Transitions and turnarounds

Tommy Ng
Senior VP, Corporate Services, SMRT Corporation

Times of change can be difficult, bringing about uncertainty, but they are also an opportunity to bring out the best in your employees.

Suggested strategies for leading your staff through change include:

• Prioritising open two-way communication: The bottom line is NOT to keep staff in the dark. Get employees’ buy-in and support by explaining the reasoning behind the need for any change. At the end of the day, the employees need to feel that each and every one of them counts.
• Sharing the expected outcome: It is also important to establish the desired outcome of any change. With a fixed end goal, managers can rally and motivate the troops in achieving that common goal.
• Encouraging staff involvement: Whenever possible, include employees in the transition process. Individuals who are given the opportunity to help shape developments bring in fresh perspectives and are more likely to support what lies ahead.

Shee Tse Koon
Chief Information Officer, Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore

Adopt a “change management” mindset and a flexible approach when steering transitions. This should begin with a definition of the new vision and what will the change “look like”. It is important to explain the motivation behind the change and the benefits that it will bring to the individual, the team, as and to the organisation to gain employees’ support.

At Standard Chartered, our organisational framework of playing to strengths and strong employee engagement, coupled with our clear strategy has helped our business leaders manage through transitions.

Constant and open communication is a must. We’ve found appointing key players as champions to be an effective way of encouraging staff involvement.

Employees can shape developments, offer insights and solutions. We also finalise objectives and timelines, and put in place rigorous change management governance mechanisms to track progress.

Lastly, it is important to keep employees focused on their core responsibilities, and to make time to create a positive work environment and celebrate milestone successes.

Azran Osman-Rani
CEO, AirAsia X

How do we do it at AirAsia X – starting up a new low-cost, long-haul airline when the global aviation industry says this cannot be done? And then turning profitable in 2009 against the red tide of record airline losses? Well, there are just a few simple ingredients.

• Have a clear high-level sense of purpose: We get excited at creating opportunities for people to travel to faraway destinations for the first time in their lives;
• A healthy dose of “us-against-them” paranoia: Many want to see us fail, from incumbent legacy carriers to protectionist governments and monopolistic suppliers. We get a high proving them wrong;
• Simple, quantifiable objectives: These give everyone a goal to work towards and measure progress against; and
• An energetic, fun and open culture: Fostered by leadership that genuinely reaches out to everyone and is easily accessible for open dialogue and engagement.