Description
In this episode, Valentijn de Leeuw, managing director at Kyoyu-Sha, highlights the key role of human factors in digital transformation within manufacturing companies. He explains that many initiatives fail not due to technology, but because of insufficient focus on communication, trust, and employee engagement, reminding us that transformation is above all a human challenge!
Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Voice of Industries.
Valentin, I'm very happy today to have you on the podcast Voice of Industries. And we will talk about all the human factors in the transformation of manufacturing companies, and particularly the human factors involved during the digital transformations. So first... Can you present yourself and give us more details about your company, Kyoyu Sha?
Yes, thank you very much, Mathieu. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. I'm very grateful for this opportunity. Kyoyu Sha was born in Belgium almost 10 years ago, but it is really a copy-paste of a French organization that I founded like 20 years ago, which provides consulting. in a technical context and the consulting is training, management, leadership, training, coaching, training, communication, conflict management and it also involves coaching of managers and helping organizations change. So that's the activities that we do.
When we talk about digital transformation in manufacturing companies, We can observe, and I think you share this feeling, that only a few are succeeding in their transformation, despite the investments they are making for that. In your opinion, what are the reasons for this failure?
Well, let's start with the basis. If we look at the statistics of how people feel and behave in companies today, even without transformation, the situation is not very positive. There is only 30% of the workforce that is engaged, that is motivated, that is enthusiastic about what they do. So now we superimpose on that not very positive situation a change. And that change is usually implemented in terms of technology, but very often companies don't pay sufficient attention to other. aspects that are related to that change. And when we analyze digital transformation in an assignment I had a few years ago, we came to the conclusion that there is at least 10 factors other than technology that are involved if you implement digital transformation. And you can think of business processes, you can think of business models, you can think of competencies. You can think of teamwork, you can think of risk management. And of course, people resist. And if you look at the statistics, at least 50% of the digital transformation initiatives fails related to what we call resistance, which is people don't like it, people don't trust you, or people don't understand. That is the very short definition of resistance. And so, you know, we have this bad situation. We impose our views on digital transformation. We don't take care of people. And now we're surprised it's not working. So those are the main reasons.
Can we summarize that all the challenge is to mobilize women and men in the organization to do this transformation? but Why is it so difficult? What are the challenges companies have to overcome to mobilize their team to do these transformations?
I personally don't think it is so difficult. I think we just need to change a little bit our beliefs. I have always thought it had to do with old beliefs from old times, maybe from decades or maybe from 100 years ago, that sort of freezes the relationship between workers and management. Another is sort of, Dr. Jung would call that a cultural complex, which is a psychological phenomenon of groups that leads its own life. It becomes sort of independent of people and it continues to live on. And basically it includes beliefs and emotions and ideas and concepts and images. And so one of those images is we need to impose. what we want from people. I think that is the wrong belief. And today we see the science since 20 years has proven that this is a wrong belief and that other methods do work. And those methods are engaging people, talking with people, finding out what their challenges are, just listening to their concerns and taking those concerns into account and designing solutions with them and being capable to listen to them and be understanding and supportive. So that's the summary of what we need to do. And so it's not difficult. It is that we need to overcome this psychological phenomenon that makes that we stick into this old way of working.
So maybe what you mentioned is related to leadership and to management qualities of the organization. So the capabilities to be able to understand the needs of all the stakeholders in the organization and to motivate them. by understanding these different stakeholders. So if we talk about leadership and management, what can make the difference on that side?
The leadership skills include a few key things. One of the key things that we need is that managers speak in a respectful and conscious manner with people, anticipating what their reactions may be. Asking and making sure they're being understood and also asking questions to make sure that they understand their people. But that's a key. So communication is a key aspect. Another key aspect is creating a no-blame environment. In a no-blame environment, it's allowed to make mistakes. I think we see this popping up recently in some successful digital transformation. projects where managers say, well, you know, we'll try out some things. If it doesn't work, that's okay. We learn from it and we'll try again with something else. So that no blame environment makes that people will speak up if stuff doesn't work. And that makes it the company has the opportunity to react quickly, to repair quickly, to reduce the damage. So no blame environment is very positive for creating an open dialogue between people and management. So that's, I think, very key. And that learning aspect is another aspect. So we need to learn from our mistakes, but we also need to provide opportunities for people to develop themselves, to get stimulated by new things, new material, new responsibilities, new challenges. That's also very important. So those are a few key things about leadership. And so leadership is something that needs to be taught and learned and exercised. And once people have those skills, then suddenly the relationships with the workers improve incredibly and the openness of the communication as well.
