Lean Change at MYOB

Editor's Notes

• #5: Don’t dwell on this, but say that it’s important to touch on
• #6: Key points 2010 Cloud and increase in competition = agile. 5 years of building agile practice in Product and engineering Period of vertical growth through acquisition (eg into Enterprise business, payroll) supporting traditional SME customers. 800-1200 employees Now: Need to take this to the organisation as a whole, making us an adaptive organisation and helping us as we scale, attracting talent etc. 1700 employees by end of 2017. Over 40 PD crews (squads) across 5 locations --- Notes below are from culture day – reference only. 1991: We launched with a breakthrough easy-to-use accounting product for non-accountants Over the past few years we've been developing and enhancing a suite of cloud solutions. We can now help you manage your business anywhere, anytime – building smarter connections with your networks while working on and storing your business data securely in the cloud MYOB invests more than $40 million annually in research and development so we can find better ways to help you do business. Here are some of our most recent innovations: 1993: Our professional partner program launched – accountants, bookkeepers, certified consultants, developers, retailers and more, all to support business owners 1997: We expanded to include specialist accountant solutions – complete management solutions for accounting practices 1999: We employed our 400th team member 2004: We became the market leader for businesses and accountants in Australia and New Zealand 2005: Our offering expanded to include enterprise solutions – business management products for larger, more complex businesses (often with 20-200 employees) 2007: We expanded to offer a range of website management solutions for small and medium sized businesses 2009: We employed our 800th team member 2010: The pace of innovation picked up further in our development of cloud-enabled business management solutions and we launched our first cloud product 2012: We won the coveted 'Transformation Award' from Human Synergistics, recognising the constructive work place culture we had worked hard to evolve over the previous two years 2013: We were listed on the annual BRW Most Innovative Companies list 2013: We united with BankLink to offer an even wider range of range of cloud accounting solutions, to for accountants, book keepers and their clients, powered by the most accurate and secure bank feeds system in the market 2013: We employed our 1000th team member2014: We acquired HR and payroll solutions company PayGlobal, won an award for MYOB PayDirect at the Australian Mobile and App Awards, and launched our latest online POS solution, MYOB Kounta. BRW also named us the 7th Most Innovative Company in 2014 2015: We listed on the ASX as a publically listed company 2015: We acquired two payroll solutions companies IMS and ACE 2015: BRW named us in the top 10 Most Innovative Companies for 2015, Job Advisor named us in the top 20 for the Coolest Companies in Tech 2015 2016: We continue our transformation from long-standing software provider to an innovative cloud accounting solutions platform for small to mid-tier businesses; We are currently building the MYOB Platform to power our vision of a connected practice; We acquired another payroll solutions company, GreenTree to strengthen our position in the Enterprise segment; 2016: We opened our new Richmond tech hub for our 200+ engineering and development teams. The location and fitout are attracting the best new tech talent, in a part of Melbourne that is fast becoming a technology and innovation hub; We won the HRD employer of choice award for 2016
• #7: Lack of time for change. Slack over and above the day job not good
• #8: Don’t know if this is necessary. The talk isn’t about how we worked out where we were going, but maybe adds weight to the size of what we undertook.
• #9: Walk through this and remind the audience that the talk is not about the nature of what we did, but it provides good background – it shows that holistic change was required. It shows the change was not trivial, and validates that lean change is applicable at an organistion level
• #10: Tell the story of how we developed these – over time and in what order. If we could do it again – would we start form the top and work down? Not being 100% sure of objectives meant it had to emerge. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not having the vision and objectives around what we needed to do to get there probably constrained us a bit Comms and PR is an imperative
• #11: So we had started to think about how we would implement the change. We had what we thought were objectives and tasks and what we thought was a direction. We were advised to ‘choose/adopt’ a change management framework and find someone who had implemented change.
