Toco Warranty is headquartered in California and opened an office in Colorado. As the Colorado Talent Development Manager, I noticed that new operational processes were initiated in California and communicated to Colorado, where they were received poorly.
I was spurred to action when Headquarters emailed Colorado employees about a new process for logging sales information in Salesforce. The change was sensitive because it impacted Sales employees’ compensation. Yet it was clear this was completely new to everyone in Colorado: Sales employees, Sales Supervisors, and Sales Managers came in my office throughout the day asking about the change. Since this was the first time I had heard about the change, I was not able to help them.
I had been studying change management and knew that at some point we would need change management processes. This moment was my chance. I decided to develop a change management process, which I named Project Canary, to help our multi-state workforce roll out new processes.
The next time I was in Los Angeles, I met with my boss, Brandon, who was the Sales Director and Talent Development Director. I outlined Project Canary on the whiteboard and Brandon and I talked through the process. After discussion, he said “canary the canary”: in other words, pilot the change management process using the change management process.
I invited Pauline, an Operations Manager who had a new process she was going to roll out, and several other Toco executives who worked in Los Angeles and Denver to be part of the pilot.
Key principles included:
- Identify Scope of Change
- Identify the scope, timeline, and training needed to support the change.
- Communicate training needs to the Talent Development team.
- Canary Group Feedback
- Ask Toco employees that are potentially impacted by the change to be part of the Canary Group. Consider representation from different locations, tenure, department, job level, etc.
- Propose the change to the Canary Group and ask the group for feedback.
- Depending on the feedback, the Process Owner may make edits to the proposed change.
- Develop the Story and Communication Strategy
- Craft the “story” of why we’re pursuing the change, which includes how one can be emotionally connected to the change and the facts: expectations, rewards, consequences, and final destination.
- Plan the communication strategy: identify the communication channels and message reinforcement.
- Determine how to cascade the message of the change to employees. For example, managers should hear about the change before their employees, that way managers will know how to support their employees.
- Execute Communication Strategy
- Execute the communication strategy based on the plan determined in Step 3.
- Accountability Check
- Process Owner checks in with business leaders to ensure that the new process is being consistently implemented.
When Pauline and other California leaders used Project Canary to roll out changes, we experienced three outcomes. First, we saved work hours as employees were clear on the change. Second, Denver employees felt more included and part of the process. Third, process owners felt more supported and faced less resistance.
Stephanie Lang 