But what you say, I will say about leadership can be applied for other things that digital transformation and will have a beneficial impact on many other aspects of the organization.
It's absolutely true. Yes, indeed. So I believe we need to apply leadership, whatever the circumstances. But as companies change anyway, you know, there is always changes. There is legal changes, regulations, new products, takeovers. There is always changes and some of those changes are digital and other changes are different, but there is always changes. So we always need to apply leadership and always need to get those relations with the people. fluid and positive and supportive.
And do you see any other ingredients that are required to succeed in such kind of transformations?
What I used myself as a manager and what I found extremely powerful is coaching. I sort of naturally discovered coaching because I had a team that was distributed over Europe and so I couldn't meet with them very easily. The only thing I could do with them is call them. At the time, we didn't have teams yet, so you didn't see each other. I could just speak with them. And the only option I had to figure out what was going on, how well things were going, was asking them questions. And asking questions is really the key aspect of coaching. So through asking questions, I was able not only to figure out what was going on, but also to draw their attention to those points that required attention and that made them change their mind, made them change their focus and motivated them to implement things differently. So coaching is extremely powerful in the context of leadership, but also in the context of teams and of digital transformation.
So you mentioned coaching. Is there any other aspect you see companies can work on to increase the success rate of their transformation?
Yes, there are a few other things to mention. So let's get back for a moment to leadership and coaching. I briefly mentioned, I think, at the beginning of this podcast that the situation in the workforce is not very positive. So motivation and engagement is low, but we have also health issues. There are mental health issues in the workforce and it's getting actually worse and worse. There is a lot of stress, burnout, anxiety, in some countries loneliness. And the estimations are that 30% of the losses of efficiency and revenues of company are related to chronic conditions, to chronic health conditions. And stress and burnout are one of the most important ones. So I think that leadership, that different attitude with respect to people, will make a difference also in health and well-being. It means that we'll be more attentive to how people feel, how people function, and we'll also be able to help people developing healthy habits. Like very simple things, taking just a minute every hour to walk around and breathe. or to provide opportunities to do sports. All those things can help creating a more healthy environment. Good, so with, let's say, a more favourable situation at work and better relationships, now if we want to tackle digital transformation, there is a key ingredient which is to engage with people about that change. And I call that co-design, co-development and co-implementation. We have seen also in the literature, and it has proven to work very well, that in engaging with people about the change and developing with them what we want to change and how we want to change it, creates buy-in, creates adoption, because people start owning the solution. We create it with them, and so it's also their solution. And therefore the implementation works much better. There are a few key methodologies. One is called human-centered design, which is designing with people. And the other one is positive change, which is very similar to coaching, but it is at an organizational level.
You started to mention solutions. So solutions are quite a specificity for digital transformation. So you just mentioned some specific aspects you need to take care when engaging in such transformation and particularly center the design of the solution around people and their use case and their usage. Do you see any other things specific to digital transformation and particularly on the way to select and implement solutions in the organization?
Well, if I say solution, then I mean it in a very broad way. I think also the The competencies and the business processes are part of the solution. So I see that in a very broad way. But of course, it's also the parameterization of the maybe a high tech solution could be also part of the story. I think teamwork and competencies are the other components that we haven't talked about yet. So in change, we will need other competencies. It means that, again, in dialogue with people, thinking and discussing about objectives we want to meet in the near term, we can define what new needed competencies could be and how we could work in getting towards those. So to me, that is competence and performance management. It's part of performance management where we also define the elements that we need to get to successful performance.
And do you see any specific competencies that needs to be developed in a current organization to be able to embrace these digital transformations?
Of course, many trades, many disciplines will need some additional IT competencies in addition to their mechanical, electronical, whatever engineering or scientific or whatever activity they have. And that may be difficult for some people. So I think there are some IT competencies to acquire. But I think that the main priority should be the emotional and social competencies. This used to be called soft skills. You may remember that term. Today, we don't talk about soft skills anymore because there's nothing soft about it. We know the hard stuff.
It's more hard to acquire, in fact, not so soft.
