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When Handelsbanken was about to undergo a major change, the 550 managers affected wanted help and training in leading that change. They also expressed a need to discuss the challenges they were facing with fellow managers.
Rebecka Thulin, competence and leadership developer at Handelsbanken, presented a suggestion to senior management – one that came to be very successful once implemented.
In this article, we dive into the details of what made the project so successful.
Members of senior management were consulted on the matter of who should be allowed to benefit from this competence development effort. Should it only be for certain managers? Select ambassadors?
Eventually, it was decided that the program should include all managers affected by the change, as well as some change leaders without any managerial duties – all in all, around 600 people.
With so many participants, the next big hurdle immediately became apparent: How do you deliver a program that feels specifically relevant to each individual in a project of this magnitude?
Even with such a large number of participants, Rebecka set out to deliver an experience that would somehow have a real impact on each and every individual. She decided to use Knowly’s platform to design a new kind of learning journey, where the format was built on self-facilitating groups.
-Change management – a learning journey
Start-up phase
SEP
Direction
Q&A
Learning group
OCT
Competence
Learning group
NOV
Competence
DEC
Learning group
JAN
Opportunity
Q&A
Motivation
FEB
Learning group
The aim of this article is to let the success of this project spread beyond Handelsbanken, and have the concept serve as an example of how other organizations can support managers who will be driving change – even with limited resources in the training department.
So, let’s get into the details: What made the project such a roaring success?
Just as the project was being launched, there was a survey among managers in the organization to see what kind of support they needed. That survey would then form the basis of senior management’s requirements.
Historically, the bank had only allowed select managers to participate in programs preparing the organization for major changes. Those managers were then meant to act as ambassadors, conveying what they’d learned to other managers.
This time, the senior management group of Handelsbanken Sweden wanted to take a different tack – one that the bank had never tried before. Given that so many of the managers had expressed a desire to learn more about change management, and thus become better equipped to lead the organization through a transformation phase, it was decided that all affected managers – not just some – should be involved in the project.
Besides improved change management competence, the managers also sought opportunities for experience exchange. While many did have local networks in place, managers struggled to connect and exchange experiences with other managers facing similar situations in other parts of the country. There simply wasn’t enough overlap with other offices or time to reach out to new people.
And so, the other central part of the project was to try to meet this demand as well – to create a forum where managers in similar roles, facing similar challenges, could support one another and hold each other accountable to the goals they had set for themselves.
Lär dig enkla men kraftfulla sätt att applicera nudging i dina lärprojekt, så att beteendeförändringen faktiskt blir av.
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The educational core of the project was the DCOM framework, which is often mentioned together with OBM (Organizational Behavior Management) – another central theme of the learning journey.
DIRECTION
COMPETENCE
OPPORTUNITY
MOTIVATION
Participants in the project were exposed to DCOM in two ways:
Besides DCOM, which formed the overall basis for the learning journey, Action Learning was used to structure the group sessions.
The essence of Action Learning is to let groups that are trying to achieve change meet regularly to discuss the difficulties that the participants are currently experiencing. Solutions brought forth by the group are then tried out in real-life situations, after which the group reconvenes, and this cycle can then be repeated as many times as the specific context calls for.
This method has proven to be very effective at developing both leadership and problem-solving skills for individuals and groups (Leonard and Marquardt, 2010). It’s about developing the ability to get something done rather than developing the ability to talk about getting something done.
The group members are given a structure to go from diagnosis and analysis to experiment, action and implementation. One reason that participants often enjoy this model is that we’re more likely to take action when we’ve talked to people who have supported us in doing so.
Knowledge acquisition in between group sessions took place primarily via pre-recorded lectures on different subjects identified in the needs assessment.
The lectures were published on the 1st of each month for the duration of the project. After that, the participants had about a month to watch the film and answer reflection questions. This meant that the participants could fit the learning process into their own daily routines, and made sure that the learning opportunities were spread out over a longer period of time.
The lectures, in chronological order:
Lecturers: Mikal Björkström, Making Change, licensed psychologist focusing on OBM.
What does a clear direction mean? How can I achieve that together with my target group?
Lecturer: Leonardo Johansson, Lion Competence, 15 years’ experience in sales and sales leadership at software, consultant and product companies.
Sales leadership: Developing how I lead sales and working more proactively
Lecturer: Rebecka Thulin, OBM-certified competence developer trained in coaching and motivational interviewing.
Part 1: Challenging conversations – before, during and after
Part 2: Motivational interviewing
Lecturer: Maria Göthe, Wise Consulting, HR, leadership and organizational development consultant
Del 1: Effective time management
Del 2: Routines for working efficiently and enabling self-leadership
Lecturer: Mikal Björkström, Making Change,licensed psychologist focusing on OBM.
How can I act to improve both short-term and long-term motivation for the co-workers’ behavioral shift?
The learning groups gave the managers…
Simply put, the learning groups basically checked every box for what needs to be in place in order for truly effective learning to take place.
There were many benefits to the learning groups, but perhaps the most important one was the opportunity presented by the way Handelsbanken chose to structure the groups.
Let’s take a step back.
The same groups could also have had a completely different format, where all participants were supposed to do the same exercises or take on the same case.
While that kind of format would have been better than a classic one-to-many approach, it would have missed out on the real key component of the whole program: That each participant brings their specific problems and gets support from group members who are very likely facing similar problems themselves.
The gist of it is that it wasn’t the learning groups per se that made the program so successful, but rather the way that the groups were organized.
Each group received detailed instructions regarding how to structure each session. These instructions varied from session to session as the group members got more and more opportunities to implement the theoretical concepts in practice, and thus also encountered more and more problems to discuss with the group.
In practice, the groups worked like this: Rebecka chose group constellations based on which managers were facing similar organizational challenges in this transitional phase. She then created group constellations in Knowly, with one group leader for each being assigned automatically.
Next, she added the instructions to the group in group assignments in Knowly. From there, she also created separate invitation messages to group leaders and group members. The group leaders received some extra information explaining the role that they’d been assigned and that this entailed some extra responsibilty in scheduling group sessions and then reporting back.
The tasks were scheduled and sent to the group members, who then had separate deadlines for booking and actually having the session. After the session, the group leader got a link to a Knowly interface where they could report how it went.
By letting the groups facilitate themselves, the same information could go out at the exact same time to all groups, and the groups could book their sessions right away. This had never been possible with an external facilitator.
Since everyone reported back through Knowly, there was no effort involved in compiling the reports from each group.
The participants reported back through Knowly’s statistics page. Here, Rebecka could quickly identify which groups had not yet booked any sessions and remind them, instead of getting stuck sifting through replies from the group leaders.
Pictured below is an example of the statistics interface shown after group sessions. Note that it does not include Handelsbanken’s data.
Being able to show that 93% of the groups booked sessions on their own, without any external facilitator, was beyond anything that Rebecka might have expected. Not only that – many participants also wrote about their great appreciation for how the experience exchange was structured in the learning groups.
Self-assessments were also performed before and after the program, showing that the participants – just as they had initially requested – felt more confident and that they had succeeded in managing change.
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