When the lights came on at the end of the storytelling session at the office of BT Global Services in India late last year, Jeffrey Ong felt a sense of gratification. He had seen the energy and positivity radiating from everyone’s faces. As the facilitator of the British telecommunications operator’s global organisational development (OD) intervention, Ong says: “The faces lit up. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was worth it.”

The same vibe was felt in Singapore a few days later. A business leader had finished his presentation on BT’s new operating model when someone among the more than 100 employees said: “Now I get it. For the past three months, I didn’t get it. But now I do.”

Ong, the head of organisation capability for BT Global Services in Asia Pacific, says: “When the organisation has gone through a lot of trials and tribulations and people support and understand the changes, it’s a good feeling.”

Two years ago, BT took a hit on its earnings and its stock price nosedived when it couldn’t cope with the rising cost of its business structure.

It also led to a layoff of up to 15,000 people after its financial results for the year to 31 March 2009 were announced. Times were tough for the telecommunications operator. An intervention was needed.

A cry for help

The organisational change team in the UK office led the charge for recovery. Pavica Krapljan-Barr, the global head of organisational change and engagement at BT Global Services, began working closely with the senior leadership team and an external OD partner.

Once the new business strategy and operating model was finalised, the senior management team and HR in the UK kick-started the large-scale global intervention by narrating stories in one-day sessions. The same format was repeated by the APAC leaders through the entire region. Ong says the session was divided into six chapters: “How we were before, how we stumbled, what’s happening now, how we can move on, what we need to do and what the future looks like.”

Each leader had to redefine the stories in their personal context. For example, in the chapter on pride, the business leaders in the UK focused on their National Health Service, which wasn’t relevant in Asia. So about 50 top leaders in APAC came together to collaborate on a series of local stories for the region. “You have to give a story which resonates with you so when you tell it, people feel it.”

One leader spoke of how BT was the only service provider still running during the Indonesian tsunami to help people trapped to talk to their loved ones.

“A lot of BT employees don’t realise the value we add to society because they don’t work directly with these people so we bring these stories to them,” Ong says. This was done without any help from the corporate communications team, “because the stories must come from the heart”.

Of course, Ong did face a challenge when setting the storytelling stage for his leadership team. “The leaders are great at doing business, but some of them fear going on stage to engage people.”

But Ong says the leaders overcame their stage fright because the main focus was for them to be authentic.

The before and after story

That is essentially the backbone of OD. But the business doesn’t have to be in trouble before gearing for a change. A thriving organisation needs to be a step ahead of its competitors if it wants to continue growing the business. Shaun Ruming, vice president of human resources and training for McDonald’s, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (APMEA), sees OD as “a planned organisation-wide effort to increase the organisation’s effectiveness and viability”.

McDonald’s has more than 450,000 employees in 8,000 restaurants, whether wholly owned, joint-ventured or franchised in 37 markets in APMEA.Ruming says focusing on business growth – organic and new – is the biggest change for McDonald’s.

The launch of initiatives such as McCafe and 24-hour delivery services in the past few years also require a different set of management skills.

Ruming says the leadership team has to start thinking about the work processes and the intellectual capital and capability needed to help drive the business over the next five years. “It’s about these 8,000 restaurants performing better, increasing their sales and employee productivity, commitment, engagement and satisfaction.”

Take China, the market expected to have the largest increase in the number of fast-food restaurants. Ruming asks: “How does an organisation evolve to be bigger, stronger, faster and better in the next two to three years, because it could have 1,500 restaurants and then 3,000 restaurants in five to seven years?”

It takes, after all, a different set of organisational competencies to run 3,000 restaurants than 1,000. What does that look like in terms of the organisational and business functions’ structure? What skills and people resources does an organisation need to execute that business plan? After working out the headcount needed, what are the competencies you have? What are the future competencies needed and what is the gap? What are the training and development programmes needed and what job experiences can you give employees to close the gap?

“You need to understand how to physically get that done,” Ruming says. “Unless we’ve got the talent, the business plan is just a plan.”

Mind the gap

The organisation then needs to look at its existing business to see how efficiently and effectively it is working – from the financial results, capability, structure, talent management processes and planning sessions. In fact, as part of the executive leadership team (ELT), Ruming had only just returned from a quarterly talent management presentation at McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago in May. He had presented the talent plans for APMEA for the next 12 months to his chief operating officer, Don Thompson.

“We are embarking on a strategic workforce planning process,” Ruming says. “We need to match the business needs of today and the business needs of tomorrow with the existing talent we have in the organisation and the future talent we need, and aligning these two together.”