Yeah, indeed, it's hard to acquire, but there is hard science behind it that explains it all and also explains how to do it. And also explains... that improving those social and emotional competencies lead to superior business performance. Today, there is a very clear body of research that demonstrates how well that works for companies.
And if we talk about what you do at QYUSHA, what kind of methodology or do you support companies to go through these transformations?
If I have the chance, it's not always the ideal case, but if I have a chance, I would propose a mix of all of this. So I would propose a change track to a change. Let me give you a real life example. I mean, I'm working with a large organization who have an IT department. That IT department wants to become a service oriented organization. So they want... to develop a service catalog and provide that to their users and make sure that the users get value from those services and try to improve the impact that they make on the organization. And that's a real culture change because that organization is absolutely not used to that. Neither the IT nor the business. Okay, so we set up a technical project which has to do with setting up the catalog and defining what that catalog is and defining what the benefits are and so on. And in parallel, we have a change project. And the change project is about engaging with the users and getting their opinion about this change and brainstorming opportunities with them, what advantages could be, what benefits could be for them by using those services. And I will start with the pilot. So we'll take one particular. case, one particular service, and we'll implement that together with an organization or part of the organization that is keen on testing it. And so we do the technical track, but we also do the change track. So we keep engaging with people in a little bit more intense way than we usually do. And we keep probing if they receive the value, if the relationship is what they expect from it. And we keep... also steering towards an optimum value and an optimum relationship. And once we have done this pilot, we will extend to a next series of services and do the same thing and have business relationship managers from IT who second that process and who keep in contact with their users to make sure that they get what they need. So it's really adding a change track to a technical project.
But I'm very happy you mentioned an example such as this one, because on our side, what we see in companies that are succeeding in their transformation is they are really this transformation in the way the operations works with the IT department. And this is, I think, a really important move to be able to sustain and support this kind of transformation. I think we shared many, many aspects of transformation in organization. Valentin, do you have any other aspects you want to share before concluding this podcast?
What I would recommend listeners to listen to is another podcast that you made not very long ago with Frédéric from Accents. And I think he gives also a very practical example of... how you can succeed digital transformation in a global organization with cultural challenges and challenges for change. And I think in a very human-oriented way, but very practical and successful on the business level. So I think it's an excellent example. And I would recommend people to listen to that podcast.
Thank you, Valentin, for the pleasure to exchange with you about these key aspects of... digital transformation, which is to succeed in doing the transformation and mainly to be able to mobilize people in this transformation.
Thank you very much, Mathieu. It was a great meeting. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Valentin.
Description
In this episode, Valentijn de Leeuw, managing director at Kyoyu-Sha, highlights the key role of human factors in digital transformation within manufacturing companies. He explains that many initiatives fail not due to technology, but because of insufficient focus on communication, trust, and employee engagement, reminding us that transformation is above all a human challenge!
Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Voice of Industries.
Valentin, I'm very happy today to have you on the podcast Voice of Industries. And we will talk about all the human factors in the transformation of manufacturing companies, and particularly the human factors involved during the digital transformations. So first... Can you present yourself and give us more details about your company, Kyoyu Sha?
Yes, thank you very much, Mathieu. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. I'm very grateful for this opportunity. Kyoyu Sha was born in Belgium almost 10 years ago, but it is really a copy-paste of a French organization that I founded like 20 years ago, which provides consulting. in a technical context and the consulting is training, management, leadership, training, coaching, training, communication, conflict management and it also involves coaching of managers and helping organizations change. So that's the activities that we do.
When we talk about digital transformation in manufacturing companies, We can observe, and I think you share this feeling, that only a few are succeeding in their transformation, despite the investments they are making for that. In your opinion, what are the reasons for this failure?
Well, let's start with the basis. If we look at the statistics of how people feel and behave in companies today, even without transformation, the situation is not very positive. There is only 30% of the workforce that is engaged, that is motivated, that is enthusiastic about what they do. So now we superimpose on that not very positive situation a change. And that change is usually implemented in terms of technology, but very often companies don't pay sufficient attention to other. aspects that are related to that change. And when we analyze digital transformation in an assignment I had a few years ago, we came to the conclusion that there is at least 10 factors other than technology that are involved if you implement digital transformation. And you can think of business processes, you can think of business models, you can think of competencies. You can think of teamwork, you can think of risk management. And of course, people resist. And if you look at the statistics, at least 50% of the digital transformation initiatives fails related to what we call resistance, which is people don't like it, people don't trust you, or people don't understand. That is the very short definition of resistance. And so, you know, we have this bad situation. We impose our views on digital transformation. We don't take care of people. And now we're surprised it's not working. So those are the main reasons.
