advised clients across Australia, North America and Asia about fast tracking changes
in workplace cultures.
After a decade as a consultant Siobhan decided to test all that she had learned
in an actual corporate setting practice; She wanted to put some ‘skin in the game’.
Now, as the executive in charge of change in a series of large, complex organizations,
she no longer practiced as an outsider but actually got her hands dirty working in the
challenging and often messy trenches of transformation. Her success won her a
reputation as “The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change.” Her “insider” positions gave
Siobhan a unique and markedly different perspective on culture change, one that went
far deeper than the views held by the academics, consultants and journalists writing
on the subject. She was actually walking the talk herself.
Siobhan currently serves as the Head of Human Resources at a successful,
growing international consumer goods company (Dulux Group), where she continues
her work building vibrant and highly productive workplaces.
Trained as an organizational psychologist, she went on to become one of a
handful of global experts in the field of culture change. She holds a BA (Double
Honors) in Psychology and a Masters degree in Occupational Psychology from
the Social & Applied Psychology Unit, University of Sheffield, England.
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SIOBHAN MCHALE – SHORT RESUME
UNIVERSITY QUALIFICATIONS Master of Science (Occupational Psychology)University of Sheffield, EnglandBachelor of Arts (Double Honors, Applied Psychology)National University of Ireland, Galway
SENIOR EXECUTIVE CAREER
DULUX GROUP: 2016 – present (4,500 employees) Executive General Manager, Human Resources: Executive in charge of creating a more growth oriented and consumer-driven culture at the international paints and consumer goods company.
BROADSPECTRUM: 2010 – 2015 (24,000 employees) Executive General Manager Culture & Change: Drove a business turnaround across the global infrastructure company by creating a more commercial, innovative and accountable culture.
ANZ: 2001 – 2009 (32,000 employees)Head of Culture & Change: Led the radical transformation of the bank’s culture over a seven-year time period to create one of the highest performing banks in the world. The work was featured as a best practice case study used by Professor John Kotter at Harvard Business School
ANSETT AIRLINES: 1999 – 2001 (16,000 employees)Culture and Performance Manager: Implemented a new performance management system in an effort to create a higher performing culture.
ACCENTURE: 1997 – 1999 (Chicago based, global consulting firm, 177,000 employees) Management consultant advising clients across North America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand about culture change.
PRICEWATERHOUSE COOPERS: 1990 – 1996 (Global consulting firm, 163,000 employees). Management consultant advising clients across Europe, Asia, and Australia about culture change.
ASHRIDGE MANAGEMENT COLLEGE: 1990Led the assessment department responsible for profiling leaders’ strengths and areas for improvement.
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THE WRITING COLLABORATOR
Michael Snell
http://www.michaelsnellagency.com
Literary Agent, book
developer and writer Michael Snell
has authored, co-authored, and
collaborated on 46 books, including
The New York Times best sellers
Creating Excellence with Craig
Hickman (New American Library),
The Oz Principle with Roger Connors
and Tom Smith (Random House /Portfolio), How Did That Happen with Roger
Connors and Tom Smith (Random House/Portfolio), Change the Culture, Change the
Game with Roger Connors and Tom Smith (Random House/Portfolio), Fix It! By
Roger Connors and Tom Smith (forthcoming from Random House/ Portfolio) and
Leadership IQ (Wiley) with Emmett Murphy. Other recent collaborations include
Business at the Speed of Now and Government That Works with John Bernard
(Wiley), Talent IQ with Emmett Murphy (Adams Media), Your Inner CEO with Allan
Cox (Career Press), Iron Butterflies with Birute Regine (Prometheus), What Keeps
Leaders Awake at Night with Nicole Lipkin (forthcoming, AMACOM), The New
Corporate Facts of Life with Diana Rivenburgh (AMACOM), Career Courage with
Katie Kelley (AMACOM), and Don’t Pay for Your MBA with Laurie Pickard
(AMACOM).
Specializing in business books, he has agented over 1500 titles since founding
his agency in 1978. Successful titles include Journey To The Emerald City by Roger
Connors and Tom Smith (Prentice-Hall/Portfolio), which appeared from Portfolio in
2011 as Change the Culture/Change the Game, Bargaining for Advantage and The
Art of Woo by Richard Shell (Penguin), The Ultimate Sales Letter by Dan Kennedy
(Adams Media), Topgrading by Brad Smart (Prentice-Hall/Portfolio), The Complete
Idiot’s Guide to MBA Basics by Tom Gorman (alpha), Why Didn’t I Think of That? by
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Charles McCoy (Prentice-Hall/Portfolio), and Leading Self-Directed Work Teams by
Kim Fisher (McGraw-Hill).
He collaborated on three of Sally Edwards’ books: Heart Zone Training and
Fit or Fat (Adams Media), and The Equilibrium Diet (Morrow/Arbor House). He also
developed and collaborated on many pet books, including Myrna Milani’s Body
Language and Emotion in Dogs and Body Language and Emotion in Cats, (Morrow/
HarperCollins). His Prima/Crown book From Book Idea to Bestseller has helped
thousands of aspiring writers get their work successfully published. A frequent
speaker at writers’ conferences and workshops, Michael constantly promotes both his
titles and those on which he has collaborated. His media contacts create feature
articles in local and national newspapers and magazines as well as appearances on
radio and television.
“We wish to thank our collaborator and agent Michael Snell for his thoughtful
suggestions, editorial expertise and encouragement throughout this process.”
–Roger Connors and Tom Smith, founders of Partners In Leadership and
authors of New York Times bestsellers How Did That Happen, The Oz
Principle and Change the Culture/Change the Game (previously Journey to
the Emerald City) (all from Random House, Portfolio).
“Thanks go to our literary agent, Michael Snell. Michael guided us from book
idea to published product—brainstorming with us over the proposal, the
book‘s title (the words ‘the art of woo’ were spoken by him first), the contract,
chapter titles, and other matters large and small. Mike is more than an agent;
he is a true friend and partner.”
–Richard Shell, director of the Wharton School’s executive Negotiation
Workshop and author of Bargaining for Advantage 2nd Edition, The Art of
Woo, and Springboard (all from Random House)
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THE AUTHOR’S PROMOTIONAL PLATFORM AND PLAN
PLATFORM SUMMARY
Siobhan McHale is a recognized expert in the field of organizational culture
who has worked as a change advisor across Europe, Australia, the United States and
Asia. Over the past 25 years she has built connections with HR executives who
influence and control the $160 billion spent annually by US corporations on training
and development. Her connections include senior HR professionals in the biggest
corporations in the United States including Walmart, Yum, McDonalds, IBM, UPS,
Target, Kroeger, The Home Base, HP, GE and Amazon. The Insider’s Guide To
Culture Change will target the multi-billion dollar training industry, the strategy
successfully employed by Carolyn Taylor to make her book Walking the Talk a 2-
million copy international bestseller.
Siobhan will tap her global network of HR “purse string holders” to sell books
to the multi-billion dollar training industry. She knows this world from the inside,
having herself overseen a multi million-dollar corporate training budget and will use
her insider knowledge to unlock this corporate training market in the USA and
beyond. The marketing plan for The Insider’s Guide To Culture Change emphasizes
bulk sales to corporations. Siobhan will sell aggressively to her vast network of
influential HR decision-makers to order books for leaders and employees in their
organizations. The summary view of her platform is as follows:
Siobhan’s work has been featured as a Harvard case study taught to
thousands of leaders by the change management guru professor John Kotter,
which has significantly extended her profile.
The author has forged connections with thousands of HR executives in the
biggest companies in the USA, including Walmart, Yum, McDonalds, IBM,
UPS, Target, Kroeger, The Home Base, HP, GE and Amazon.
Siobhan has spent over a decade working as a management consultant in the
Chicago-based firm Accenture and in the London-based PricewaterHouse
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Coopers and has built connections with senior partners who can sell the book
to management consultants within their firms and to clients.
The author has worked in academia and has forged connections with senior
academics in the best universities in the United States including Harvard,
Wharton, Booth, Stanford, Tuck, and Yale.
Siobhan has employed LinkedIn as the social media platform best suited to
the corporate training market and her followers are growing at a rate of 600%
per annum (12,000+ currently) and expected to be 20,000+ by March 2019.
This is Siobhan’s life’s work and once she leaves her Head of HR role at
Dulux Group she plans to become a global culture advisor, leveraging the
book to educate executives about how to create better workplaces.
Siobhan’s promotional plan includes:
Speaking Engagements
LinkedIn And Other Social Media
Connections With Senior HR “Purse String Holders”
Connections With Senior Advisors In The Largest Global Consulting Firms
Connections With Academics In The Best Business Schools in the USA
Speaking Engagements
HR Professional Groups
Current And Previous Employers
Third Party Endorsements
International Market
Speaking Engagements
Siobhan has frequently spoken at international conferences and plans to target
the Human Resources speaking circuit to activate book sales. She has already booked
a number of engagements for 2018 and plans to multiply her appearances upon
publication of her book:
Chief Human Resources Conference (May 2018) on "The evolving role of
the CHRO in the Digital Business Era." Other confirmed speakers at this
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virtual, web-enabled conference include the leadership guru, Dave Ulrich,
CHRO of Uber, Liane Hornsay and the CHRO of Air Asia, Varun Bhatia.
