In this first episode of Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan, Sara introduces us to herself, her career history, and her business. Sara already shares insight and experience through her consulting work, but this podcast gives her another platform in which to address some of the corporate transformational concerns resonating through the business world today.
Sara discusses how COVID-19 changed the office culture landscape in ways that can’t be ignored. The shift to remote and hybrid working can’t be dialed back, and Sara advises that companies will additionally need to take a hard look at employee engagement and customer care. She names the four factors in transformation success and explains how taking them into consideration greatly impacts successful outcomes.
In this episode, Sara details exactly what her consulting company can offer clients. She explains the ROI and life-changing potential within her PInnacle Executive Coaching Program, shares the ways in which her Center for Change Leadership provides supportive community to C-suite changemakers, and lays out the framework of the 12-week Mastering Change Management course. Tune in to learn more about Sara and all the ways in which she can assist in supporting and transforming your business.
Resources discussed in this episode:
- Harvard Business Review: “The Hard Side of Change Management”
- William Bridges
- Harvard Business Review: “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail” by John P Kotter
- Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: EKR Foundation
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Contact Sara Sheehan | Sara Sheehan Consulting:
Transcript:
Hi there, I’m Sara Sheehan and welcome to my podcast, Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. Today I’m talking about my specialty in human capital, in the consulting and executive coaching services that I offer my clients. If you would like to learn more after listening to today’s discussion, check out the show notes for a link to book a meeting with me.
Sara Sheehan: Hi there. My name is Sara Sheehan and welcome to Transformational Thinkers with Sara Sheehan. I’d like to share a little bit today about who I am and what I do so that listeners have a little more perspective on how we might work together in the future. I bring almost 30 years of experience working with the world’s largest consulting firms and Fortune 100 clients. The kinds of projects that I typically work on are big business transformations like mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing of a global function, technology transformations like implementing SAP, Oracle or Workday, custom application development, or other kinds of digital transformations, just to name a few. I specialize in human capital, and that means that I help clients with human performance challenges through organization change management, training, leadership development, organization design, and executive coaching. My clients like to work with me because I make the hard work of adopting change easy. They know that I am a trusted business advisor that they can count on for years to come. I have truly deep personal relationships with clients and business partners alike. Relationships matter a ton to me and I value them for all that they bring to my life and to my work. In terms of my ideal client, I am looking to work with companies at $100 million in revenue up to a couple billion dollars in revenue. And I am not looking to compete with my former firms at all. I’m interested in working with growing companies that really see the value in investing in people, companies that want to increase employee engagement, that want to develop more leaders at more levels of the organization, and companies that see that investing in people increases shareholder value. That’s the kind of client that I would love to work with. So thank you for giving me an opportunity to share a little bit about me and my business.
Sara Sheehan: Now I’d like to transition our conversation to talk a little bit about big challenges affecting business, as well as four key factors for transformation success, and then transition into giving you a definition on what change management is and sharing a little bit about the ways that Sara Sheehan Consulting works with clients. That’s my agenda for today and I very much look forward to hearing back from you after getting through the conversation. And so moving forward, let’s talk about what the current challenges are facing senior executives. They are enormous. After two years of constant disruption, there are signs of acceleration in the marketplace. There are some industries that are showing growth and development, but there are permanent changes to office culture. Every business out there is having to work through whether they’re going to stay remote, whether they will go hybrid or whether they will truly return to the office. No one can escape this work and the need to focus on your employees and handle it in a way that you keep the relationship intact. There’s a tremendous rush to rebuild teams and rehire based on layoffs that occurred during the pandemic, based on loss of business need, as well as employees leaving due to the great resignation or reshuffle. There’s a constant need right now to be in tune and tweak employee engagement. Everyone needs to be listening to what their employees think, what they want, and how to build a culture that engages employees. There is a persistent supply chain issue that has not gone away. It started during the pandemic and it continues on today where companies are not able to deliver their products or their solutions. This is across all industries. You’ll even find it in your grocery store when you shop for your Thanksgiving meal, I promise you. Unrest in the Ukraine continues to impact business supply chain and well being globally. And finally, customer care has taken a huge hit. Massive hit. Customer care is diminished. It’s at one of the lowest levels that I’ve seen it. And companies are rebuilding their staff because they’ve gotten so understaffed. But it’s pitiful. It is absolutely pitiful. We are not paying attention to the customer enough, and that has to change.
