Find your champions
It can be a delicate balance to find the right number of people for a team that is embarking on a major change initiative.
“If you make the numbers too small, then it impacts the buy-in that you have,” Reeg says. “If you make the numbers too large, it complicates decision-making and gets into group analysis paralysis that can permeate something that’s complex.”
The best approach is to have one person established as a champion for each of the key components of your project.
“That person is going to draw on the expertise, knowledge and assistance from a wide variety of sources throughout the company,” Reeg says. “For success, you need to ensure they have the necessary support and bandwidth. If that’s not in place, their success is in jeopardy, as is your own.”
In other words, if you put somebody in charge of something, let that person do his or her job and lead it.
Look for people who have demonstrated in the past an ability to dissect a situation into manageable pieces and put it back together as a solution.
“This person went out and did something completely different and worked with the business to help start domestic processing in a country where we never had it before,” Reeg says. “That’s something that helps give MasterCard a foothold.”
Be approachable and be out interacting with your people to get firsthand insight as to who has what it takes to be a leader.
“You’re not going to be able to unearth potential leaders without interacting with them,” Reeg says. “I maintain a regular schedule of what we call skip-level meetings that allow me to get to know some of the more junior people. We also rotate individuals from front-line customer-facing roles back into the product development groups and vice versa. It works as a fertilizer for the organization and the individual.”
When you get to the point of selecting a champion who will lead some aspect of the change, you need to have a clear idea of what you want the project to accomplish.
“The change plan needs to be as specific as possible, with the goals made very clear and measurable,” Reeg says. “You need to paint the picture for people so they can envision what things will look like in the new, changed environment. Then, that plan needs to be broken down into specific tactical components that you can match up with the leaders to advocate and advance those mini-plans.”
It’s that detail that can help these champions succeed.
“For me, when I can see firsthand how the change is impacting someone or some process, I have a lot better appreciation for what’s trying to be accomplished,” Reeg says.
The bottom line is that making change happen is not easy.
“No one should be surprised about how hard it is to make a significant change,” Reeg says. “But if you leverage the right people and give them a process and capability to get stuff done, that will drive change through the organization. When people see it working for someone else and good things come of that, it really does start to be a trickle-down effect and get embedded into the DNA of that organization.”
How to reach: MasterCard Worldwide Global Technology and Operations, (636) 722-6100 or www.mastercard.com