Organizational Thought Leadership Conference (June 2018) organized by
Assistant Vice Chancellor at The University of Texas to bring together
virtually academics to explore the future of business.
Leadership Development Summit 2018 (May 2018 in Sydney) is aimed at
audience of 100 Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) who have a
combined workforce of 75,000 people who potentially need up-skilling on
how to manage change.
Siobhan will seek a number of high-visibility speaking engagements
including slots at the ATD International Conference (world’s biggest training
conference with 10,000 attendees and 37,000 members), SHRM Annual
Conference & Exposition (world’s biggest HR conference with 15,000
attendees and 290,000 members), and the Academy of Management
Conference (with 10,000 attendees and 20,000 members).
As part of the book launch plan Siobhan will aim to give a Ted talk on culture
change to seed the groundbreaking ideas contained in the book.
Siobhan has worked at the Chicago-based consulting firm Accenture and has
travelled extensively throughout the United States. She plans to spend three
months in New York at book launch to activate sales with her extensive
network of senior HR professionals, academics and consulting partners
(detailed activation plan will be developed closer to launch).
LinkedIn and Other Social Media
Siobhan plans to leverage LinkedIn as the cornerstone of her social media
platform. LinkedIn has emerged as THE social networking platform for all things
business and provides more than 300 million professionals an opportunity to engage
on work matters. Businesses are 50% more likely to buy a product if they’ve already
engaged on LinkedIn and over 80% of B2B leads generated from social media come
from LinkedIn. Here’s the percentage of B2B leads generated through each social
network:
• LinkedIn – 80.33 percent
• Twitter – 12.73 percent
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• Facebook – 6.73 percent
• Google+ – 0.21 percent
LinkedIn is the ‘go to’ platform for a highly engaged audience of HR
professionals, academics and corporate change advisors that The Insider’s Guide To
Culture Change targets and Siobhan’s followers are growing at a rate of 600% per
annum:
• March 2017 – 2,000 followers
• March 2018 –12,000+ followers (600%+ growth rate)
• March 2019 – expected to be 20,000+ followers
The majority of Siobhan’s LinkedIn followers (7,000+ professionals) are
located in the United States and work at senior levels in some of the biggest
companies in the country including Walmart, Yum, McDonalds, IBM, UPS, Target,
Kroeger, The Home Base, HP, GE and Amazon (see details below). These LinkedIn
followers are “high quality” connections who can buy the book in bulk for large
numbers of employees. By the way, the change management guru John Kotter has just
over 12,000 followers on LinkedIn which compares to Siobhan’s 12,000+ followers.
The author will continue to build her social media followers via a strategic
marketing campaign designed to consolidate her position as a global expert in the
area of culture change, which will include publication of these thought leadership
articles across her social media platform:
My dad had a fall: 3 ways to overcome resistance to change (Jan 2018)
It’s not HR’s job to fix the culture (Feb 2018)
Culture change is leader-led (Mar 2018)
The key reason that corporate change efforts fail (Apr 2018)
The key trait that transformational leaders possess (May 2018)
The 3 keys to successful change (Jun 2018)
What is culture anyway? (Jul 2018)
The 7 things leaders need to know about culture (Aug 2018)
The 7 lies you’ve been told about culture (Sept 2018)
Your culture change map (Oct 2018)
Why leaders need to step up (Nov 2018)
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This marketing campaign is gaining momentum with viewers of Siobhan’s
LinkedIn articles growing at the rate of 600%. The first publication in the series
(January 2018) receiving over 3000 views and a recent article (February 2018)
received over 19,000 views.
The author will continue to expand her social media presence prior to
publication and link all elements of her platform to drive book sales including:
Website: The site siobhanmchale.com has been launched recently and has
been designed to drive book sales.
Facebook: Targeting a ten-fold increase from 400 to 4000 followers by March
2019 with strategic thought leadership campaign.
Twitter: Account has recently been established and targeting growth to 5000
followers by March 2019 with strategic thought leadership campaign.
Siobhan plans to submit articles on culture to top business magazines
including Fast Company, Wall St Journal and HR Magazine in order to build
demand for the book.
Connections With Senior HR ‘Purse String Holders’
Siobhan has forged connections with thousands of senior HR professionals in
the biggest firms in the USA, including Walmart, Yum, McDonalds, IBM, UPS,
Target, Kroeger, The Home Base, HP, GE and Amazon. These HR executives are the
“purse string holders” who control the multi-billion dollar corporate training spend.
Each one of these executives is charged with the responsibility of training their
employees to cope with the faster pace of change right now and they decide what
resources get purchased for thousands of staff members.
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Siobhan’s connections with senior HR professionals in 20 of the largest firms in the
USA include:
1. Walmart (2.2 million employees)
Ben Saba Hasan, SVP Chief Culture Diversity & Inclusion Officer Brian Baker, SVP Global People Anupriya Sharma, Director Global People Strategy & Operations David Van Rooy, Vice President Talent & Organizational Capability David Scott, SVP, Talent & Organizational Effectiveness Travis McNeal, Director Change Management, Training and Communications
2. Yum! Brands: Taco Bell, KFC & Pizza Hut (1.5 million employees)
Andrew Francks, Global Training manager at Yum! Brands Jonathan D-Souza. People Capability Director at KFC John Watts, Chief Capability and Culture Officer at Yum! Brands Neil Piper, Chief People Officer KFC Emily Miller, Organizational Development at Yum! Restaurants
3. McDonald's (440,000 employees)
David Fairhurst Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer Claire Hall, SVP Chief People Officer at McDonald's Corporation
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Mark Reilly, Head of Learning & Development H Walker, Director Global Diversity, Inclusion & Engagement Matt Sproll, Director Global Talent
4. IBM (434,000 employees)
Horst Gallo, Vice President People & Culture Sofia Lamuraglia, Global Leaders, Management Development Susan Steel, Global Chief HR Officer Advisor Wagner Denuzzo, VP Leadership Talent Transformation
5. United Parcel Service (399,000 employees)
Frank Becker, Vice President of Human Resources Shannon Benham, International Talent Development Director Kelli Barley, Director of Human Resources
6. Target (361,000 employees)
Anahita Cameron, SVP Human Resources. St Paul's Minneapolis Christine Robles, Human Resources Vice President Sumit Kumar, Director of Performance Acceleration
7. Kroger (343,000 employees)
Tim Massa, VP Human Resources Stan Martz, Division HR Manager Lanell Ohlinger, VP Talent Development Lauren Baumann, Talent Manager, Corporate Brands and Manufacturing
8. Home Depot (340,000 employees)
Brandon Carson, Director of Learning Tim Crow, EVP & Chief Human Resources Officer Thomas Spahr, VP of Learning & Development Jennifer Stanhouse Ferrera, Senior Learning, Leadership and Organization
Development Leader
9. Hewlett-Packard (332,000 employees)
Mike Jordan, Global Head Talent & Learning Michelle Croy, Learning & Development Leader Luciana Duarte, VP, Global head of Employee Experience
10. General Electric (305,000 employees)
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Justin Holland, Director Global Leadership Development Janice Semper, GE Culture Transformation Leader Paul Davies, Employee Experience Executive Jim Ryerson, HR Executive
11. Amazon (341,000 employees)
John Olson, VP Human Resources Charles D Shaw, VP learning & Organisation Development Kelly Wolf, HR Director John Golden, Snr. Talent Management Leader
12. Bank of America (282,000 employees)
Ria Rossini Nicholls, SVP of Leadership Development Lorry Olson, Leadership Development Executive Jeanine Rust Wilson, SVP Human Resources Executive Chuck Bohlen, SVP Human Resources Executive Allison Kirkpatrick, SVP Human Resources
13. Wells Fargo (264,000 employees)
Teresa Marshall EVP Head of Learning & Development Cara Peck, EVP, Head of Enterprise Talent Group Jon Coutour, EVP & Head of HR, Consumer Lending Group Cigdem Gencer, EVP Head of International Human Resources Shawn Lewis, Head of Instructional Design Services
14. PepsiCo. (264,000 employees)
Allan Church, SVP Global Talent assessment & Development Matthew Del Giudice, Director Organisation Development Michael Rady, HR Sr Director Annette DiBenedetto, HR Director, Talent Acquisition * HR Transformation
15. Apple (240,000 employees)
Matt McKelvey, Director Human Resources Joel Podolny, Dean of Apple University Kim Wylie, Head of Customer Change & Culture Lucero Tagle, Organisation Development Consultant
16. JP Morgan Chase (240,000 employees)
Carlo Frapolli, Head of Talent. New York Christine Hardy Kaus, Head of Talent & Organisation Development. New
York
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Usha Mirchandani, Managing Director, Head of HR, Washington Jesse Jackson chief learning officer. New York
17. Marriott international (200,000 employees)
David Rodriguez, Executive VP & global Chief HR Officer Antonia Hock, Global Head of Human Capital, The Ritz-Carlton Leadership
Centre Heather Powell. Senior Vice President Human Resources
18. Microsoft (124,000 employees)
Christopher Yates, GM Learning & Development Kyran O'Neill, Director Learning Design Irada Sadykhova, Senior Director, Organizational Development Peter Heller, Senior Director, Global Learning & Development
19. Nike (74,000 employees)
Andre Martin, VP/CLO, Talent Development & Culture Elizabeth Vales, Senior Director, Global Organization Effectiveness Katie Filkins, Director Organisation Effectiveness Sergio Sibaja, Director Global Organization Effectiveness
20. Google (72,000 employees)
Steve Vranakis, Executive Creative Director, Google Creative Labs David Peterson, Director Executive Coaching & Leadership Danielle Mastrangel Brown, VP and Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer Karen May, VP People Development
Connections With Senior Advisors In The Largest Global Consulting Firms
Siobhan spent a decade of her career as a management consultant in two of the
largest consulting firms in the world – the London-based firm PricewaterHouse
Coppers and the Chicago-based Accenture. She has built connections with senior
partners in the biggest consulting houses globally including Accenture, Deloitte, PwC,
Booz, McKinsey, Korn Ferry and Bain. The partners in these firms must ensure that
clients have the best tools available to successfully navigate the disruptive changes
they are facing in the marketplace today and that the management consultants in their
firm know how to advise about change. These partners can recommend The Insider’s
31
Guide To Culture Change to consultants within their firms as well as to clients.