Sara Sheehan: Moving forward, let’s talk about four key factors for transformation success when using internal resources. This research was done by Boston Consulting Group, was published in Harvard Business Review in October of 2005. These four factors were common across 200 engagements that they took a close look at. And when you’re using internal people, there are some factors that you need to consider where you can take action to stack the deck in your favor towards a positive result. How long is your business transformation? What is the program duration? If it is a long program where it’s 12 to 18 months, you will need to have check points in place for leadership reviews, sponsor reviews, business reviews in place, so that you don’t go more than six weeks without a major checkpoint. You also want to take into consideration the performance integrity of your people. Are your people able to do their day job and deliver their role on the project? This is a very big deal and you really need to consider what back-fills you need to have in place. And honestly, do you need some temps to help you with certain business processes during crunch periods? These are things that will help you be more successful. Your senior leaders’ commitment to the overall success of the engagement. That is not only your senior leaders visible commitment, but also your employees commitment. Those that need to be involved in the project and have a responsible role that they need to deliver on. Are they committed to show up for the work? And finally, what’s the level of effort that’s required in the project and are they able to deliver against that level of effort over the long haul? Those are four key factors for transformation success when using internal resources.
Sara Sheehan: Let’s talk about what is a great definition for change management. I love this definition. It’s by William Bridges and. It’s very, it touches my heart. It absolutely does. He says, “It isn’t the changes that do you in. It’s the transition. They are not the same thing. Change is situational. The move to a new site, the retirement of the founder, the reorganization of the roles on the team, the revisions to the pension plan. The transition is the psychological process that people go through to come to terms with the new situation. Change is external and transition is internal. Unless transition occurs, change will not work.” It’s beautifully said. Why do so many transformation efforts fail? It’s remarkable at how many efforts fail. According to McKinsey, 70% of all transformation efforts fail. Contributing factors include insufficiently high aspirations, a lack of engagement within the organization, an insufficient investment in building capabilities across the organization to sustain the change, among others. That is a genius quote, in my opinion, because it encompasses a lot. It talks about insufficiently high aspirations, a lack of engagement, and the fact that they don’t have enough capability. Let’s talk about the change curve. The change curve comes to organization change management from its beginning by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her work on death and dying.
Sara Sheehan: My change curve has been adapted visually from hers that is on her website EKR Foundation dot org and it highlights the emotions, the stages that you go through over time, after learning about your impending demise. Whether it’s your death, in her work on death and dying, or in a business context, your impending outsourcing engagement that you just learned about, where they’re outsourcing your function globally, you might go through shock, you might have denial, you might be frustrated, you might be depressed, you might really get to a point where you want to start trying options and experimenting so that you can move forward. And then you’re going to make a decision and you are going to integrate that decision and be whole, be a new, a new person operating in that new environment. You’re accepting that change. What are the benefits of managing change? Well, they are definitely real and they impact the bottom line. The stakeholders are visible and committed. There is a change network that is aligned and prepared and serving as a line of defense. They are also cascading messages and getting feedback from that organization. So serving a two way role that is highly valuable. Your business impacts are identified and mitigated. Your communications and training are timely and thorough. You have managed to deal with that productivity dip in the change curve and you’ve reduced it. And those changes are fully integrated. Your project is delivering outstanding business results and financial benefits to the bottom line. And finally, you’re saving time and money. It’s phenomenal benefits.
