Organizational Transformation Case Study
Transforming the Technology Department of a Leading Healthcare Services Company
The Ask
A Healthcare Services company needed to transform its technology department to foster collaboration, improve operating models, integrate a nascent senior leadership team, and ensure consistent communication throughout the organization. This monumental transformation aimed to pivot the department's culture (and 1,200 employees) from a "safety and order" mindset to one of "learning, growth, and collaboration."
The Background
The technology department's existing organizational structure struggled with isolated teams and practices, in no small part due to growth via mergers and acquisitions and a recent unification of the legacy Engineering and IT departments. These siloes hindered efficient collaboration, innovation, and the ability to scale. With the full technology department being so large, it was imperative to implement a new operating model that aligned segments of the engineering teams with the business domain they supported while maintaining collaboration, cohesion, and standardized processes (particularly with cross-cutting support teams) between these segments.
Our Approach
In any engagement, we focus on human-centric solutions implemented in a sustainable way so we can quickly step back and allow organizations to move forward independently and stronger than before. In this case, this meant getting newly organized and newly minted leaders to stand on their own, operate, collaborate, and make decisions with the department's vision in mind.
Focused Leadership Engagement
Consistent meetings with Department Leaders: Recognizing that the collaboration between previously separated and siloed leaders would be pivotal to the success of the transformation, weekly collaboration sessions began. These meetings allowed for constant and clear communication of roadblocks, increased trust and team building, and proactive raising/resolving of issues. Additionally, ad-hoc facilitated meetings between departments were continually prompted until departments began collaborating proactively.
Engagement with Senior Leaders: The new combined senior leadership team was brought together weekly. This platform allowed them to voice concerns, share insights, and collaboratively brainstorm solutions while building trust with each other to constructively challenge where necessary. These meetings affectionately became known as “group coaching” meetings with strong bonds forming between leaders as their comfortable relationships enabled them to share challenges, opportunities, and space for strategic planning.
Operational Cohesiveness:
Workshops for Process Alignment: A series of workshops were initiated to identify both commonalities and variations in processes across business segments in the new operating model. This facilitated the creation of unified, efficient workflows and shared processes with an understanding that these processes would continue to evolve over time and need to be shared across the entire technology department.
Guiding Principles Sessions: Senior leaders participated in these sessions to outline how each practice should function with one another, ensuring a cohesive department strategy and clear guidelines for roles and responsibilities. These meetings established guardrails for collaboration so middle management could have a springboard for designing the details of interdepartmental collaboration.
Establishing Collaboration Agreements: Middle management leaders crafted these agreements in independent workshops. The objective was to clearly define how cross-functional teams and individuals would collaborate, thereby streamlining operations and minimizing friction, particularly for teams supporting several different technology department segments. These agreements became living documents to govern future operations.
Personalized Leadership Support:
Individual Coaching: Recognizing the unique challenges faced by leaders in new roles, dedicated one-on-one leadership coaches were provided. These coaches offered tailored guidance for individual growth, ensuring that each leader felt equipped to navigate their new responsibilities effectively.
The Outcomes
Unified Teams: The once-siloed departments witnessed a marked improvement in collaboration. The new organizational model fostered a sense of community, and the newly appointed technology segment leaders became pivotal cornerstones for various teams, helping guide the department through the transformation.
Empowered Leadership: The newly formed senior leadership team, through regular meetings and guiding principles sessions, developed a strong bond of trust and a shared vision for the department, gained comfort in challenging and supporting each other in constructive ways, and built closer personal bonds which enabled efficient collaboration (as well as the continual sharing of wins, obstacles, and, of course, memes with one another).
Clear Communication: With consistent communication strategies, all 1200 employees in the technology group were kept informed as the transformation progressed and evolved. This clarity minimized resistance to change and fostered a sense of ownership among employees.
Cultural Metamorphosis: The department successfully transitioned from its previous "safety and order" culture to a new ethos, centered on "learning and collaboration." This has paved the way for innovation, flexibility, and improved inter-departmental relations.
Conclusion
Though intensive and challenging, this transformative journey showcased the immense potential for proactive change management, clear communication, guidance by coaching, and unifying around a shared vision focused on the humans experiencing the change. Relationship building proved to be an effective catalyst for driving change as trust and transparency grew strong enough to navigate the inevitable unplanned obstacles in organizational change.
Quotes
“They've really brought the human aspect into this change and transformation in a way that I've never seen another group do.”
“These two people can teach your leaders how to successfully walk their staffs through traumatic change. The bigger, the more upsetting it is, the more ambiguity that's in it, the more of it that's undefined about how we're going to bridge that gap between where we are and what we want to be, the more valuable Siamo is to you and your leadership team.”
“Siamo truly coaches. They won't do it for you. They'll make sure you figure it out and do it.”
“They've made me a much better leader with much more empathy.”
“They listen to us, not prescribe a fixed method. While I have every faith and I know that they know best practices, change management, and here's the book of different pieces, the approach that they take is a much more consultative approach, not a prescriptive approach.”
“We went through like a big, big four consulting agency Change Management. They've got the book. They're going to tell you what to do, they're going to tell you how to be able to do those pieces, and we don't react well to that as an organization. We are very opinionated, and Siamo works with us and help us on the journey, which I think is a big differentiator. They feel like they're part of the team, not somebody coming in to help judge us on our journey.”
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