Siobhan’s connections with senior advisors in the biggest consulting firms in the
world include:
1. Accenture (411,000 consultants)
Bruno Berthon, Senior Managing Director Eva Sage-Gavin, Senior Managing Director Talent & Organization Practice Margaret Ann Cole, Managing Director, HR Practice Leader Rahul Varma, Talent & Development Officer Terrance Gargiulo, Chief Storyteller Jessica Kane, Managing Director
2. Deloitte (244,000 consultants)
Noah Rabinowitz, Managing Director. Deloitte Leadership & Human Capital David Brown, Human Capital Partner
3. PricewaterHouse Coopers (223,000 consultants)
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Jon Katenbach, Managing Director Tim Ryan, US Chairman & Senior Partner Blair Sheppard, Global Strategy Leader Amy Richardson, Managing Director in Human Capital Kathy Kavanagh, Global Learning & Development Leader
4. Booz Allen Hamilton (22,000 consultants)
Dee Dee Helfenstein, Senior Vice President Stephen Berry, Lead Associate Shannon Fitzgerald, SVP and Partner
5. McKinsey (14,000 consultants)
Ramesh Srinivasan, Senior Partner Mary Meany - Senior partner in charge of Organization practice Nick van Dam, Global Chief Learning Officer Scott Keller, Senior Partner, San Francisco area. Change specialist and Co-
author of Beyond Performance: How organizational health delivers ultimate competitive advantage
6. Korn Ferry/Hay (7,000 consultants)
Iain McAdam, Head of Human Resources Practice Dennis Baltzley, Ph.D, Global Head of Leadership Development Dr. Scott Leuchter, Senior Client Partner Miriam Nelson, Senior Client Partner
7. Bain (7,000 consultants)
Chris Zook, Managing Partner and head of strategy function for 25 years. Best-selling author
Hernan Saenz, Partner and Senior Lecturer of Management and Organizations at Cornell University
Connections With Academics In The Best Business Schools In The USA
Siobhan has worked at Ashridge Management College in England, which is
ranked as one of the top 25 business schools in the world. She has established
connections with some of the leading US academics at institutions including Harvard,
Wharton, Booth, MIT, Kellogg, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, and Duke. These academics
are charged with the task of ensuring that future leaders can successfully navigate
change and are searching for the best reading materials on organizational
33
transformation. These academics can recommend the book to business students who
attend their courses.
Siobhan’s connections with senior academics in the top 13 business schools in
the USA include:
1. Harvard University
Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership & Management Ethan Bernstein, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at HBS Tsedal Neley, Leadership & Organizational Behavior Faculty at HBS David Fumina, Henry B Arthur Fellow, HBS Faculty Rakesh Khurana, Professor of Leadership Development Margarita Mayo, Professor of Leadership, Harvard University John Kotter, change management guru and former Professor at Harvard
Business School Francesca Gino, Professor and author of ‘Sidetracked’
2. University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
34
Stew Friedman, Wharton Professor of Leadership, author Katherine Klein, Vice Dean and Professor of Management Sigal Barsade, Professor Management Faculty Peter Cappelli, Professor of Management (HR specialist) Michael Useem, Professor of Management
3. University of Chicago (Booth)
Professor John Burrows, Professor of Organizational Psychology
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
Otto Scharmer, Senior Lecturer and author of ‘Presence’ Deborah Ancona, Faculty Director of the MIT Leadership Centre Hal Gregersen, Executive Director, MIT Leadership Centre, Author
5. Northwestern University (Kellogg)
Brian Uzzi, Professor of Leadership Wayne Baker, Professor of Management & Organizations
6. Stanford University
Matt Abrahams, lecturer in Organizational Behavior Bruce Cryer, Adjunct Faculty Stanford, Well-being expert
7. University of California - Berkeley (Hass)
Morten Hanson, Management Professor & Faculty at Apple University
8. Columbia University
Malia Mason, Professor of Psychology Rita Gunther McGrath, Strategy Professor
9. Dartmouth (Tuck)
Sydney Finklestein, Professor of Business. Author John Thomas, Vice president Pino Audia, Professor of Management
10. Yale University
35
University of Michigan Ann Arbor (Ross) Jane Dutton, Professor, Founder for the Centre for Positive Organizations.
Author. Paula Caprioni, Professor Management & Organizational Faculty. Author. Gretchen Spreitzer, Faculty Member, Centre for Positive Organizations
11. Duke University (Faqua)
Dr Edward Barrows, Managing Director Corporate Education Karen Boylston, Managing Director Duke Corporate Education Greg Marchi, Leadership & Organization Development
12. New York University (Stern)
Luke William, Stern school of Business. Best selling author
13. George Washington University School of Business
Herman Aguinis, Professor of Management
HR Professional Groups
Siobhan is a member of nine HR professional groups whose members are
actively looking for better ways to manage corporate change. The author contributes
to discussions in these forums, which increases her profile and credibility within these
communities. These HR groups are:
1. Linked HR – 1,600,000 members
2. HR Management – 150,000 members
3. Culture Change Network – 3700 members
4. Leading Change – 6500 members
5. Association for Change Management Professionals – 12,500 members
6. The Leadership Development Group – 24,000 members
7. Learning and Organization Development – 57,000 members
8. Organizational Change Practitioners – 62,000 members
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9. OD Network – 51,000 members
Current And Previous Employers
Siobhan has spent her entire career making workplaces better. This work has
meant that she has developed positive and enduring connections with current and ex
colleagues who remember her for having made a positive difference in their working
lives. Employees from these organizations may be interested in reading The Insider’s
Guide To Culture Change:
1. Dulux Group – 4,500 employees (current employer)
2. Broadspectrum – 24,000 employees and 24,000 contractors
3. ANZ bank – 50,000 employees
4. PriceWaterhouse Coopers – 223,000 employees (connected via LinkedIn
group with 78,000 members)
5. Accenture – 411,000 employees (connected via LinkedIn group with 100,000
members)
6. Ansett airline –14,000 employees (connected via regular gatherings and
LinkedIn group with 1,300 members)
Third Party Endorsements
Siobhan has some key influencers who will endorse her work and create an
early buzz about the book. These people include:
Dr. John Kotter is one of the leading change management academics
globally, a Harvard Business School professor, and a New York Times best-
selling author. Kotter has used ANZ as a case study at Harvard and could
potentially write the foreword for the book.
Carolyn Taylor is one of the world’s leading experts in the area of culture
change and her book Walking The Talk is considered a corporate classic on the
subject of culture change.
37
John McFarlane is the Chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland and was the
CEO at ANZ bank at the time of the radical transformation of the culture over
a seven-year time period.
Patrick Houlihan is the CEO of Dulux Group (where Siobhan is currently
employed) and would be willing to write a ‘blurb’ about the book.
Brian Hartzer is currently CEO of Westpac bank and was part of the
executive team leading the change at ANZ bank.
Bloggers in the areas of leadership, culture, and change. The author will
target bloggers including Dan Rockwell (Top 30 Leaders in Business 2014),
Dan Pink (leading management thinker), Chris Brogan (power influencer
online), and Jeremie Kubicek (consultant to top-level executives) to write
about the ideas contained in the book.
International Market
Siobhan has spent her career working across four continents and has built connections
with senior executives in some of the biggest companies across Europe, Asia and
Australia, including Barclays Bank, Shell, BP, HSBC, Royal Mail, Tesco, UBS and
Compass Group. Siobhan can exploit these connections to sell additional copies of the
book.