Sara Sheehan: Let’s talk a little bit about how we work with clients. First of all, we have a fully developed change diagnostic to help identify where a client’s change capability is currently, where it needs to be in the future, and develop an action plan to help that client get there. We do all kinds of consulting and advisory work and then finally we do executive coaching, learning and community engagement. Let’s talk a little bit more about that change diagnostic. The diagnostic could take a few days to a few weeks, depending on how many people the client want engaged in an assessment. In the assessment, the client would identify where they are on a maturity model for each change method component area and where they want to be. So where they are currently, where they want to be in the future. And then those numbers feed into an action plan that will help them get there. It is a very objective discussion and it’s one that yields tremendous benefits for clients. This is a paid assessment, but if the client chooses to do follow on work, whether it’s the actual recommendation plan that they want to implement or there’s another project on the side that is similar or related. Any follow on work means that that change diagnostic is forgiven financially because they got through the process to understand what they need to do to improve. This is a highly valuable experience for clients.
Sara Sheehan: Pinnacle Executive Coaching Program. This program is something that absolutely feeds someone’s growth. And it is so rewarding to be part of it. I help busy executives sprint their way up the corporate ladder. The purpose of this particular program is to help individuals that are transitioning into a new role, into a new level, into a new organization to help them to set new goals that they can develop an action plan to achieve, to improve their performance, to resolve conflict, to set up an advisory team so that they can be even more successful in the future. This is a formula that many consulting firms use in the promotion process, and it absolutely works. I have had so many advisory teams over the course of my career and I will always have a group of advisors available to run things by. Things that are part of the program, one on one executive coaching. If the individual’s interested in it, they can also get in person observation and feedback for an additional fee. Guidance on navigating complex conversations, dilemmas or managing conflict. A built in action and accountability plan to increase your impact in the organization. And finally, a transition plan and advisory team strategies are all part of the program. Tremendous return on investment for this program.
Sara Sheehan: Mastering Change Management. So this is my digital course. And it is something that you can either take in a live experience or you can take it from a self study perspective via Kajabi. Mastering Change Management is up to 12 weeks, including two weeks for capstone presentations for a cohort that really wants to tie it off with final presentations. But it is the foundational course where I help a client build change capability in their organization. We start off with change management foundations. We go into stakeholder alignment, the assessment mapping and engagement plan process, developing and launching a change network, conducting business readiness assessments, getting a solid communication strategy and plan in place, as well as identifying business impacts and mitigating action plans. Understanding any role or organization impacts and making sure that you’re designing for that. Developing a behavior change plan. Making sure that you’re addressing any training and leadership development efforts that need to be part of your project. And then finally, employee engagement. This course will have one hour of live content a week with one hour of office hours a week. You would also have a peer to peer support pair or triad that meets weekly. Weekly office hours would be on another day that week. On Friday, participants would post an update to share what they’ve learned, what challenges they’ve had, what questions they have. Providing an update to other course members about what they’re learning. Finally, Kajabi offers a self study option if you’re not into a group. That’s the experience in a nutshell.
Sara Sheehan: Finally, I would just like to wrap it up with I have a lot of client testimonials that you can access on my website and my LinkedIn profile. I invite you to check out the wonderful testimonials that I have. I would love to be able to explore your business challenges and understand how I could help you from a human capital perspective. Finally, I just want to share a little bit about me personally. I am a native Texan. I grew up in Arkansas. I went to the University of Arkansas for undergrad and graduate. An interesting fact about me is that every member of my family has at least one degree from Arkansas. So we’re all in. Our name is in the sidewalk. I moved to Dallas to work for Anderson Consulting, which is now Accenture, and I have also worked for IBM, KPMG and Deloitte, and I am happily married to my husband, Jeff. We’ve been married for over 23 years, and I really do love traveling and cooking, exercising and spending time with people that I love, whether it’s friends or family. I feel like knowing more about the person and their heart really helps you to understand if you want to work with that person. And I think that’s valuable in today’s world. I thank my listeners. I appreciate you for giving me a chance to share a little bit about me, my business, and how we work with clients. Have a great day.
