People, change, and resisting the flip of the Nabla

Change Management

It is accepted that it is people in a business who create value. But, sadly those same people are often forgotten during change programmes, which inadvertently erodes the value being sought from the change.

We believe businesses stand a better chance of realising a good return on their investments by minimising uncertainty. To do that, you need to resist the flip of the Nabla!

Before I get blocked by every digital content filter, let me explain.

At the top of the Nabla are your customers, clients, or service users (we will use ‘customers’ as short-hand for all these groups). These are the most important people for any business. If they are not happy at the point of engagement, you don’t have a valuable business. They, and only they, provide the value.
Next in the Nabla are your talented, motivated, and engaged team members who provide the experience for your customers at the point of engagement. They create the value.
Then we have your managers who provide the support, guidance and supervision to enable front-line team members to deliver well. Managers also ensure that all the supporting infrastructure (products, processes, guidance) is in place to enable the value to be delivered to customers. They enable the value to be created.
Towards the bottom of the Nabla are your executive leaders who provide vision, strategy, and direction. They seek value from customers.
And, finally at the bottom we have owners, shareholders, or funding stakeholders who provide money, advice, and guidance to the business to deliver value to its customers. They seek value from their investments. Customers are your value providers.

Value Creation Hierarchy

Graphic showing customers as most important people in business.

Nabla

/ ˈnæblə /

An inverted triangle, commonly used as an operator in mathematics.

It encapsulates the essence of change, direction, and magnitude.

Value flows from top to bottom

We see value realisation flowing in that order; from top to bottom. Value providers benefit from the skills and expertise of the value creators, who are supported by value enablers, who in totality deliver value to those seeking a return on their investment.

When businesses take on investment, it often comes with new pressures. Pressure to do more, do better, deliver faster and cut costs. This can result in an unplanned and, we could argue, misplaced focus on what is important. Executive and managerial attention gets pulled towards servicing the investment rather than servicing customers. The ‘gravitational pull’ of customers becomes secondary and there is a risk of flipping the Nabla.

Our advice is to resist this at all costs. Not because the investment isn’t important but because it is the team members delivering value to customers that will drive the return for the investors.

Why we should resist flipping the Nabla

What we observe is that from the point of investment, the flow of value realisation is often turned on its head.

When the pressure to do more, better, faster, and cheaper while simultaneously maintaining business as usual is pushed onto managers and team members without good change management support, they are distracted from their value creation activities.

Managers push pressure onto the front-line team members who often don’t understand why the changes are happening or what they need to do to support the change while continuing to create value for customers. They are often not sighted on all of the other changes going on around them.

Uncertainty about their future kicks in and distracts them from performing as they have done before, demotivates, and negatively impacts a previously positive culture.

Ultimately, your talented front-line team members either leave or are less productive.

Flipping the Nabla results in a zero-sum game where no-one wins.

Value Creation Hierarchy

Graphic showing how a shareholder first approach doesn't work.

How do we resist the flip?

Enlightened self-interest

Those seeking to benefit from the investment focus more on the interests of the value providers, value creators, and value enablers than their own. Ultimately, their own interests will be met by thinking first about the interests of others.

Stay laser-focused on the prize – your customers

The need for customers to see value in what you do does not change because there is new investment. They don’t really care about the ROI for investors or the personal wealth of executive team members.

Minimise uncertainty

Recognise that change causes uncertainty for team members and managers. You need to help them understand the change. You need to understand the challenges they are experiencing and support them to build capability, capacity, and confidence to do what you are now asking them to do. You need to validate them as the value creators that they are. Change delivers value, but it isn’t easy. And change is delivered by people not by the mere existence of visions or strategies. If you want to minimise uncertainty and drive out value, you need to take a people-centred approach to change.

Need help or want to share success?

If you are struggling with change delivery or not realising the value from your investment or are absolutely knocking it out the park and just want to boast about it, contact us.

Contact Mark Bell & Lesley Fordyce