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BOOK CONTENTSIntroduction – Hard-won Lessons From Inside
Chapter 1 – Learn The Insider’s Secret:Tapping The Power Of The Change Accelerator
Chapter 2 – Get The Inside Scoop:Grasping The Basics Before You Begin
Chapter 3 – Diagnose The Current Culture:Moving Beyond Symptoms To Underlying Causes
Chapter 4 – Begin At The End:Choosing The Right Culture For The Organization
Chapter 5 – Draw A Culture Map:Designing A Blueprint For Culture Change
Chapter 6 – Take Charge Of The Journey:Becoming An Inspiring Change Leader
Chapter 7 – Enroll Your Top Team:Galvanizing Every Leader To Become A Change Agent
Chapter 8 – Engage Everyone: Mobilizing The People Who Do The Work
Chapter 9 – Align Organizational Processes: Changing Work Systems To Support The Desired Culture
Chapter 10 – Conquer Resistance To Change: Overcoming Fear Of The New
Chapter 11 – Trigger The Tipping Point:Enabling The Change To Go Viral
Chapter 12 – Consolidate Gains: Embedding The Emerging Culture
Chapter 13 – Make Change A Constant: Improving Organizational Adaptability
Chapter 14 – Maintain the Right Energy Level: Keeping Up The Pace Over The Long Term
Conclusion: Change Never Sleeps
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SPECIFICATIONS Manuscript Length: Approximately 55,000 words. Delivery Date: 6 months from publishing contract
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CHAPTER SUMMARIES
INTRODUCTION
Hard-won Lessons From Inside
I’ve spent the past 25 years as a “culture doctor”, helping thousands of leaders
around the world to create more vibrant and productive workplaces. During this time
I’ve travelled across Europe, the United States, Australia, and Asia to help transform
work environments. I loved the work, but I began to wonder what it felt like to play,
rather than coach, the change game. I longed to learn firsthand what it takes to make
change happen.
So I rolled up my sleeves, joined a series of large, international organizations
and went to work, no longer calling the shots from the sidelines, but immersing
myself in the rough and tumble world of business transformations. Gradually, I went
from Ms Outsider to Ms Insider.
This insider role afforded me a unique perspective on workplace culture.
While outside consultants, academics and other self-styled experts watch from a safe
distance, I put myself on the playing field where culture change is a contact sport.
During the course of my career, I’ve walked into hundreds of work
environments to observe the complexity and subtlety of workplace culture. I watched
toxic environments drain the energy from employees and leave customers feeling
frustrated and unhappy. And I witnessed high performing, productive cultures bring
out the best in their people and delight their customers with spectacular service. In this
book I share everything I know about what works and doesn’t work in the real world
of culture transformation.
You will learn how to:
Assess the complex yet subtle role culture plays in your business success Think of culture as the ultimate competitive advantage Accept culture-building as the hardest work you will ever do
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Chapter 1
Learn The Insider’s Secret:
Tapping The Power Of The Change Accelerator
John McFarlane, the newly appointed CEO of the Australian-based ANZ
bank, knew he was walking into a storm. Banks across Australia had lost the trust of
customers and the broader community with increased product complexity, a lack of
transparency on fees, and branch closures in rural areas. Public contempt and bank
bashing had become a national sport with politicians, community groups, unions,
churches, media, and talk radio hosts all joining the fray.
McFarlane knew would need to shake things up if he was going to transform
the organization and win back the trust of the communities the bank served. How
could he engage the bank’s 32,000 employees to create a more “human’ and
customer-centered culture? It would take seven years of hard work, but McFarlane
eventually achieved his goal, turning his company into one the top performing banks
in the world.
To do what ANZ did, leaders keep their foot on what I call The Change
Accelerator. The Accelerator consists of 4 major steps: Diagnose, Reframe, Break,
and Consolidate. The book will look closely at these steps in the pages ahead.
You will learn how to:
Diagnose what’s really going on in your organization Reframe the role of employees from passive followers to active leaders Break out of the deeply embedded patterns that govern culture Consolidate gains by keeping your foot on The Change Accelerator
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Chapter 2
Get The Inside Scoop:
Grasping The Basics Before You Begin
Several years ago I flew into Las Vegas for a Leadership Conference where
two high profile business leaders would deliver keynote addresses. I was excited to
hear what they had to say. Sitting in the packed auditorium I listened to them describe
the major changes they had overseen in their organizations. Slowly it dawned on me
that neither speaker fully grasped the basics of workplace culture.
The first speaker, the CEO of an engineering company, told us how he had
launched his company on the path to becoming a high performing, agile organization.
Defining culture as the “behaviors at work”, he concluded that the effort was still a
work-in-progress. The second presenter, the head of a large department in the armed
forces, shared his dream of replacing a male-dominated culture with one that
embraced diversity and inclusiveness. He defined culture as “the stories that are told
in the workplace”. In the end, however, he admitted that despite strong public support
for the change, women in his organization were still suffered under a range of
bullying and discriminatory practices, which the media had gleefully reported. The
change effort had not gotten rid of harassment and intimidation within the ranks.
Despite the most admirable intentions, both change initiatives failed to get the
desired results because the leaders had not understood the fundamentals of workplace
culture. I decided to do something about that. Before you embark on changing your
culture you, too, need to understand the basics.
You will learn how to:
Discover Patterns (the collective, unwritten rules) Deal with the fact that it all comes down to People (individual mindsets and
behaviors) Address Processes (the systems that control the work activities)
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Chapter 3
Diagnose The Current Culture:
Moving Beyond Symptoms To Underlying Causes
If you occasionally suffer crushing headaches and frequent bouts of fatigue,
you might worry that you’ve come down with a serious ailment, perhaps an
impending stroke. When I couldn’t shake those symptoms, I went to see my doctor.
After giving me a thorough check-up, she announced a surprising diagnosis.
“Siobhan, you might need glasses.” She went on to explain that folks my age develop
long-sightedness and that the strain involved in compensating for it can create exactly
the symptoms I was experiencing. When an ophthalmologist confirmed my doctor’s
diagnosis, I found myself shopping for designer frames. I might be getting old, but I
would look good doing it!
The health of a corporate culture requires the correct diagnosis, one that goes
beyond symptoms and knee-jerk conclusions to the underlying causes of the problem.
You must carefully assess the situation. And, of course, a second opinion always
helps.
Organizational leaders often feel such enormous pressure to fix a sick culture
that they make hasty decisions they soon regret. With the wrong medicine, the
culture’s health keeps declining until not even the most radical treatment can revive it.
Over the years I have seen a lot of quick-fix solutions create disastrous problems of
their own. Suppose I had done something radical when I started getting those
headaches. No amount of chemotherapy would have corrected my vision, and I would
have lost all my hair in the bargain.
You will learn how to:
Ensure that you really know what’s going on in the workplace Gather multiple perspectives Avoid jumping to premature solutions
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Chapter 4
Begin At The End:
Choosing The Right Culture For The Organization
Two different leadership teams headed out to country for their annual strategy
retreats. The Big Global Brands team spent every minute discussing how they could
exploit emerging market trends to meet their business goals. They had developed
world-class products they needed to get into the hands of consumers around the
world. The CEO concluded weekend by saying, “It’s all about creative thinking. We
need a creative culture where everyone works their tails off on marketing campaigns
that will knock ‘em dead!”
The other team, the 3rd Infantry Division, spent their time discussing strategies
for minimizing both military personnel and non-combatant citizen deaths in war
zones. Unconventional enemy tactics, such as the use of IEDs and bomb-laden cars
and trucks had changed the landscape of battle. The General closed the session by
saying, “Discipline. We need iron-clad strategies to build the most disciplined military
culture on earth.”
Culture comes in all shapes and sizes. One size does not fit all. What works for
a consumer electronics giant will not work for a modern-day army. Smart culture-
builders define their destination before they start building the right culture for
achieving their organization’s mission.
You will learn how to:
Define desired results Determine your ultimate destination Choose the type of culture that can get the results you seek
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Chapter 5
Draw A Culture Map:
Designing A Blueprint For Culture Change
“Mark Reynolds” had recently taken the helm at the underperforming airline
“RedJet” and felt terribly anxious about his first speech at the company’s Annual
General Meeting. The investors and market analysts in the room would be on the
warpath. How could he calm their jitters and convince them to give him time to turn
things around?
He chose the path of absolute honesty. “Look, we’re at the biggest turning
point in RedJet’s history. If we don’t drastically improve our performance, we’ll crash
and burn. But it won’t happen overnight. Let me show you a picture that represents
the journey ahead of us”. Mark flashed an image onto the screen: several people
standing atop a mountain, looking down on a faraway beach. A dense forest separated
them from the beach. In the far distance they could see a tiny island on the horizon.
Mark spoke quietly. “We are trying to get to the Island of Better Returns, but we can’t
get there until we slash our way through a forest of high costs and navigate a sea of
change.” Ben clicked a picture of a chainsaw onto the screen: “We’ll start the journey
by cutting our costs to become the lowest-cost provider, turning in profits far beyond
those of our industry’s top performer. Then we will turn to culture change. “RedJet’s
new culture will focus on 100% customer satisfaction.”
Fast-forward three years. RedJet’s performance had not budged an inch. Its
planes almost never landed on time, customers complained about rotten service, and
the stock price had tumbled to a record low. What went wrong? Mark knew how to
use the chainsaw, but he did not possess a map to navigate across a turbulent sea of
change.
