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The Life and Times of a Change Manager
(Part 2c)
Contributed by Ron Leeman on October 15, 2015 in Organization, Change, & HR
Editor’s Note: Ron Leeman is a world-recognized Change Manager and author of
several Change, Process, and Project training guides on Flevy. He has decided to write a
series of articles that chronicle his personal “change” journey. This is the
second installment (part). You can read beginning from the first piece here. You can also
learn more about Ron and his approach to Change in our recent interview with him.
* * * *
This is the last post about my Abbey National days. I will specifically deal with two major
projects that I was responsible for and also the reasons why I left Abbey National which is
related to one of these.
Financial Advisers Activity Review
This project came about because overall figures for product sales had been showing a
downward trend for the past 3-years and there was a suspicion by the Sales Director that
Financial Advisors were not spending enough time selling. Without any real evidence of this,
I was tasked with undertaking a comprehensive review of their activities. It was agreed that
the project would be conducted in 5 separate phases:
1. Fact Finding. o Stage 1 – to identify key Financial Adviser activities.
o Stage 2 – to gain an overview of the amount of time spent on these key
activities and to map their key processes.
2. Task Analysis. To review the information and determine where the inefficiencies
were.
3. Process Re-design. To design a process that would drive down non-Sales activities
thereby creating time to concentrate on Sales activities.
4. Pilot Implementation. To pilot the new processes to determine if they had the
desired effect.
5. Full Roll-out. If the pilot was successful then to roll-out the redesigned processes to
all Branches.
Between each phase, there would be a “quality gate” to ensure that the findings and
recommendations were acceptable to move to the next phase.
Fact Finding
Stage 1
To establish the key activities undertaken by Financial
Advisers, I designed a questionnaire and undertook
structured interviews at a number of selected Branches.
Following a review of questionnaire answers, the
following were the key activities that were decided
should be measured:
Sales activity e.g. Face-to-face customer
interviews.
Lead Generation activity.
Prospecting activity.
Sales Administration activity.
Non Sales activities e.g. general Branch meetings.
Other e.g. Training.
Stage 2
Having determined the key activities, I then needed to establish the average amount of time
spent on each of them through a data collection exercise. However, before embarking on this,
I first of all had to decide which Branches I wanted to visit. This was done using the
following information:
Sales figures for all Branches for the past 6-months.
Identification of Branches that had a good, average and a not so good record of
product sales.
From the above select a cross-section of Branches which were the ones to become
part of the data collection exercise.
Having done that out came my map of the UK to plan my country-wide campaign.
Anecdote time… Of course, my primary consideration was that I get to the right number &
mix of Branches in order to ensure that the data I collected was representative. However a
secondary consideration (hum hum) was paying less tax. Sorry … come again? My company
car was regarded as a taxable benefit and there were three mileage tiers associated with that
e.g. 6,000/12,000/18,000 (not sure if that’s correct but you get my drift) and the higher the
mileage you traveled the less tax you had to pay. So my aim was to hit or surpass the 18,000
miles to ensure I paid minimal tax. I got there by the way… hah!
Anecdote time … talking of company cars (specifically the Mondeo) I clearly remember the
annual Abbey National Sports weekends at Loughborough University which was an excuse
for well-paid bankers to behave like hooligans for a couple of days. At one of these
weekends, one night someone, in their wisdom, decided they didn’t like my company car so
they smashed the glass sunroof and poured beer into the car. Many years later I found out that
it was the same individual who was found to have dishonestly appropriated a not insignificant
amount of money through the re-location process mentioned in my last post. Back to the
“judgement of my Process Improvement Manager” observation in my previous post.
The other thing I remember was that I was shot put champion for 5-years running – I
normally only had to take one put and then wait to see of anyone could get near me.
Normally they didn’t so I just sat and watched the proceedings whist smoking and downing a
few beers.
So, back to the project. I decided that the best way to measure activity was through a
technique called Activity Sampling (a statistical technique for determining the proportion of
time spent by workers in various defined categories of activity). Given the number of
Branches that were selected for data collection I implemented two Activity Sampling
approaches:
1. Self-Recording (recording of activities by the individual who is actually performing
them)… this involved designing a simple sheet of paper which contained the activities
down the left-hand side and random times of the day across the top. All the Financial
Adviser had to do was, at the pre-determined time, just put a tick against the activity
that they were undertaking. I can hear what you’re thinking now … Self Recording?