Can we summarize that all the challenge is to mobilize women and men in the organization to do this transformation? but Why is it so difficult? What are the challenges companies have to overcome to mobilize their team to do these transformations?
I personally don't think it is so difficult. I think we just need to change a little bit our beliefs. I have always thought it had to do with old beliefs from old times, maybe from decades or maybe from 100 years ago, that sort of freezes the relationship between workers and management. Another is sort of, Dr. Jung would call that a cultural complex, which is a psychological phenomenon of groups that leads its own life. It becomes sort of independent of people and it continues to live on. And basically it includes beliefs and emotions and ideas and concepts and images. And so one of those images is we need to impose. what we want from people. I think that is the wrong belief. And today we see the science since 20 years has proven that this is a wrong belief and that other methods do work. And those methods are engaging people, talking with people, finding out what their challenges are, just listening to their concerns and taking those concerns into account and designing solutions with them and being capable to listen to them and be understanding and supportive. So that's the summary of what we need to do. And so it's not difficult. It is that we need to overcome this psychological phenomenon that makes that we stick into this old way of working.
So maybe what you mentioned is related to leadership and to management qualities of the organization. So the capabilities to be able to understand the needs of all the stakeholders in the organization and to motivate them. by understanding these different stakeholders. So if we talk about leadership and management, what can make the difference on that side?
The leadership skills include a few key things. One of the key things that we need is that managers speak in a respectful and conscious manner with people, anticipating what their reactions may be. Asking and making sure they're being understood and also asking questions to make sure that they understand their people. But that's a key. So communication is a key aspect. Another key aspect is creating a no-blame environment. In a no-blame environment, it's allowed to make mistakes. I think we see this popping up recently in some successful digital transformation. projects where managers say, well, you know, we'll try out some things. If it doesn't work, that's okay. We learn from it and we'll try again with something else. So that no blame environment makes that people will speak up if stuff doesn't work. And that makes it the company has the opportunity to react quickly, to repair quickly, to reduce the damage. So no blame environment is very positive for creating an open dialogue between people and management. So that's, I think, very key. And that learning aspect is another aspect. So we need to learn from our mistakes, but we also need to provide opportunities for people to develop themselves, to get stimulated by new things, new material, new responsibilities, new challenges. That's also very important. So those are a few key things about leadership. And so leadership is something that needs to be taught and learned and exercised. And once people have those skills, then suddenly the relationships with the workers improve incredibly and the openness of the communication as well.
But what you say, I will say about leadership can be applied for other things that digital transformation and will have a beneficial impact on many other aspects of the organization.
It's absolutely true. Yes, indeed. So I believe we need to apply leadership, whatever the circumstances. But as companies change anyway, you know, there is always changes. There is legal changes, regulations, new products, takeovers. There is always changes and some of those changes are digital and other changes are different, but there is always changes. So we always need to apply leadership and always need to get those relations with the people. fluid and positive and supportive.
And do you see any other ingredients that are required to succeed in such kind of transformations?
What I used myself as a manager and what I found extremely powerful is coaching. I sort of naturally discovered coaching because I had a team that was distributed over Europe and so I couldn't meet with them very easily. The only thing I could do with them is call them. At the time, we didn't have teams yet, so you didn't see each other. I could just speak with them. And the only option I had to figure out what was going on, how well things were going, was asking them questions. And asking questions is really the key aspect of coaching. So through asking questions, I was able not only to figure out what was going on, but also to draw their attention to those points that required attention and that made them change their mind, made them change their focus and motivated them to implement things differently. So coaching is extremely powerful in the context of leadership, but also in the context of teams and of digital transformation.
So you mentioned coaching. Is there any other aspect you see companies can work on to increase the success rate of their transformation?