• #12: Kotter’s 8 step was an eye opener for us because while we felt we’d created urgency and a coalition, we were struggling with the vision and while we were desperate to create qiuck wins, we didn’t know what they should be. There was something missing.
• #13: When we looked at ADKAR, we thought that we had created a good AWARENESS, but DESIRE was problematic, because we couldn’t verbalise ‘why’ and and as a result, we couldn't pinpoint the knowledge people would need to help us with the change. Both Kotter and ADKAR were great sensible framework that made a lot of sense, but for our situation they just didn’t feel quite right. Sometting was missing
• #14: We even tried to frame with through other paradigms such as The Heroes Journey, we were struggling to Test, Allies and Enemies, but we didn’t know where the ‘inmost cave was’ Our realisation was that in change, just like in software development, we were trying to map a one size fits all framework to our change. We would never do that with our software development so why would we do it with a change framework? The reality is that just like any other framework/tool, we choose the bits that suit our situation. The need for formal CM is based on the prevailing view that the answer is simple, we know what it is so it is just a matter of execution
• #15: The clincher was when we thought about it from a Complexity theory perspective. Early discovery made us imagine that change was simple and the answer was known: the conversation was about ‘best practice’, process, documentation – it was even referred to as a project – indicating it had a finite end. A mandated top down driven change We realised we didn’t know what we needed to do; we needed a method to help us find out.
• #16: The right supports the original view of exec, we journeyed to the left. When we showed people this slide, everyone started to feel better!
• #17: Talk about how this picture supports the Complex zone of Cynefin (Probe Sense Act) but that also reflects evolution, but also based on where we are, how we best navigate to the next step. It indicated that it is OK to not know, and to take different paths and experiment.
• #19: What is lean change? Where did it come from? What is the lean change cycle? What are change experiments? What are some lean change principles?
• #20: Lean change is organisational change with an agile mindset. Focus on people over process, employ short feedback cycles. Think about goals and target conditions, not about detailed change plans. Don’t focus on changing a process, focus on the way people interact with one another. It’s one of the core agile values. It’s also a build-measure-learn approach to organisational change. Work toward MVCs – minimum viable changes. Validate before you go all in on implementation. That is, experiment your way to real change. Break the problem down. Build a learning and experiment backlog. Seek feedback early and frequently. We coach our teams to work this way all the time….so why do we treat organisational improvement any different? Perhaps talk about the weight of the word “transformation” – the analogy of stirring milk into coffee, not a road/journey
• #21: Lean Change Management, a book by Jason Little, takes principles and theories from multiple disciplines and schools of thought Toyota Kata, Lean Startup, Kotter and other traditional change management models, agile manifesto. Can we follow it all the way back to Francis Bacon in the 1600s who is the philosopher to whom we attribute the scientific method and empiricism.
• #23: What needs to change? What are the business drivers? What’s the urgency? Who will be impacted? Where do we want to get to? What’s our target state? Examples – infrequent software releases. Product prioritisation is a mess. Too much WIP. Low engagement. Many techniques for this – lean change canvas, interviews, surveys and retrospectives.
• #24: What needs to change? What are the business drivers? What’s the urgency? Who will be impacted? Where do we want to get to? What’s our target state? Examples – infrequent software releases. Product prioritisation is a mess. Too much WIP. Low engagement. Many techniques for this – lean change canvas, interviews, surveys and retrospectives.
• #25: Now that we know what needs to change and why, what are our options? Divergent thinking is key. Create a learning backlog. In his book, Jason Little frames option analysis with some key questions – are there low hanging fruit? Are there in flight changes already? Are we over saturating particular areas with changes? Consider change burn out when looking at options. Look at 3 options minimum. Some may be experiments, some may be more easily implemented quick wins (or Just Do Its) Examples – Different prioritisation techniques (cost of delay, games)
• #26: Now that we know what needs to change and why, what are our options? Divergent thinking is key. Create a learning backlog. In his book, Jason Little frames option analysis with some key questions – are there low hanging fruit? Are there in flight changes already? Are we over saturating particular areas with changes? Consider change burn out when looking at options. Look at 3 options minimum. Some may be experiments, some may be more easily implemented quick wins (or Just Do Its) Examples – Different prioritisation techniques (cost of delay, games)
• #27: Our insights and options are assumptions that we need to test. They are hypotheses that we will prove or disprove using change experiments.
