The Life and Times of a Change Manager

(Part 2e)

Contributed by Ron Leeman on December 3, 2015 in Organization, Change, & HR

Editor’s Note: Ron Leeman is a world-recognized Change Manager and author of

several Change, Process, and Project training guides on Flevy. He has decided to write a

series of articles that chronicle his personal “change” journey. This is the

second installment (part). You can read beginning from the first piece here. You can also

learn more about Ron and his approach to Change in our recent interview with him.

* * * *

Here we go then… the final post in my Abbey National Years series…

So, why exactly did I resign from Abbey National?

There were two main reasons but both are connected:

1. Being passed over for promotion (yet again).

2. My desire to go independent.

Being Passed over for Promotion (Yet Again)

With the change from Process Improvement to Profit Improvement came another promotion

opportunity. So, once again, I duly applied and hey, guess what, along with a few other

candidates, I got selected for the interview process, which consisted of:

A paper based exercise.

A Q&A session on the paper based exercise.

An interview.

In the paper based exercise, we were give a scenario about a business problem and asked to

make recommendations on how to tackle it which I had no real problem with this. During the

interview, I was obviously asked many questions, including some related to the paper based

exercise, which I thought I answered well.

Anyway, I never got the job!

So, inevitably, I asked for a meeting with the Profit Improvement Manager to discuss why I

wasn’t successful.

1. I was given some really positive feedback about my paper based exercise, such that I

was the only person to “read between the lines” and give recommendations based on

my answers. OK, good start.

2. One of the interview questions asked was what papers I read, to which I detailed

several “tabloid papers,” such as the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. I was told that

the answer they were looking for here was perhaps one of the “broadsheets,” such

Financial Times or Daily Telegraph. I was a little perplexed at this, because I couldn’t

see the link between reading a “tabloid” and being able to do my job… but who was I

to judge!

3. I was also told that one of the other contributing factors to me not being selected was

the fact that I didn’t have a degree or an MBA, which was not necessarily a pre-

requisite, but a highly sought after qualification for Abbey National’s Senior

Managers. Mmmmm would having a degree or MBA made me a better

consultant/practitioner? No, it bloody wouldn’t and it didn’t!

4. And, finally, another question I was asked was where I thought Abbey National

should position itself within the next 3 to 5 years, to which I answered that I felt we

held a unique position in the marketplace (the first Building Society to convert to a

Bank) and that we should consolidate that position through core activities, such as

Mortgages and Retail Banking. It was explained to me that the answer they were

looking for was the need for Abbey National to diversify!

Well, in relation to the last question, guess what… look what happened to Abbey National as

a result of diversification:

2002 – Ventured into the wholesale loans business.

2002 – Bad loans in the business led to Abbey issuing a profit warning.

2003 – Dubbed “Shabby Abbey” (or “Shabby National”), it was in the doghouse with

many of its customers over its cost-cutting plans,

2003 – Out of favour in the “City” after reporting a near £1bn loss following an ill-

fated expansion into risky financial investments–it lost millions on the likes of Enron

and WorldCom.

As a result, the bank’s bosses pledged to focus single-mindedly on traditional high-street

banking. Isn’t that what I suggested way back when? And, so the story unfolded… from

Abbey National to Abbey to being taken over by Banco Santander.

Call me a “visionary” if you like. LOL.

My Desire to Go Independent

Abbey National had a habit (pardon the pun) of using many External Consultants on projects,

which was evidenced by the use of the 3rd Party Consultants for the Benchmarking work.

This really irked me, because it seemed I was doing all of the work and then they came along,

took over the reins, and were paid handsomely for it.

So I thought… I can do that.

As a first step, I set up my own company, Leeman Associates Ltd and outside of Abbey

National’s time, started touting for business. This paid off very quickly in that I managed to

get a good level of interest in two potential Benchmarking Initiatives:

1. Barclays Bank who wanted to benchmark Current Account processes.

2. Halifax Building Society who wanted to benchmark Home Surveyors

processes

Let me give you a brief synopsis of what happened with the two initiatives:

Current Account Processes

I developed the Benchmarking Invitation Pack and was about to send this out to Barclays

preferred benchmark partners when, without any prior warning, Barclays decided to pull out

of the initiative and was never told why (I will reveal all later).

Home Surveyors Processes

Again, I developed the Benchmarking Invitation pack and got to the stage of holding an

inaugural meeting with about 8 interested organisations.

Anecdote time… I prepared a comprehensive slide deck using acetates and an overhead

projector. Remember them?

It was an art form taking one off, putting one on, then taking that one off, and then putting

another one on, and not breaking the flow of the presentation. Oh, the memories.

This was a successful presentation and all organisations present were enthusiastic, so, despite

the setback of the Barclays Bank initiative, I was positive that this consortium would

eventually be set up with me as the 3rd Party Independent Consultant managing the process

going forward.

What happened? You may well ask!