You will learn how to:
Develop a detailed culture change plan Pinpoint milestones on the journey ahead Build a persuasive case for the change
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Chapter 6Take Charge Of The Journey:
Becoming An Inspiring Change Leader
“Ben Harkness”, the CEO of” BuildPro”, an underperforming infrastructure
company based in Atlanta, had grown impatient with a change initiative designed to
create a more productive and nimble culture that could compete more effectively in a
tough economic climate.
“We’re trying to become leaner and meaner, but we’re just getting fatter and
slower,” he complained to his wife over breakfast. “We can’t even get that new
billboard up on the roof!” To promote the BuildPro’s new brand, Marketing had
designed a beautiful image of speeding racecars that would show the world that the
company had become a highly responsive and productive enterprise. He had approved
the design four months ago, but all that had appeared on the rooftop was a flock of fat
pigeons. Ben shared his frustration with everyone, everyone that is, but Mike Tucker,
BuildPro’s Head of Marketing.
His wife laughed out loud. “You should talk! You’re still walking around the
office playing ‘Mr. Nice Guy’, when you want your people to give immediate, honest
feedback to each other. Walk the talk, Mister!” That day he pulled together his
executive team and opened the meeting with a little speech about holding the hard
conversations about BuildPro’s problems. “Mike, where the heck is that billboard?” A
lively discussion ensued. At the end, Mike promised he would get it done by the end
of the week. Everyone who attended that meeting took the message about candid
conversations back to their people.
You will learn how to:
Adopt your role as a change leader Break deeply embedded cultural patterns Move and adjust as you go on the change journey
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Chapter 7
Enroll Your Top Team:
Galvanizing Every Leader To Become A Change Agent
While Ben had kick started the shift to a new high-performing, agile culture at
BuildPro, a six-month culture check-up revealed a good deal of backsliding into old
habits. He confessed his frustration over coffee. “Siobhan, I just got off our monthly
teleconference with all of BuildPro’s 100 global leaders. I’ve gotta tell you, I did 90%
of the talking. And I got the sinking feeling everyone would go back to their offices
and go through the same old routines I’m hell-bound to change.”
I told Ben that that this did not surprise me in the least, “You’ve stepped up as
a leader, but you’re letting your team get away with playing the role of observers. You
need to break that pattern. And the only way you can do it is to put them into their
roles as co-creators of the change.”
A week later, Ben invited his top 100 leaders to a two-day Culture Change
Conference where he reframed their role from observers to change leaders. “You’re
not followers, you’re leaders. Your people need you to lead them to our destination: a
more agile and more financially robust organization.”
It took six more months for his team to show measurable progress toward the
goal he had set out at the conference. But that didn’t shock Ben. He knew that if you
want to teach a reluctant elephant to ice skate, you’ll need to bring a ton of patience
and perseverance to the task.
You will learn how to:
Reframe the role of every leader to become a change agent Drive home the case for change Align leadership with the new culture imperatives
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Chapter 8
Engage Everyone:
Mobilizing The People Who Do The Work
“Chloe Kahn” managed a maintenance team that served the treatment plants
and networks for Metro’s Water Services Department. Relatively new to her job, she
was just beginning to learn first-hand about organizational culture. An initial
diagnosis revealed an ingrained pattern of blame between supervisors and employees,
each pointing the finger at the other for any problems that affected performance. Her
management team played the same game with her, blaming the supervisors who
reported to them for every problem that went unresolved.
Chloe decided to call a meeting with all of the front-line supervisors to discuss
the need to break this old habit. They marched into the canteen straight from the water
treatment plants, still wearing their bright yellow gear. Each sat with arms folded
across their chest, waiting for the big boss to blame them for the problems at work.
Chloe did not fall into the old “blame game” pattern. Instead, she asked a
question. “Randall, tell me, please, what’s your job here? You know, what’s your
role?” Randall did not hesitate. “I’m a supervisor in charge of the central filtration
unit.” Chloe held up her hand. “No. You’re not. You’re the guy in charge of
protecting the health and well-being of an entire city.” She then outlined the history of
the Water Services Department, beginning with the era when cholera and other water-
borne diseases plagued the region. “We cleaned it up,” she told the crew. “Without
clean water, there would be no life on earth.” Chloe began her campaign to break the
deeply embedded pattern of blame by connecting people to the life-saving purpose of
their work. Over the next nine months she hammered home this mission. Those who
“got it” kept their jobs and won promotions. Those who didn’t looked elsewhere for
work.
You will learn how to:
Connect people with the organization’s core purpose Reframe the mission in a way that inspires the front lines Reward and promote early adopters
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Chapter 9
Align Organizational Processes:
Changing Work Systems To Support The Desired Culture
I was living in Sheffield, a city in northern England, once famous for steel
making, studying for my Masters degree in occupational psychology. My research
focused on the subject of high performance teams. Reading books taught me a lot, but
I longed to study a real team. To that end, I met with Ron Bassett, the manager of the
Sheffield United Football Club. Why football? Why not? After all, where better to
examine how a team operates?
I spent the next six months immersed in the daily life of a highly successful
football club, watching the players work out, sitting on the sidelines during matches,
and listening to the Monday morning debriefing sessions. I even joined the players for
an intensive 3-day military-style boot camp session.
As my study drew to a close, I tried to summarize all that I had learned. No, I
did not learn how to score a goal or to head-drive a ball into the back of the net, but I
did learn one extremely valuable lesson: Success wasn’t about the individual players,
it was all about the winning culture in which the athletes performed. It did not happen
by accident. It was the result of carefully designed processes, systems, rituals and
rewards that inspired the team to the highest level of performance on the field. The
coaches did not just manage talent; they reinforced the key elements of a winning
culture that inspired the players to do their best to bring home trophies.
You will learn how to:
Align processes and systems with the desired culture Establish rewards that encourage the right behaviors Ensure that the work environment fosters the desired culture
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Chapter 10
Conquer Resistance To Change:
Overcoming Fear Of The New
Despite some early success with his change initiative, Ben, the CEO of
BuildPro, could see that he needed to do more to embed the shift in his company’s
culture. Too often, his middle managers took too much time to contribute to bids on
new work, resulting in poor sales results as customers turned to more agile
competitors.
When Ben looked into the matter, he concluded that the his managers spent
more time on their relationships with their colleagues than with potential customers.
This tradition traced its roots to the firm’s formative years, when the team needed to
form close bonds and a strong esprit de corps. In the early days of rapid expansion,
these positive working relationships had fueled the company’s success on
construction projects in far-flung, often hostile locations. Now, however, his
managers needed to refocus their attention on their customers’ needs.
Solving the problem began with accepting the fact that human beings are hard-
wired to fear change. In prehistoric times changes posed a life-and-death threat to our
ancestors. The saber-toothed tiger leaps into your path? You freeze, flee, or fight. Ben
needed to short-circuit that response in his team.
You will learn how to:
Combat the natural human fear of change Identify and test hidden assumptions Craft compelling culture stories that counter resistance Employ powerful symbols to reinforce the change
Chapter 11
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Trigger The Tipping Point:
Enabling The Change To Go Viral
ANZ’s new CEO John McFarlane had walked into an organization that had
lost the trust of its customers and local communities. Customers believed the bank
cared only about its own bottom line, usually at the expense of customer needs. The
bank’s own employees shared that view. John knew that changing ANZ’s image
would take more than a slick public relations campaign.
Step One: stop closing rural branches. They might not kick in as much profit
as the big-city branches, but their customers sorely needed their services. When a
competitor announced the closure of 56 of its rural branches, McFarlane knew that
this news would do nothing but reinforce the public’s opinion that bankers are cold-
hearted, ruthless, self-absorbed scoundrels. To combat that setback, he made a
surprising move, telling the media that ANZ would buy those 56 branches.
The announcement sent a shock wave through the country. The public and
ANZ’s employees saw McFarlane as a knight in shining armor and his bank as a loyal
servant of the people. As employees embraced the principles driving the new ANZ,
John McFarlane’s change initiative fully caught fire.
You will learn how to:
Promote the change with both words and actions Choose actions that will mean the most to people Reach the tipping point within 18 months
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Chapter 12
Consolidate Gains:
Embedding The Emerging Culture
Seven years after embarking on the ANZ’s change agenda, John McFarlane
decided to host an event to acknowledge the bank’s progress toward a more “human”
culture. No longer a toxic and bureaucratic place to work, ANZ had won the
admiration of employees and customers alike.
What better way to celebrate this achievement than to host a global festival.
John invited employees from all corners of the business to submit ideas that would
make the festival a joyous occasion. Over 5000 people responded with enthusiasm.
Their creative suggestions highlighted the fact that they held the bank close to their
hearts.
John accepted the best ideas. One led to a Maori choir from New Zealand
performing a rap song that showcased the bank’s diversity. Another, a short film
created by an assistant bank manager in a rural town, told the story of an office
worker who felt trapped in his job but then decided to break out of his old ways of
thinking. A call center supervisor from India submitted a photograph of her elderly
father, whose image reminded her of the bank’s integrity. The festival consolidated
all the gains the bank had made over the past seven years.
