FROM OUR CEO

Case Study – Successful Change with Organizational Network Analysis

December 7th, 2020 | From our CEO

LogisticCo is a privately held company headquartered in the United States. As a global leader and the oldest company within its niche, it had always strived to provide the best products and services for its niche. LogisticCo had an impressive track record; with many well-known satisfied customers and operates in +40 locations across +15 countries.

The company had had a poor track record with implementing changes in the last few years. Top-down approaches to change had failed. The cascading communication approach had been very unsuccessful. Now, a new President had been brought in to get the company back on track.

The new President realized he needed to take ownership, and made successful change management a personal goal.

From his trusted peers in his business network, he had heard about a tool called Organizational Network Analysis that could help him move towards a bottom-up by identifying influencers amongst the employees and road blockers and decided to try out the approach.

Innovisor was engaged after a careful vendor selection that included a review of past clients, testimonials, and conversations on how to make the data actionable. Innovisor was his clear choice. He also liked the fact that they would be able to tell him, how LogisticCo benchmarked versus other companies in terms of network structures.

Innovisor worked with LogisticCo to identify the most influential employees – nicknamed the Change Ambassadors – at every level across the company. The approach was to use electronic peer-to-peer assessments to map influence flows and select Change Ambassadors using Innovisor’s exclusive algorithm to identify the right people to engage.

„The results arrived after four weeks“

The results arrived after only four weeks.

Innovisor then together with its consulting partner helped design the framework for engaging and mobilizing the informal networks with high attention to the Change Ambassadors, ensuring expectations were aligned and social elements considered. The framework included a concept called “Fireside Chats”, which was rolled out to facilitate trustful conversations between the Change Ambassadors and the President. It also included an informal governance structure for engaging with Change Ambassadors and a virtual communications and discussions network. The first focus area was the major negativity around change activities that came right from the core of the company (See circle on the illustration).

Over the next 12 months, the Change Ambassadors became an integral part of the LogisticCo change architecture; they vetted the results of the Employee Barometer, calibrated messages needed for engagement, and gave early feedback on planned initiatives.

Every single time the Change Ambassadors were engaged they received feedback on how their input and insights were used. Paying this kind of attention to the Change Ambassadors really paid off in terms of motivation, buy-in, and the building of trust.

Having Change Ambassadors has really paid off in terms of motivation and buy-in. Two drivers of change management that the President of LogisticCo considered key.

At the time of writing – almost 18 months on – the Change Ambassadors continue to show their value and importance to LogisticCo. They are now being included by default as key stakeholders in any major change initiative.