They will not tell the truth! Moving on to the second mechanism …
2. Direct Observation (recording activities of the individual by a third party through
observation) … a very similar approach to that of Self-Recording the only difference
being that I was doing the actual recording rather than the individual. Because of the
potential vagaries of Self-Recording this was also used as a “check & balance” to
determine the validity of the Self-Recorded data.
This two-pronged approach allowed me to gather a good representative sample of data. And
before you ask … YES … the Self-Recorded data and the data collected through Direct
Observation showed no significant variance on final analysis.
In addition to this I also undertook some high-level Process Mapping to record the key
processes and the interfaces and hand-offs between Counter Staff, Financial Advisers and
Sales Administration to add that additional perspective to the data collected.
Having gathered all of the necessary information it was now time to undertake my favourite
activity … the number-crunching. As you can imagine having all that self-recorded and
directly observed data on hundreds of sheets of paper I had to enter it all into a spreadsheet …
time for my favourite phrase … “mind-numbingly boring”.
Task Analysis
Having entered all the data into spreadsheets and done an amount of analysis the findings
showed that (as far as I can recall):
In effect, nearly half of a Financial Advisers time was spent on non-sales activity.
In addition, using the various processes I had mapped at the Branches I visited, it was evident
that there was no consistency in the way Financial Advisers undertook their Lead Generation
and Prospecting activities and clearly did not spend enough time on it. However some
Branches were far better than others which reflected in their sales figures.
On presenting this information to the Retail Sales Director, it confirmed his suspicions and I
was given the “green light” to go onto the next stage which was to focus on the following:
Reduce Non-Sales activity.
Increase Lead Generation activity.
Increase Prospecting activity.
This was based on the premise that by doing the above it would have the effect of increasing
Sales activity.
Process Re-design
I have to start by saying that I initially looked into using the system as part of this process e.g.
collecting initial customer data but because of the inflexibility of the systems used by the
Branch Counter staff this proved to be a non-starter.
Using the process maps from the Branches visited I set about identifying what I thought were
“best practices”. Whilst I initially focused on those Branches that had the better sales figures,
I also looked at practices from the other ranches that had an average or not so good record of
product sales and discovered a number of processes that I felt should be included in the
overall re-designed process.
So I set about designing a 3-part self-carbonating Lead Referral Slip to be used by Counter
Staff while interacting with customers undertaking counter transactions. On identifying
customers with a specific financial need e.g. Personal Loan, Cheque Account (for those with
Savings Accounts), Mortgage, Life Assurance etc the referral slip would be completed with
all relevant details required by the Financial Adviser. The three parts of the referral slip were
used as follows:
Slip 1 – retained by Counter Staff as a personal record and for use during their Annual
Appraisal and for regular updates with the Financial Adviser and at the end of each
week during planned meetings with the Financial Adviser to establish progress of
Leads and update this on their respective parts of the referral slip
Slip 2 – given to the Customer for reference purposes when attending a sales
interview.
Slip 3 – passed to the Financial Adviser for follow-up with the Customer to invite
them in for a sales interview and also to keep a record for their Annual Appraisal.
To get an initial feel for the relevance and workability of the solution I selected a few
Branches, previously visited, and talked them through the proposed new process. Feedback
was very positive.
The proposed process was presented to the Sales Director during a “quality gate” who again
gave the “green light” to move to a pilot stage.
All sounds simple but would it work in practice? Lets’ see shall we!
Pilot Implementation
So on to the pilot stage which consisted of four key phases:
1. Selection of Branches.
2. 3-part Lead Generation slips.
3. Design of training for the new processes.
4. Actual pilot implementation.
Selection of Branches
The selection of Branches had to be carefully thought through and the following were some
key considerations:
Those that had a good, average and a not so good record of product sales?
Those with whom I had already engaged with extensively throughout the previous
stages?
Big, small or large Branches?
Urban or City Branches?
Because I needed the pilot to be as representative as possible I decided to have a “mix and
match” of Branches encompassing all of the above. But as far as I can remember I was asked
to concentrate on Branches in the East of the UK for this purpose. I also needed to ensure that
we had benchmarks against which to measure the success or otherwise of the pilot e.g.:
Have relevant pre-pilot data available from Branches involved in the pilot
Select a number of Branches who would not be part of the pilot to use as benchmark
Branches against which to measure and compare the results of the pilot Branches.
