FastNFurious Cars: Change Management Plan

Problem Definition

FastNFurious is a sports car manufacturer based in Germany. With the ban on petrol and diesel cars imminent in EU, they are trying to get ahead of the game and switch to electric sport cars production. Recently they announced a 3-year digital transformation programme to overhaul their procurement systems. They have a huge base of global suppliers who provide parts and components for the final product (their sports car). The programme is now entering its second year and the Programme Head is getting very nervous about the poor adoption of the new procurement system. He is getting reports that employees are sticking to old ways of working and using emails/phone for ad-hoc engagement with the suppliers. The programme will miss its savings and transformation objectives if this continues.

How can the Programme Head create a change management and adoption project to complement the ongoing transformation programme? He wants to keep the consistent digital theme.

Comments

• This is a candidate-led qualitative case with no quantitative calculations. The interviewer should provide minimal help to the interviewee
• Points marked with a * could be highlighted by exceptional interviewees
• Interviewee can assume the year is 2019 and ignore COVID-19 impact
• The new procurement system is used by FastNFurious's Leadership Team, Financial Team, Procurement Team, General Managers, Factory Staff and External Suppliers
• The Transformation Programme spans the globe, i.e. every major geography will see new ways of working
• The Programme Head has identified a central Change Project team of 5 people already who are ready to start

Short Solution

Solution

Interviewee must pick out following key aspects to correctly create the changement management project. Interviewer should help the interviewee in case they miss these and start thinking of the structure and solution straightaway:

1. There are two years left in the Transformation Programme, so time is short
2. Transformation Programme is global, so local language and cultural aspects must be taken into account
3. Users of the new procurement system span from Leadership to Factory workers to external suppliers, so no one can be ignored
4. Digital theme, i.e. leveraging technology & tools to drive value quickly

Once above are correctly identified, a change management project can created as follows.

Change Management Plan

• ALIGN (2 months)
  • Messaging: These needs to in line with the overall programme objectives and wider goal of sustainability (Ban on petrol & diisel cars soon)
  • Leadership: Messages and strategy to share with leadership to ensure top-down sponsorship of the change program
  • Other internal stakeholders : Definition of key internal stakeholders for the project, their roles, how they will be engaged, and how highly they are impacted by the change
  • External stakeholders: Understanding who from external suppliers to engage and how highly they are impacted by the change
• ENGAGE (regular)
  • Execute the customised messaging created and signed off in ALIGN phase via emails/company webinars/in-person workshops etc. *Provide local language & cultural adaptations as required
  • *Ensure regular company wide engagement from Leadership via biweekly webinars
  • *Gather feedback from the stakeholders on the impact of the change and provide clarifications and/or mitigation plan
• TRAIN (6 months)
  • Appoint Change & Training Champions (ambassador of the project) in each country/geoprahy- someone who knows FastNFurious well and has influence on leadership. These champions will also interface with the external suppliers
  • Support delivery of training on the new processes, ways of working and the new system via instructor-led webinars/self online learning/in person workshops. *The instructors can be experts from other projects of the Transformation Programme (Process, Systems etc) while the Change team can help create the training content, videos etc. Change team can create experiential learning opportunities such as hack-a-thons, team competitions, and gamification (Digital Theme)
  • *Provide local language & cultural adaptations as required
• MEASURE (after training is completed)
  • Measure impact of change of the new capabilities via these metrics : Employee Engagement, Customer Satisfaction, Productivity & Profitability
• IMPROVE (regular)
  • Uplift employee & supplier experience based on feedback
  • *Reinforce changes and new behaviours and go back to Align to start the process again till the Transformation Programme comes to an end

CONCLUSION

Interviewee must identify that FastNFurious doesn't have any change management as part of the Transformation Programme. Hence adoption is poor and the programme is failing.

Alignment with other projects of the Transformation Programme

Exceptional interviewees will figure out that Change Management project cannot work in isolation and will require regular engagement and alignment with the other projects e.g. process roll out or the systems testing projects. They will need to know the exact phases to be able to excute the messages or training at the right time and not comes across as misaligned.