You will learn how to:
Make major culture gains visible to everyone Keep your foot on the Change Accelerator Detect and overcome the re-emergence of old patterns
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Chapter 13
Make Change a Constant:
Improving Organizational Adaptability
Theresa Martinez, a retail executive at “DressSmart”, was feeling quite
apprehensive about her impending meeting her boss. “Svetlana’s going to rake me
over the coals,” she thought as she sipped her morning coffee. Theresa had been
working hard to create an online presence for “DressSmart”, but so far the website
and social media strategy had failed to generate significant new revenue.
Sure enough, Svetlana made her disappointment perfectly clear. “We’re still
the same stodgy old bricks-and-mortar shop. You need to get that website humming.
If we can’t double online revenue in nine months, I’m pulling the plug.”
Theresa caught up with me afterwards. “Where am I going wrong?” she asked,
putting her head in her hands. I explained to her that the IT project was a piece of a
bigger puzzle. “The big picture involves the whole company. Lee in Marketing will
need to develop a killer online strategy, Tim in Procurement will need to source
awesome products for the online store, and Jane in Supply Chain will have to deliver
your fabulous dresses to customers in record time. Does your leadership team have
the skills to make this change happen, and make it happen fast?”
Theresa sighed. “Oh! Yes! I get it! I’ve been trimming the toenails on the
elephant’s foot. We need to get the whole elephant moving in the right direction. We
need to get it on a big-time fitness program.” With that insight, she took a big
financial risk, hiring a top-notch expert to come aboard and put all of her leaders
through use an intense “action learning” program. Soon, the elephant’s growing
muscles were making it more agile and productive. Revenues from the digital
platform escalated nicely. When the nine-month deadline rolled around, Svetlana
called Theresa into her office. “I don’t know how you did it, but online sales have
almost tripled. Good work!”
You will learn how to:
Build your change muscle Focus and intensify your change efforts Speed your progress toward results
Chapter 14
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Maintain the Right Energy Level:
Keeping Up The Pace Over The Long Term
On the morning that Theresa’s boss Svetlana had raked her over the coals for
the dismal performance of the new website, Theresa felt on the verge of a heart attack.
Sitting in the car afterwards she was so dizzy and disoriented that she booked an
appointment with her old friend, Dr. Wellington. As she sat in his office later that
afternoon it all spilled out. “I’m burning the midnight oil, revenues are stuck, and
Svetlana has given me nine months to turn it around. Otherwise, I’ll be polishing my
resume. I am totally stressed. I cannot work any harder!” Theresa felt her palms
sweat and her heart race as she contemplated a job hunt.
When she finished Dr. Wellington warned her that her recent weight loss and
high blood pressure could seriously threaten her health. “You are working 18-hour
days, but are you getting as much done now as you did two years ago?” She admitted
that even though she was putting in long hours, her stress levels were robbing her of
the energy she needed to get the results Svetlana expected.
“If you want to run 100 miles, you cannot keep up a 20 mile per hour pace.
Remember the tortoise and the hare? Steady, reliable progress can get you to the
finish line more surely than a continuous all-out sprint.” Theresa took her doctor’s
advice. She booked a relaxing cruise off the coast of Alaska, she turned off her iPhone
and MacBook from 6 PM to 6 AM every day, she went into the office at 9 AM and
left promptly at 6 PM, and she reserved every other weekend for personal and family
time.
Theresa’s energy levels steadily rose until she felt like her old self again. Not
only did she feel her mood lifting, she got a lot work more done. A big plus: her
increased energy levels rippled through her entire team.
You will learn how to:
Treat the journey as a series of sprints Pace yourself Make stress an ally
Conclusion
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Culture Never Sleeps
Take a look at the shoulder on the business superhighway, where change
happens at the speed of light, and you’ll see a lot of stalled enterprises and the
wreckage of many once dominant companies that could not keep up with the pace:
Nokia, Blackberry, Blockbuster, Dell, Polaroid, Sony, and Borders, to name a few.
Take Nokia, for instance. In the late 1990s the leading maker of mobile phones
enjoyed a position as one of most exciting and successful technology companies in the
world. However, in 2007 it began to crash. In 2013, Microsoft rescued it before it
before it became just another a casualty of change
Adapt or die. Change never sleeps. Culture never sleeps. You can’t afford to
sleep.
You will learn how to:
Befriend the future Spot disruptions that could kill your business Remain agile in an increasingly disruptive world
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SAMPLE CHAPTER
Chapter 8Engage Everyone:
Mobilizing The People Who Do The Work
The day John McFarlane strolled into ANZ bank’s headquarters to begin his
tenure as the company’s CEO, he understood the huge task he faced. ANZ, like all of
the other major banks in Australia, had earned the scorn of its customers, the broader
community, and even its employees. The bank offered a bewildering array of
products, charged a lot of unexplained fees, and was frequently closing branches in
less-profitable rural areas. Bank bashing had surpassed rugby as a national sport.
Politicians, community groups, unions, churches, media, and talk radio personalities
were ganging up on what they saw as the enemy of hardworking Australians.
Nicholas Way, in his Business Review Weekly article The Price of Bank
Bashing, summed it up nicely. “Fee increases or branch closures cause a great public
outcry in which any rational explanation from the banks is ignored, ridiculed or
dismissed. They have become corporate pariahs.” Way cited a recent survey of
customer views on banking by the Financial and Consumer Rights Council that
proved his point. Australians hated their banks
McFarlane had resolved to turn that attitude around. But where should he
begin? A true turnaround in public perception would mean fundamentally changing
the attitude of ANZ’s 32,000 employees, and that would take more than a new
mission statement and a slick public relations campaign.
The new CEO decided to take a surprising first step in a long-term campaign
(it ended up taking seven years) to restore faith in his company. He would simply
listen to the complaints of the bank’s customers, shareholders, employees, and
community stakeholders. Too often, those voices had fallen on deaf ears. His listening
initiative showed all of the naysayers that he was serious about improving ANZ’s
service and reputation. For the first time in a long time he gave the bank a human
face. As he met with a wide range of unhappy Australians, he made it clear that the
company’s mission went far beyond satisfying investors with handsome returns. The
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bank, he insisted, would not rest until it met or exceeded the needs and expectations of
all of its stakeholders.
At the heart of this strategy lay the CEO’s firm belief that organizations don’t
change; people’s behavior does. Acting on that belief, he invited each and every one
of ANZ’s employees to behave like leaders, or, to put it another way, to step into
leadership roles and help him build a more human, customer-centric culture. He
summed up his expectation with a clarion call: “You must lead and inspire each
other.”
To change any organizational culture, you must start by engaging people and
mobilizing them to join the change movement. Applying that basic principle,
McFarlane led the transformation of ANZ from a despised industry laggard to one of
the highest performing and greatly admired banks in the world. In an article that
appeared in Insider magazine, titled “Lame Duck Bank is Flying High”, Mark
Westfield gave McFarlane high marks. “Yesterday’s 18 percent first half profit leap
vindicates McFarlane’s unique plan, among his peer banks of eschewing traditional
growth strategies and recasting the culture of his bank to lift efficiency and earnings.
Three and a half years ago ANZ was the worst performer of the big banks, regarded as
the highest risk bank investment by the market, and in strategic disarray.” He went on
to praise the CEO for inspiring his people to “work harder and work smarter”. This,
he informed his readers, “… has turned ANZ from the industry lame duck into a
highly polished money making machine with an eye to its customer needs.”
Understand the Importance of Role
Sarah wakes up on a Monday morning, greets her husband Mark good
morning, and bounds out of bed to face the busy day. In her conversation with Mark
about the day ahead, she fulfills the role of loving wife. She sweeps into the kitchen,
kisses Mark on the cheek, and switches to her role as mother, pouring milk onto bowls
of cereal for her eight-year old twins and checking for any symptoms of the flu that
has been making the rounds at school. “Button your jackets and wash your hands
before lunch.”
Ninety minutes later Sarah steps onto the train and settles into her usual seat
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before opening her laptop to review the day’s schedule at Mount Sinai hospital, where
she works as head of the Cardiology Department. She loves her role as a team leader.
On her morning rounds Sarah talks with a group of first year medical students,
comfortably switching into her role as teacher and coach. Later in the morning she
catches up with her boss to discuss the need for new imaging equipment in her
department, smoothly assuming the roles of persuader and negotiator. When a
colleague whisks into her office late in the day to ask Sarah’s opinion about a
troubling diagnosis, Sarah adopts the role of advisor and peer.
Note how Sarah’s behavior shifts as she moves into all of the different roles
she must play each day. By nature a rather quiet and reserved woman, she adjusts her
behavior in ways that make her effective in each role. She doesn’t talk to her family
the same way she talks with students, patients, colleagues, or her boss. She doesn’t let
her personality dictate her behavior. This may seem like a fairly obvious point, but
most leaders believe that personality governs human actions and that traits such as
extroversion, introversion, shyness, gregariousness, dominance, and submissiveness
rule an individual’s behavior. In fact, a whole army of trainers and consultants in the
field of change management preach this sermon. “Figure out personality types, then
change them to support your transformation initiative.” That’s the hard way to do it, I
think. It’s far easier to accept people for who they are and work, instead, on reframing
the role to lead to the behavior change you are seeking for your organization.
