Tailored Programmes

A leading academic with a wealth of experience in researching and advising global corporations like GSK and T-Mobile, as well as the public sector, Professor Hope Hailey is a leader of the Change Management Consortium which has built up an unrivalled record of research into change programmes.

Professor Hope Hailey looked at the evidence of key issues in major change programmes based on data she and her team had collected. She described the methodology they used, the key data revealed and the learning this has for action by managers at all levels in large organisations - the publc and private sectors. She also shared fundamental learning points from her work with HMRC.

She and her team were invited by Chairman David Varney to use the same research methods with HM Revenue and Customs following one of the largest mergers in UK history. Offered unrivalled access, she was able to offer senior management high quality comparative data on key change dimensions. Sharing some of the key data, she underlined some fundamental learning points:

• This seriously major change - the huge scope of change in a very constrained change context and timescale is placing huge demands on HMRC's change capability.
• Can you do too much at once? HMRC are engaged in a structural realignment plus a performance transformation plus a job rationalisation plus a merger and running in parallel to these is a cultural change.
• Clarity about strategic objectives of the newly formed HMRC is vital at levels below Executive Committee - in practice there were numerous explanations, more consistency is clearly a goal.
• Tensions have emerged between the language of emergent and participative change expressed at senior levels (eg 'Lean' processes adapted from industry) and the lived experience of tighter control and accountability and work intensification experienced at lower levels.
• More communication is needed on the vision and strategic intent that bridges the two experiences.
• The pivotal role of Middle and Front Line Managers needs to further developed to help make the change successful.