3-Part Lead Generation Slips
Having selected the pilot Branches I now needed to estimate the number of 3-part Lead
Generation slips that were needed and have these printed which I had done through Abbey
National’s internal Printing Services.
Anecdote time … I can remember getting a phone call from the Head of Printing Services
saying that my “goods were on their way”. Well was I surprised when a guy came into the
Department with a hand trolley
containing goodness knows
how many cardboard boxes full
of printed Lead Generation
Slips. My first thought was had
I overestimated numbers. When
I actually calculated the
numbers of slips delivered
against my initial estimates for
each Branch it tallied …
phew!!!
Design of Training for the new Processes
This was clearly a key activity in the pilot process. All Branch staff involved with the new
processes had to be made aware of:
The rationale behind the re-designed processes.
Which other Branches were involved in the pilot.
How the new processes would actually work.
Details of the 3-part Lead Generation slip, who was involved and who should
complete what.
The benefits and expected outcomes.
This was actually quite a simple task because it was just a case of consolidating all the
information I had gathered during the preceding stages into a Training Pack.
Actual Pilot implementation
The pilot was scheduled for 3-months which was considered enough time for Branch staff to
get used to the new processes.
So out came my trusty map of the UK again to plan my campaign which simply involved
driving to ach of the pilot Branches to deliver both the training and the referral slips followed
by regular subsequent trips to input data from the referral slips into a spreadsheet and
undertake analysis to determine results.
Having completed the 3-month pilot the results showed the following (again as far as I can
recall):
All in all, a very successful outcome!
Full Roll-out
The project took about 9-months from start to the end of the pilot. Because the Head of
Process Improvement felt that I had been involved in the project for too long I was given
another project and the full roll-out was assigned to someone else… something I could never
fully comprehend!
Anecdote time… at the end of the year, it was obviously appraisal time. My appraisal was
based on two projects, this one and one other which unfortunately I can’t remember the
details of. For the second project I reported directly into the Process Improvement Manager
rather than to my Line Manager. Due to the overwhelming success of the Financial Advisers
project I was given a Highly Effective rating by my Line Manager but for the subsequent 3-
months project I was given an Effective rating. As the Process Improvement Manager had the
final say I was given an overall Effective rating for the year! Whooaaaa wait a minute … so
75% of the year = Highly Effective and 25% of the year = Effective … so overall rating =
Effective? Huh … even my maths was not that bad!
So guess what … yep you guessed … I
submitted an appeal. Low and behold
after the appeals panel deliberated my
submission the overall Effective rating
was overturned into an overall Highly
Effective rating. YES, YES, YES! As
you have probably gathered from this
article the Process Improvement
Manager and I never really “hit it off”
and I suppose this was a kind of
vindication (again) for me.
When I said at the beginning “This is
the last post about my Abbey National
days” I lied (again) … LOL. Describing
this project has taken longer than I
thought so I have decided to finish this article here and I will use the next post to describe my
other major responsibility, that of Benchmarking, which, as I mentioned at the beginning of
this article, led to me to eventually leave Abbey National.
So, look out for Part 2d next… see you then.
About Ron Leeman
Ron Leeman has been involved in “change and process” work for more years than he
cares to remember. He has worked extensively across the UK, Europe, and globally--
and has an enviable track-record of delivering organisational change and process
initiatives across a wide cross section of industry sectors. In 2012, Ron was bestowed
with a “Change Leader of Tomorrow” award by the World HRD Congress “in recognition of my
remarkable progress in initiating changes enough for others in the same industry to follow my
example”. Ron is firm believer in knowledge transfer and now wants to share his vast knowledge with
those who are considering getting into or at various stages of “change” and/or “process” work or those
working on specific Projects wanting to gain practical insights into “how to” type situations. You can
connect with Ron Leeman on LinkedIn here, where you can view his 85+ Recommendations and in
excess of 800 Endorsements from clients and co-workers alike to give you an indication of the quality
of service that he has provided and can offer. Ron is also a document author on Flevy. Browse his
frameworks on Change Management, Process Analysis, and Program Management here:
http://flevy.com/seller/highwayofchange.
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