But future talent planning wasn’t as integrated into the business discussions four or five years ago, as it is for McDonald’s now.

It was only six years ago when the fast-food company brought out the “plan to win” strategy: a framework comprising five aspects – people, place, product, promotion and price – that integrated talent management with business strategy.

Before the company became more disciplined in the planning process, it had 37 countries focused on 140 different things with the lack of alignment affecting its business results.

“We used the excuse that because we are so different, the countries really know best about what each should be doing,” Ruming says.

Once the learning process is in place, it is all about making tweaks to the overall plan.

“We try not to do too much because too much change too many times for too many people looks like we don’t really know where we are going,” he says. “Because we do it quarterly, people get used to the refinement.”

Yet, HR shouldn’t drive the OD process. At McDonald’s, the process has been driven by the business leaders, and not HR. “We are the subject matter experts if you like,” Ruming says.

“We map out the process, come up with the questions, design the meetings, pull the information together and facilitate the discussions, but the process is on the larger agenda of business strategy.”

A way of life

The fundamental purpose of an OD initiative is to align every resource across the entire organisation, says DM Arulraj, regional head of human resources for Standard Chartered Singapore and Southeast Asia.

Once everyone from senior leaders to entry-level employees are on board, it’s then creating an organisation that is constantly learning and growing, while adapting to the changing business and people’s needs. Oh, and also delivering value to stakeholders.

Arulraj and Ong say it is then no longer about an intervention, performance management or training. It’s a way of life.

“You can’t have a change management programme that takes three years to deliver. You need to be able to constantly tune it,” Arulraj says.

That requires the organisation to regularly articulate the overall strategy and goals clearly to everyone in the organisation, be it a business or a support function, and translating these conversations into daily key performance objectives. At Standard Chartered, its strategic intent of making sure everyone becomes customer-centric can be applied to all functions such as human resources, risk management, compliance and legal.

Moreover, it has been simplified in the form of a card no bigger than your regular credit card.

“This is what we are really all about,” Arulraj says, showing off the card which is in his wallet everyday.

The card has helped the bank successfully shift its focus on selling specific products in the past to moulding a singular purpose in everyone.

While it’s not compulsory for everyone to carry the card, Arulraj says it is a good reference for him anytime he is unsure of whether a new HR initiative would meet the bank’s business objectives.

It’s the same for hiring, training and other HR processes. “It’s all about meeting the objectives in the right frame of reference and that the organisation is running in the same direction.”

Adapting to changes is difficult, but it helps if there is a well-thought plan with good sponsorship from senior management.

Another way in which Standard Chartered shows how serious it is about aligning everyone’s way of thinking with its value system is through a rewards plan. Each individual has a scorecard which consists of two areas – achieving the objectives and how they meet them. The final ratings of both scores will affect their bonus.

Looking into the future

What do these senior HR leaders see for their organisations in the next three years, other than continuing and tweaking the existing talent plan in place?

Ruming foresees more change management support around vision development and the ability for organisations to achieve a new way of doing business. The fast-food company has started to understand more about the organisational structure for growing markets, ratio of employees to restaurant numbers, redesign of functional roles and new leadership support. “That’s where we are seeing the markets are asking us for.”

More importantly, leaders at McDonald’s are required to start thinking longer term in the macro environment, not just its business environment. “We are running workshops, focusing on building and leveraging talent, as well as innovation and strategic thinking.”

It’s also getting country leaders together to fast-track their thinking process by sharing insights and experiences so leaders can learn from each other’s mistakes.

It’s these OD practices that Ruming feels have led to McDonald’s becoming a better learning organisation.

“We learned a lot more from experience while developing new capabilities – not making the same mistakes twice and to be a little smarter in what we do and how we do it.”

Now that BT has moved from the previous ailing business model into the new customer-centric strategy successfully, Ong says the company is in the second phase of the global OD intervention. After allowing the stories to percolate in every employee, this September will see the telecommunications operator execute its strategy for the future as visualised by its employees in full. “It’s a business proposition through people,” Ong says.

It has become a daily to-do item for the HR team at Standard Chartered to design HR solutions that will support the bank’s customer-centric values from the start. But there is obviously room for improvement. “Are we perfect? I don’t think so. But are we intending to get better and better every day? The ability to get better every day is really the challenge,” Arulraj says.

Finally, Ruming warns HR practitioners to never try adopting any OD solution off the shelf. Instead, businesses should tailor a plan that addresses their specific needs and competencies required in a change process.