A few weeks later, I was summoned into Head of Profit Improvements office and was told

that the 3rd Party Benchmarking Consultants we were using for the initiatives mentioned in

my previous post had made a complaint about me, because they found out about the Barclays

Bank initiative. They were also pursuing Barclays for similar benchmarking business. The

gist of the complaint was that I was using their material and doing this while still employed

by Abbey National, which they felt was unethical and gave me an unfair advantage. So

whatever happened to competitiveness?

Anyway, I made it clear to the Profit Improvement Manager that:

1. I was not using anyone else’s material, as I was the one who developed Abbey

National’s Benchmarking Methodology and created the Benchmarking Invitation

Packs in the first place.

2. Whilst I was still employed with Abbey National, whatever I did for Leeman

Associates Ltd, was in my own time, e.g. I took annual leave or worked at the

weekends.

To cut a long story short, the upshot was that it was deemed a “grey area” and to avoid any

further conflict of interest, and to appease the 3rd Party Benchmarking Consultants, I was

told I would be relieved of all Benchmarking activity for the foreseeable future. You can

guess I was not impressed. Following some sleepless nights and much deliberation with the

family, I decided to resign in the knowledge that the Surveyors Benchmarking initiative was

going well.

Guess what?

The day after I submitted my formal resignation to Abbey National, the Halifax Building

Society contacted me and said they were pulling out of sponsoring the Surveyors

Benchmarking initiative, as there was a change in business priorities. Mmmmm… OK, no

problem, there were still the other interested organisations… or so I thought! Because of its

size and standing in the Mortgage Market, the Halifax acted like a catalyst and it was the

reason the other organisations wanted to pursue the initiative. Unfortunately, because of this,

the other organisations started pulling out.

To this day, I am convinced this was all a result of the complaint and that the 3rd Party

Benchmarking Consultants “put the boot in.”

Interestingly I recently came across a post on LinkedIn called the 7 Hidden Reasons why

Employees Leave. I think most of them applied to me at the time.

Given the demise of both my Benchmarking opportunities, my reason for resigning was now

completely invalid and I had nothing on the horizon by way of gainful employment. Clearly,

this made me think about what I was going to do to secure some kind of job and with it an

income. Having thought about it for a little while, I came to the conclusion that the only

option I had was to put myself on the “contract market” as an Independent Consultant. So, I

went through a process of registering my details with many Recruitment Agencies. As you

will appreciate, this was a worrying time for me… no job, no income, no car. After some

weeks of waiting, one Recruitment Agency came up trumps and got me an interview with

Prudential and I secured a 3-month contract with a day-rate that was substantially greater than

what I was earning at Abbey National.

From here on, in it starts to get more interesting.

Part 3 will be when I start recalling my days as an Independent Process and Change

Consultant and where many of the “warts and all” revelations will be and the following is a

list of assignments that I intend to cover:

Business Process Consultant for Prudential Corporation.

Business Change Programme Manager for Department for the

Environment, Transport and Regions.

Business Change Programme Manager for Raiffeisen Zentral Bank

Poland.

Business Process Change Manager & Performance Improvement

Consultant for LloydsTSB Bank.

Global Business Change Programme Manager for British Petroleum.

Business Change Programme Manager for Metropolitan Police

Service.

Business Change Manager for London Borough of Enfield.

Business Process Change Manager for Suffolk Council Council.

Business Change Programme Consultant for E-on.

Operational Business Change Manager for Network Rail.

Business Process and Organisational Design Consultant for KBank,

Thailand.

Business Process Change Manager for Northamptonshire County

Council.

Business Change Programme Consultant for Howden Group.

Business Process Change Manager for Aviva.

Business Change & Engagement Manager for Essex County Council.

Business Process Change Manager for Orange.

European Business Change Manager for Kao Corporation of Japan.

Business Change & Engagement Manager for Manitowoc Group,

Singapore.

Please understand that I will have to be extremely careful, because I am connected to a lot of

people on LinkedIn that I worked with during this time on and I wouldn’t want to go

upsetting anyone (would I!).

About Ron Leeman

Ron Leeman has been involved in “change and process” work for more years than he cares to remember. He has worked extensively across the UK, Europe, and globally--and has an enviable track-record of delivering organisational change and process

initiatives across a wide cross section of industry sectors. In 2012, Ron was bestowed with a “Change Leader of Tomorrow” award by the World HRD Congress “in recognition of my remarkable progress in initiating changes enough for others in the same industry to follow my example”. Ron is firm believer in knowledge transfer and now wants to share his vast knowledge with those who are considering getting into or at various stages of “change” and/or “process” work or those working on specific Projects wanting to gain practical insights into “how to” type situations. You can connect with Ron Leeman on LinkedIn here, where you can view his 85+ Recommendations and in excess of 800 Endorsements from clients and co-workers alike to give you an indication of the quality of service that he has provided and can offer. Ron is also a document author on Flevy. Browse his frameworks on Change Management, Process Analysis, and Program Management here: http://flevy.com/seller/highwayofchange.

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