1. Business Challenge
The Engine Room was engaged by a large (province-wide) electrical distribution utility to support the implementation of new digital tools intended to modernize the way technical design was done across the utility. The client’s goal in modernizing their software tools included increasing technical design work productivity, quality, and accuracy. However, the risk associated with the change was the potential for a short, to medium-term drop in design technician productivity, output, and customer service at a time when customer demand across the utility was actually increasing.
The challenges associated with the digital transformation included onboarding large numbers of employees to new software tools and business processes in geographically distributed operations centers but also developing the capability to allow supervision and management to engage with their teams and effectively manage the transition process while maintaining commitments to customers and the provincial Regulators.
With previous IT projects, the client had encountered significant challenges in aligning their IT solutions with operational needs. Significantly, IT projects struggled with unclear ownership and accountability (particularly during the project and rollout phases), leading to project delays, inefficiencies, and resistance to new tools and processes.
Early in the engagement, the Engine Room encountered some of the same challenges that had affected previous IT projects, including:
- Lack of project ownership within the Operations group who would inherit the project when it was rolled out. That was made worse by the fact that operations leaders lacked visibility into the progress and decision-making of the IT project. In turn, that resulted in misalignment and distrust in the project team’s ability to meet operational needs.
- Operations leaders were not sufficiently informed/educated on the new IT systems and the implications of the transformation. That inadequate understanding caused a lack of confidence in Operations leaders who were being asked to lead their teams through the changes.
- Despite being hopeful about the new IT tools, there was a cultural resistance to change because so many previous IT project implementations had gone poorly. That meant that operations leaders faced skepticism and resistance from their teams when adopting the new technology and processes.
Given the client’s experience with previous digital transformations, the Engine Room was engaged to improve the outcomes of this digital transformation by defining the roles and responsibilities of operations leaders and, through leadership coaching and training, providing the Operations team with the skills required to lead the transformation process through to full adoption.
2. Actions Taken and Tools Used
To meet the goal of the engagement, including enabling the client to realize the value of their investment in the IT project, the Engine Room worked with the client on several complementary but distinct focus areas, including:
| Operations Ownership and Accountability Training and Coaching: The Engine Room provided structured training and tailored coaching to operations leaders on best practices related to Operations leaders taking ownership and responsibility for their IT systems, best practices in change management, and proactive operational performance management throughout the transformation. |
| Data Hygiene and Core System Usage: To enable a smoother transition to the new digital tools, the Engine Room worked with the client’s teams to prepare for the IT project going live by helping them clean up the existing core system data and processes. This was necessary because the team had fallen into an unhealthy situation when processes were not followed as intended, and bad data was allowed to accumulate in the old system. Unfortunately, that reinforced employees’ belief that IT system data could not be relied on. It would have also significantly complicated the step-over and go-live process if it had not been addressed. |
| Dashboard Development and Training: The Engine Room developed custom dashboards for Operations teams to monitor operational performance and data hygiene through the go-live period (and beyond). In previous IT projects, ‘reporting’ was often treated as an afterthought or something done to meet a corporate leadership requirement. In this case, the custom dashboards were designed to align with the needs of Operations staff and managers who needed to understand where they stood during the go-live process. As new dashboard tools were adopted, the Engine Room provided training to ensure that performance reporting was effectively utilized to track progress and empower managers and supervisors to step in and support employees or teams who were having difficulty and maintain customer commitments. |