• #28: But change experiments aren’t an exact science. We’re not mixing two chemicals together for a predictable outcome or reaction. We’re introducing elements of change and don’t know what results we’ll get. We need to react to these results in the best way we can. Experiments can help us be more proactive than reactive.
• #29: Prepare – what needs to be in place for this experiment to run? Who do we need to involve? Who do we need to communicate with? Are we aligned on the purpose? What are our success measures? Introduce – introduce the change, run the experiment. Be transparent and visualise progress. Review – what did we learn from the experiment? Measure. Did we succeed? If we failed, what did learn? Example – run an experiment on cost of delay on a single tribe’s backlog. Compare it to current prioritisation. Then experiment on different types of work within that tribe.
• #32: Even beyond implementation. Validate always!
• #33: Helps make change organic and less daunting. Helps to grow a culture of continuous improvement.
• #34: Just as agile isn’t scrum, lean change isn’t just a single framework or methodology
• #35: How did we use lean change at MYOB to help us address the business urgency outlined by Simon? We are going to focus on the HOW, not the WHAT. We believe every organisation is fundamentally unique, and the actual insights we gained have a reduced relevence to your organisation.
• #42: Inputs into purpose -> insights Amplify -> nemawashi
• #45: Self-selection is difficult
• #48: Talk about wall driving culture
• #51: You need to have a plan for how you take a successful change experiment and allow it to grow into something the org just does. How do you take something that, for example, a tribe is experimenting with and roll it out to every team in Engineering? This is something we aren’t doing well and we’ve reflected on some of the reasons why. Whilst you want your change experiments to have relatively small blast radius, but you need to share the outcomes as wide as possible. More importantly, the key attributes of experimentation still apply to any operational process or practice. The only difference between an MVC and operational change is scale. Use example of transparency – reports…constantly get feedback.
• #52: Focus. Autonomy. Trust and Transparency. Continuous improvement. Safety and Openness. No silver bullet. Build product communities around initiatives including all stakeholders needed to bring a product to the market Our primary measure of progress is products that are actively addressing our customer needs or problems Safety is a prerequisite. We welcome diverse perspectives and sincerely respect that everyone has a voice Focus! Maximise work not done through eliminating wasteful processes, activities and features (Don’t do shit we don’t need to do) Empower product communities and teams to make decisions ensuring decision-making doesn’t become a bottleneck Optimise for achieving customer outcomes not team utilisation We believe that the best outcomes are achieved by people who love their work
• #53: This will make your working groups often more difficult, there will be a stronger need to coach
• #57:  Not enough focus on communication channels beyond working groups Lack of consistent messaging (“brand”) End dates for working groups
• #58:  Executive buy in Business need for change Embrace of the unknown  Executive-driven steering committee becoming the focus Focusing on solution before exploring problem
• #59:  Small focus groups to explore the problem Healthy debate between philosophical points of view Pragmatic change agents  Prescribed roles Lack of facilitation in focus groups
• #60:  Experiments Visualisation Change canvases Learning (experiment) backlogs  Canvas as artefact over tool for alignment
• #61: Experiment culture - Exec level- Organic (eg dev lead CoP, demand driven training)- Talk about how experiment wall led to other groups running their own experiments Success – celebration, transparency, organisational restructure
• #62: So how do you know if Lean Change is right for you? Howe successful will you be? We have produced a self-assessment survey that will help you understand, as well as areas to work on to improve your chances of success. Some items are more important for different organizations, you might with them accordingly There might be more If Lean change is for you, We have included templates that you might want to use to get your own Lean change running