Yes, there are a few other things to mention. So let's get back for a moment to leadership and coaching. I briefly mentioned, I think, at the beginning of this podcast that the situation in the workforce is not very positive. So motivation and engagement is low, but we have also health issues. There are mental health issues in the workforce and it's getting actually worse and worse. There is a lot of stress, burnout, anxiety, in some countries loneliness. And the estimations are that 30% of the losses of efficiency and revenues of company are related to chronic conditions, to chronic health conditions. And stress and burnout are one of the most important ones. So I think that leadership, that different attitude with respect to people, will make a difference also in health and well-being. It means that we'll be more attentive to how people feel, how people function, and we'll also be able to help people developing healthy habits. Like very simple things, taking just a minute every hour to walk around and breathe. or to provide opportunities to do sports. All those things can help creating a more healthy environment. Good, so with, let's say, a more favourable situation at work and better relationships, now if we want to tackle digital transformation, there is a key ingredient which is to engage with people about that change. And I call that co-design, co-development and co-implementation. We have seen also in the literature, and it has proven to work very well, that in engaging with people about the change and developing with them what we want to change and how we want to change it, creates buy-in, creates adoption, because people start owning the solution. We create it with them, and so it's also their solution. And therefore the implementation works much better. There are a few key methodologies. One is called human-centered design, which is designing with people. And the other one is positive change, which is very similar to coaching, but it is at an organizational level.
You started to mention solutions. So solutions are quite a specificity for digital transformation. So you just mentioned some specific aspects you need to take care when engaging in such transformation and particularly center the design of the solution around people and their use case and their usage. Do you see any other things specific to digital transformation and particularly on the way to select and implement solutions in the organization?
Well, if I say solution, then I mean it in a very broad way. I think also the The competencies and the business processes are part of the solution. So I see that in a very broad way. But of course, it's also the parameterization of the maybe a high tech solution could be also part of the story. I think teamwork and competencies are the other components that we haven't talked about yet. So in change, we will need other competencies. It means that, again, in dialogue with people, thinking and discussing about objectives we want to meet in the near term, we can define what new needed competencies could be and how we could work in getting towards those. So to me, that is competence and performance management. It's part of performance management where we also define the elements that we need to get to successful performance.
And do you see any specific competencies that needs to be developed in a current organization to be able to embrace these digital transformations?
Of course, many trades, many disciplines will need some additional IT competencies in addition to their mechanical, electronical, whatever engineering or scientific or whatever activity they have. And that may be difficult for some people. So I think there are some IT competencies to acquire. But I think that the main priority should be the emotional and social competencies. This used to be called soft skills. You may remember that term. Today, we don't talk about soft skills anymore because there's nothing soft about it. We know the hard stuff.
It's more hard to acquire, in fact, not so soft.
Yeah, indeed, it's hard to acquire, but there is hard science behind it that explains it all and also explains how to do it. And also explains... that improving those social and emotional competencies lead to superior business performance. Today, there is a very clear body of research that demonstrates how well that works for companies.
And if we talk about what you do at QYUSHA, what kind of methodology or do you support companies to go through these transformations?
If I have the chance, it's not always the ideal case, but if I have a chance, I would propose a mix of all of this. So I would propose a change track to a change. Let me give you a real life example. I mean, I'm working with a large organization who have an IT department. That IT department wants to become a service oriented organization. So they want... to develop a service catalog and provide that to their users and make sure that the users get value from those services and try to improve the impact that they make on the organization. And that's a real culture change because that organization is absolutely not used to that. Neither the IT nor the business. Okay, so we set up a technical project which has to do with setting up the catalog and defining what that catalog is and defining what the benefits are and so on. And in parallel, we have a change project. And the change project is about engaging with the users and getting their opinion about this change and brainstorming opportunities with them, what advantages could be, what benefits could be for them by using those services. And I will start with the pilot. So we'll take one particular. case, one particular service, and we'll implement that together with an organization or part of the organization that is keen on testing it. And so we do the technical track, but we also do the change track. So we keep engaging with people in a little bit more intense way than we usually do. And we keep probing if they receive the value, if the relationship is what they expect from it. And we keep... also steering towards an optimum value and an optimum relationship. And once we have done this pilot, we will extend to a next series of services and do the same thing and have business relationship managers from IT who second that process and who keep in contact with their users to make sure that they get what they need. So it's really adding a change track to a technical project.
But I'm very happy you mentioned an example such as this one, because on our side, what we see in companies that are succeeding in their transformation is they are really this transformation in the way the operations works with the IT department. And this is, I think, a really important move to be able to sustain and support this kind of transformation. I think we shared many, many aspects of transformation in organization. Valentin, do you have any other aspects you want to share before concluding this podcast?
