Ask yourself that question. Simple, try it. There is an amazing amount that comes out that is extremely useful for your change process. It ranges from content direction to just the right questions, to ideas for communication and process. In this blog, Koen Edlinger and Dolf L'Ortye, management consultants at Summiteers, invite you to ask yourself — and especially your employees — the question: if you look to the future, what are we going to do differently and what do we need to do to get there? In this blog, they explain what that brings you.

A group of people working together to achieve a goal

Those who are busy with strategy execution are planning for the future. Here, you can quickly lose yourself in concepts and frameworks, whether complex or not. While it is interesting and useful to look at strategy execution in this way, it involves the risk of losing sight of what an organization is at its core. If you peel it all off, an organization is little more than a group of people working together to achieve a common goal, increasingly supported by digital means. After the change process, they need to do things differently. Just imagine that, what does that look like?

A fresh perspective on change plans

First of all, let's say that we do not want to create a new way of making strategy here. However, we do think it is very valuable to think about your change plans from a different perspective than the management framework. Simply by asking yourself that one question: what will we do differently in the future? By identifying more with the people it ultimately affects, you get more insight into where the real changes — and therefore potential risks — are. For example, it provides very clear insight into questions such as: What should you communicate to your employees about? What should you explain to them? It also encourages dialogue with your team early in a strategy process. Interestingly enough, it also provides a substantive direction and leads to exactly the right questions.

In practice

What can that look like in practice? For example, there are all kinds of developments going on around AI, digitization, robotization and remote working that are changing that work. Then we are talking about both what we do and how we do it. Suppose you work in a large call center, you can bet your ass that AI will affect your processes. You already know that. Of course, your employees know that too, so talk to your people about that. What does the arrival of AI require of them? What will their work look like? What else are they going to do? What do they need for that? What do they need to learn to do that? Do they find it exciting? If AI already answers most of the questions on the phone, your call center agents may be going to do much more specialized work. So that means something for how you train your people, how you manage your employees and even for the competencies on which you hire new employees.

An invitation to reflect

This blog is an invitation to the change maker. Those who are busy with strategy execution are busy making plans. You give substance to the what and the how. Sit down with your team and put this question on the table. That's going to give you insights that you might not have if you didn't ask that question. That's not to say that you shouldn't do all the other things that are so valuable in a change process. Quite the contrary, but this creative approach helps you to think about strategy execution and change processes from a people-centered perspective. We are very curious about what it brings you.

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