Change Agents Build Internal Capability
A “change agent” describes a first line leader whose job is to learn and model change leadership, setting a course for the organization to follow. Change is difficult, and working with many models and processes takes time and can be daunting. Pyramid’s master coach team guided the change agents until they were ready to lead all the processes needed for change. Over the course of the first four months, they received extensive training in change leadership and team coaching skills during week-long rigorous sessions.
Change agents were carefully selected and recruited from within Sanofi for a two-year assignment and their average tenure at the company was over 10 years. Their scope of influence was approximately 100 employees each. This team of 25 leaders was charged with supporting first line through director level and business unit head leaders in implementing broad organizational change in three specific areas – cultivating change agility, accelerating team performance and creating an environment where continuous improvement is a natural progression of work.
From a change agent’s perspective on how the change was accelerated.
My role as a change agent is to act as a catalyst to build capabilities that will put the organization in a position to change to meet the needs of a rapidly shifting business and customer landscape. The leadership who sanctioned the placement of change agents embedded in the organization understood that if we work to change processes, business approaches and foster innovation without undertaking significant cultural change, we would be setting the organization up for frustration. As change agents, our first order of business was to shift the water cooler dialogue from ‘what is wrong’ to ‘what is possible?’”
Doug Buriani, Change Agent, California, USA
First Step – Listen!
The change agents began their work by hosting intensive listening sessions with all field and select home office teams to understand why engagement was low. Exercises with employees, such as plotting emotions on the William Bridges change curve, helped create language that employees could use to express clearly what they were experiencing.
Genuine conversation was beginning between employees and change agents, and through those interactions, change agents began to introduce contrasts between talking about change and driving it. These contrasts revised the emotionally charged water cooler conversations and enabled people to shift their points of view from old ways of working to new ways of thinking. Change had begun. People were energized by new possibilities.
Second Step – Hear and Acknowledge!
Many issues surfaced and were present in the employee population. Both the listening sessions and the baseline survey provided rich feedback from employees in the form of theme reports delivered to the leaders at the request of Anne Whitaker, President, Sanofi North America Pharmaceuticals. The challenge was to identify and catalogue this feedback in a way that would contribute to an action plan, achieve quick fixes for the easy problems, and acknowledge issues that would take longer to address. These themes were presented to the individual division leaders, addressed in virtual town hall meetings and in leadership workshops.
Third Step – Coach Employees to Participate in the Change
Shortly after the change agents were deployed in 2012, a company-wide survey was launched to create a baseline measure of behavioral indicators and engagement and to provide a secure and confidential outlet for employees to voice their concerns. The survey provided an additional opening for leadership to continue the dialogue with employees that was under way with the change agent listening sessions and presented the opportunity to create action plans based on the survey findings. Additionally, to determine the impact of team coaching and other employee touch points intended to drive organizational change, the plan was to survey employees at the beginning of the initiative and then one year later in 2013.
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