Let’s say you want a customer service team to replace pre-packaged scripts
with a question-and-answer approach tailored to each customer who calls to complain
about a product your company sells. Do you tell shy Cameron to become a more
outgoing and curious person? No, you reframe his role to one of “questioner” and then
show him how to ask questions that show empathy for the customer and get to the
heart of the dissatisfaction. Cameron does not become more gregarious, but he does
learn how to replace his old role of “script reader” with the new role of “questioner”.
Now he behaves in a way that displays his concern for whatever has upset the
customer. “What can I do to help you? Have I answered all of your questions? Is there
anything more I can do for you?”
Sarah grasps this basic tenet of effective leadership, which applies to any
effort to change an organization’s culture. As we saw earlier in the book, roles
influence behavior; stepping into the appropriate roles will prompt people to act in a
way that produces the desired changes.
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“But,” you may object, “This seems so manipulative, getting people to act in
inauthentic ways, in ways that run counter to their normal behavior.” Not at all.
Think about the roles you play in a given week. How do you behave at work, and how
does your behavior enable you to do your job? If you work as a sales rep for a
pharmaceutical company, you dress and act in ways that help you build good
relationships with the physicians you visit. Are you married or single? If you go out to
a bar for a drink after work, you would behave one way if you hope to meet your
future partner, and another way if your spouse were expecting you home for dinner.
If you work out at a gym or play a competitive sport such as golf or tennis, you
behave in ways that suit those roles. Now, suppose I ask you to help me deal with an
emergency, perhaps helping people who have just survived a train wreck. Basically,
I’m asking you to play a role you’ve never played in your life. But you would
probably try to step into this role act in a way that meets the demands of this situation.
We each hold a map in our heads that describes the role we may need to play
at any given point in time, but we seldom consciously examine them or share them
with others. Adding a new role to the map does not mean that you will behave in an
inauthentic way. You are just choosing to do something outside your usual modus
operandi. Your personality doesn’t change; your role changes.
Over the course of her busy week Sarah could step into any number of new
roles. If she comes upon an automobile accident on her way to the train station, she
immediately becomes a first responder, issuing orders in a loud, commanding voice
she would never use with her staff at work. She’s still her normally quite and reserved
self, but she has adopted an entirely different voice and style in this emergency
situation. So it goes with culture change. A leader doesn’t ask people to become
different people. She makes it clear that she needs them to take up a new role in order
to deal with the current “emergency”. Think for a moment about John McFarlane’s
situation. He faced a challenge that anyone would have called an emergency. In a
sense, then, a culture change is often a response to a form of organizational
emergency. Otherwise, why bother?
Reframe Roles
Do you think of yourself as an employee? It’s an interesting word. It suggests
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a strict hierarchy. There’s the employer (the boss) and the employee (the worker).
What if you use a different word, say “partner” or “colleague”? Reframing the role of
employees can make a world of difference. No longer are they just people who punch
the clock and do their jobs, they are partners in change, colleagues who will help
make the change happen.
When the leaders at Nordstrom, the upscale department store, wanted to
engage employees in their quest to create a truly customer-centric culture, they
redefined the role of their employees. Rather than producing a binder with hundreds
of pages describing the behaviors they thought would make this happen, leadership
formulated, one simple rule. Showcased in the employee handbook, this rule reframed
the role that each Nordstrom employee should play in the Nordstrom culture. The rule
appeared after a brief preamble stressing the company’s goal to provide exceptional
customer service:
Rule #1: Use good judgment in all situations. There will be
no additional rules.
This rule of “good judgment in all situations” invited employees to move from
the role of “shop assistant” to the role of “business owner”. Rather than merely
assisting customers with their purchases, Nordstrom’s people should own the outcome
as if they were the corporate Directors.
This reframing of the role of a Nordstrom employee immediately influenced
people to go out of their way to eliminate the pain points for customers. As
Nordstrom’s employees stepped into the role of “business owners”, they began to
think more deeply about every aspect of the customer’s experience, from the moment
they entered the store to the moment they left. You hear a phone ringing? Answer it
before the third ring. A customer asks where he can find children’s clothes? You
escort him to that department. You have just wrapped a bulky sweater for a customer?
You walk around the counter to hand it to them, or, even better, you offer to carry it to
their car. It did not take long for the good judgment rule to earn Nordstrom a
reputation as a provider of unparalleled service and a destination-of-choice for
shoppers. It was not your same old department store. It was the store where you were
treated like royalty.
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What emergency drove the culture change? Nordstrom’s leaders knew the
company needed to become a magnet for attracting and holding customers in the
fiercely competitive jungle of retailing. Become the destination-of-choice, or join
other once-dominant retailers like J.C. Penny and Sears Roebuck, who ended up
among the road kill littering the roadside.
Here’s a good rule for culture changers: keep it simple. The leaders at
Nordstrom summarized the role of employees in one clear, concise and compelling
sentence. By keeping it simple they made it easy for people to behave as if they
owned the business. Can you craft a sentence that captures the role you want your
people to play in the change initiative? Don’t settle for the first one that pops into
your head. It takes time to write a truly great one. Bear in mind Mark Twain’s
apology for sending a longwinded letter to a friend: “I would have made it shorter, if
I’d had the time.”
You can reframe roles in multiple ways. At Southwest airlines CEO Herb
Kelleher defined the company’s expectations of employees in three organizational
values:
A warrior spirit. Be fearless in delivering the service to customers.
A servant’s heart. Connect with people, treat them with respect, and put their
needs first, with friendly and reliable service.
A fun-loving attitude. Have fun, enjoy work and don’t take yourself too
seriously.
Apple defined five key steps (roles) store staff should step into to satisfy retail
customers. The acronym A-P-P-L-E, makes it easy for employees to remember the
steps:
Approach customers with a friendly, warm welcome.
Probe politely to understand all the customer’s needs.
Present the customer with a solution.
Listen for and resolve any ‘unexpressed’ wishes or concerns.
End with a warm farewell and an invitation to return.
Google relies on a mission statement to help define the role of employees:
“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and
useful.”
Susan Wojcicki, Google's Senior Vice President of Advertising talks about the
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power of this mission statement in guiding employee behavior. “We use this simple
statement to guide all of our decisions. Our mission is one that has the potential to
touch many lives, and we make sure that all our employees feel connected to it and
empowered to help achieve it. In times of crisis, they have helped by organizing life-
saving information and making it readily available”. For instance, Google’s people
launched a Person Finder tool within two hours of the earthquake and tsunami that
struck Japan in 2011. What a wonderful example of a mission statement influencing
employee role and driving behavior!
When reframing the role of your employees choose the format that works best
for your unique needs and goals. But no matter what method you choose, keep it
simple. Concisely and compellingly reframing individual or group roles provides one
of the most powerful levers for change. And clearly redefined roles help turbo charge
the change effort, getting people on board faster, while creating minimal turbulence in
your business.
Make it Meaningful“Chloe Kahn” managed a maintenance team that served the treatment plants
and networks for Metro’s Water Services Department. Relatively new to her job, she
was just beginning to learn first-hand about organizational culture. An initial
diagnosis revealed an ingrained pattern of blame between supervisors and employees,
each pointing the finger at the other for any problems that affected performance. Her
management team played the same game with her, blaming the supervisors who
reported to them for every problem that went unresolved.
Chloe decided to call a meeting with all of the front-line supervisors to discuss
the need to break this old habit. They marched into the canteen straight from the water
treatment plants, still wearing their bright yellow gear. Each sat with arms folded
across their chest, waiting for the big boss to blame them for the problems at work
Chloe did not fall old “blame game” pattern. Instead, she asked a question. “Randall,
tell me, please, what’s your job here? You know, what’s your role?” Randall did not
hesitate. “I’m a supervisor in charge of the central filtration unit.” Chloe held up her
hand. “No. You’re not. You’re the guy in charge of protecting the health and well-
being of an entire city.” She then outlined the history of the Water Services
Department, beginning with the era when cholera and other water-borne diseases
63
plagued the region. “We cleaned it up,” she told the crew. “Without clean water, there
would be no life on earth.” Chloe began her campaign to break the deeply embedded
pattern of blame by connecting people to the life-saving purpose of their work. Over
the next nine months she hammered home this mission. Those who “got it” kept their
jobs and won promotions. Those who didn’t looked elsewhere for work.
Viktor Frankyl, a Jewish psychiatrist imprisoned by the Nazis in various
concentration camps during World War II, wrote about the power of purpose in his
bestselling book Man’s Search for Meaning. His pregnant wife and parents perished
in the camps before the Allies liberated them at the end of World War II. Writing
about his experiences at Auschwitz, Frankyl described how a sense of purpose helped
him survive the horrific conditions of camp life. During his internment he cared for
and supported other inmates both personally and professionally He believed that
service to a greater cause gives people a deep sense of purpose that enables them to
survive and thrive under the most difficult circumstances. Success in life and work
depends less on what you do than on why you do it. Any bricklayer can place one
brick on top of another, but the one who feels a sense of purpose, that he’s not just
laying bricks but playing an important part in the construction of a cathedral to honor
his God, will do the most inspiring work.
Employees do their best work when they feel a sense of purpose. My
colleague Michael found it in the world of textbook publishing when his mentor
James Leisy asked him what book publishers do. Michael replied, “We publish
books.” Leisy replied, “No, we don’t. We package information that can change
people’s lives.” Don’t you want to be involved in meaningful work and create
something that benefits the lives of others? Sadly, too many businesses have lost sight
of that basic human desire. A single-minded focus on the bottom line can blind
leaders to what drives their people to deliver peak performances. It’s not the money;
it’s the sense of accomplishment. As Mr. Leisy told Michael, “Money is just a
yardstick we use to measure whether or not we are accomplishing our mission to
educate people and improve their lives. Do great work, and the money will follow”
The disconnection between work and purpose began with the industrial
revolution and the age of mass production, when people migrated from their rural
homes to the big city. Before then, business owners lived next door to their customers.
The baker made bread for her neighbors, the farrier forged shoes for the local farmers’
horses, and the tailor fashioned clothes for everyone in the township. You saw your
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customer every day. Nowadays, the customer service rep probably lives a thousand
miles or even a continent away from the person on the other end of the phone.
Leaders intent on building vibrant, high-performing cultures spend a lot of
time developing and promoting their organization’s purpose. When they do it well,
they inspire their people to make a difference in the lives of their colleagues, their
customers, and their communities.
Inspire Employees To Solve Problems
When John McFarlane embarked on his journey to revive his people’s sense of
purpose and restore the community’s faith in the banking system, he focused his
attention on the human side of the business. Who, he wondered, would pay the
biggest role in the turnaround he envisioned? Sure, he could do his part, but the real
change would require the hearts and minds of 32,000 employees. They, not the CEO,
would need to come up with the solutions to the bank’s problems.
McFarlane engaged ANZ’s people in pointed conversations about the bank’s
purpose in society. These conversations inspired many to join the cause. No longer
were they just going through the motions laying bricks, spending their time at work
yearning for the weekend to arrive, they were enrolling in the effort to put meaning
back into their work. No longer did they feel a need to apologize to their friends and
neighbors for working at “the big, bad bank”. They were proud to say that they were
playing a major role in a cultural revolution.
McFarlane reinforced the growing sense of purpose with a program of
community service that allowed bank employees to take paid leaves-of-absence
during which they volunteered to participate in community service projects. In one
particularly touching instance, a team from ANZ’s Risk Department decided to use
their volunteering leave to remove rubbish from a local beach during Clean Up
Australia day. After spending the day filling plastic bags with trash, they bumped into
a middle-aged couple walking along the sand. The bankers began chatting with the
couple, ultimately admitting that they worked for ANZ. That brief encounter did a lot
to restore the bank’s image in the area as the couple spread the word about their
encounter with the big, bad bank’s volunteers. One little act of community service had
dropped a pebble into the pond of public opinion.
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“Why not go a step further and put the bank’s greatest skill to work in service
of the community?” suggested one employee. McFarlane bought the idea and decided
to offer the bank’s financial acumen to help some of society’s most vulnerable people.
To that end ANZ launched a series financial literacy programs for those who lacked
confidence in money matters or who had gotten themselves mired in a debt. No
longer did folks who benefited from the service view the bank as a predator. Another
program promised to match every dollar a customer deposited in an ANZ savings
account. Everyone won, especially employees who gained deep satisfaction from
helping others get out of debt and build larger nest eggs.
Staff members also came up with the idea to hold an annual community-giving
event wherein employees in the bank’s 700 branches would spend one week each year
raising funds for local causes as a way of thanking their communities for supporting
the bank. McFarlane approved the proposal, which ended up raising millions of
dollars for schools, hospitals, and emergency services. The CEO walked the talk
himself, matching employee contributions dollar-for-dollar. By the third year the
bank’s staff had donated over 16,000 hours of their time to the program, which
contributed $6.8m in community donations and sponsorships. Employee satisfaction
skyrocketed, community trust intensified, and the bank prospered. Five years after the
bank launched its change initiative, it won accolades from the Dow Jones
Sustainability Index (DJSI) as the number one bank globally, and, not incidentally,
gained a reputation as an ardent supporter of the community improvement. McFarlane
would give all of the credit to ANZ’s people. They were the ones who came up with
and implemented the solutions that made it happen.
A culture change, no matter how grand or subtle, never happens easily, often
because an organization’s people are navigating uncharted territory. As people
journey from the old way “we do things around here” to new ways of thinking and
acting they may find challenging they must examine their often deeply embedded
assumptions, shifting their mindsets and exiting their safe comfort zones. That takes
courage. No one can do it for you. When problems arise, and they always do, you
can’t sit around waiting for a leader to tell you what to do. Change doesn’t occur in
the executive suite or in a meeting with consultants, it happens on the shop floor. It
takes place in the hearts and minds of the organization’s front-line workers.
Suppose you are a manager of a production line that churns out a hundred
widgets an hour. Over the years you have come to accept a certain amount of waste,
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say 15%. When the company’s CEO decides that for competitive and financial
reasons the company needs to reduce waste to 5%, do you ask the boss how to do it?
Do you do it yourself? Or do you ask Ted and Sally, who have been running the
widget machine for the past three years. The best solutions always come from the
people closest to the work. When overseeing a change effort, smart leaders loosen the
reins and relinquish control of the problem-solving process, inspiring their people to
find the most effective and creative solutions. Ted surprises everybody when he
comes to work one morning and inserts an ordinary stainless steel paper clip in the
widget machine’s innards. Voila, less conveyor belt wiggle, less waste.
Leaders who push people to change or threaten them by saying, “You must do
this, or else!” find that the harder they push, the harder people push back, often in
subtle ways that end up sabotaging the cause. It’s far better to create an environment
that gives people the freedom to solve problems. If you inspire Ted and Sally to find a
way to get a better result and reward them when they do, it becomes their widget
machine. Feeling a sense of ownership, they buy into solving the problem themselves.
Set Challenging Goals
When I was a twenty-something student of organizational psychology, I
walked into the headquarters of the Sheffield United Football Club, one of the top
professional soccer teams in England, to study high performance in teams as part of
my research for a Masters degree. I wanted to explore firsthand what it takes for
individuals and teams to stay at the top of their game. Over the course of the season I
saw how the Club’s culture motivated players to stick to a grueling training schedule.
Winning the FA (Football Association) Cup Final provided the heartbeat of the
culture. It was a challenging goal. Players told me stories about how they reminded
themselves of this supreme goal with stickers plastered on bathroom mirrors, signs
tacked to bedroom ceilings or magnets stuck onto fridge doors. These reminders
spurred them to do their best, knowing their best depended on getting out of bed each
morning and be thrown into a demanding training regime that taxed even the fittest
players. Yes, they brought a certain amount of raw talent to the game, but a
challenging goal helped them make the most of their talent.
We all need targets in our work. Otherwise, why get out of bed in the
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morning? If you just go through the motions, fulfilling the minimum requirements of
your job as a bricklayer, you will come to see it as drudgery. You’re merely filling the
role of replaceable human resource. But if you work to achieve a higher goal, to build
a cathedral, you take on the role of an essential player in the undertaking.
Effective leaders set challenging goals to help focus their people on what
matters most. Targets focus people’s attention and pull them toward doing what needs
to be done to accomplish the goal. Goals represent a vision of the future. It’s really
quite simple. As Earl Nightingale wrote, “People with goals succeed because they
know where they are going”.
Reward Early Adopters
Herb Kelleher, the CEO of Southwest Airlines, understood the power of
recognition. When he set about creating the company’s extraordinary culture, he
regularly wrote articles for Southwest’s company that became known as the CEO’s
“Shout Out”. In these articles he praised specific employees who had gone the extra
mile to meet customer needs. Their stories inspired others to follow their example,
going above and beyond the call of duty to delight customers. They helped the
company to reach its goal of achieving a best-in-class on-time departure record.
Pilots, flight attendants and cleaners received the sort of reward that motivates people
more than money. You can’t take a bonus to your grave; but you can take your pride
in a job well done.
Kelleher built a culture where employees loved coming to work everyday,
received full acknowledgement for their accomplishments, and felt proud to work for
the company. Southwest staff members receive over 43,000 customer commendations
every year and remain fiercely loyal to the company. Proof of the pudding: voluntary
turnover at the company hovers around two per cent, a number that would delight any
human resources department.
When successful change leaders catch people doing terrific work to achieve
the company’s goals, they shine a spotlight on their achievements. Early adopters
become early leaders. When someone displays desired cultural traits, turn that person
into a beacon for others to follow. Sally sees Ted win accolades (and an appropriate
bonus) for his waste-saving gizmo, and she will likely look for ways to win the same
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sort of praise.
The Essentials
Reframe roles to speed the change with less turmoil.
Make the work meaningful.
Inspire the front lines with challenging goals.
Cascade problem solving to the people who do the work.
Reward those who are making the change happen.
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