What I would recommend listeners to listen to is another podcast that you made not very long ago with Frédéric from Accents. And I think he gives also a very practical example of... how you can succeed digital transformation in a global organization with cultural challenges and challenges for change. And I think in a very human-oriented way, but very practical and successful on the business level. So I think it's an excellent example. And I would recommend people to listen to that podcast.
Thank you, Valentin, for the pleasure to exchange with you about these key aspects of... digital transformation, which is to succeed in doing the transformation and mainly to be able to mobilize people in this transformation.
Thank you very much, Mathieu. It was a great meeting. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Valentin.
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Description
In this episode, Valentijn de Leeuw, managing director at Kyoyu-Sha, highlights the key role of human factors in digital transformation within manufacturing companies. He explains that many initiatives fail not due to technology, but because of insufficient focus on communication, trust, and employee engagement, reminding us that transformation is above all a human challenge!
Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
Voice of Industries.
Valentin, I'm very happy today to have you on the podcast Voice of Industries. And we will talk about all the human factors in the transformation of manufacturing companies, and particularly the human factors involved during the digital transformations. So first... Can you present yourself and give us more details about your company, Kyoyu Sha?
Yes, thank you very much, Mathieu. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. I'm very grateful for this opportunity. Kyoyu Sha was born in Belgium almost 10 years ago, but it is really a copy-paste of a French organization that I founded like 20 years ago, which provides consulting. in a technical context and the consulting is training, management, leadership, training, coaching, training, communication, conflict management and it also involves coaching of managers and helping organizations change. So that's the activities that we do.
When we talk about digital transformation in manufacturing companies, We can observe, and I think you share this feeling, that only a few are succeeding in their transformation, despite the investments they are making for that. In your opinion, what are the reasons for this failure?
Well, let's start with the basis. If we look at the statistics of how people feel and behave in companies today, even without transformation, the situation is not very positive. There is only 30% of the workforce that is engaged, that is motivated, that is enthusiastic about what they do. So now we superimpose on that not very positive situation a change. And that change is usually implemented in terms of technology, but very often companies don't pay sufficient attention to other. aspects that are related to that change. And when we analyze digital transformation in an assignment I had a few years ago, we came to the conclusion that there is at least 10 factors other than technology that are involved if you implement digital transformation. And you can think of business processes, you can think of business models, you can think of competencies. You can think of teamwork, you can think of risk management. And of course, people resist. And if you look at the statistics, at least 50% of the digital transformation initiatives fails related to what we call resistance, which is people don't like it, people don't trust you, or people don't understand. That is the very short definition of resistance. And so, you know, we have this bad situation. We impose our views on digital transformation. We don't take care of people. And now we're surprised it's not working. So those are the main reasons.
Can we summarize that all the challenge is to mobilize women and men in the organization to do this transformation? but Why is it so difficult? What are the challenges companies have to overcome to mobilize their team to do these transformations?
I personally don't think it is so difficult. I think we just need to change a little bit our beliefs. I have always thought it had to do with old beliefs from old times, maybe from decades or maybe from 100 years ago, that sort of freezes the relationship between workers and management. Another is sort of, Dr. Jung would call that a cultural complex, which is a psychological phenomenon of groups that leads its own life. It becomes sort of independent of people and it continues to live on. And basically it includes beliefs and emotions and ideas and concepts and images. And so one of those images is we need to impose. what we want from people. I think that is the wrong belief. And today we see the science since 20 years has proven that this is a wrong belief and that other methods do work. And those methods are engaging people, talking with people, finding out what their challenges are, just listening to their concerns and taking those concerns into account and designing solutions with them and being capable to listen to them and be understanding and supportive. So that's the summary of what we need to do. And so it's not difficult. It is that we need to overcome this psychological phenomenon that makes that we stick into this old way of working.
So maybe what you mentioned is related to leadership and to management qualities of the organization. So the capabilities to be able to understand the needs of all the stakeholders in the organization and to motivate them. by understanding these different stakeholders. So if we talk about leadership and management, what can make the difference on that side?
The leadership skills include a few key things. One of the key things that we need is that managers speak in a respectful and conscious manner with people, anticipating what their reactions may be. Asking and making sure they're being understood and also asking questions to make sure that they understand their people. But that's a key. So communication is a key aspect. Another key aspect is creating a no-blame environment. In a no-blame environment, it's allowed to make mistakes. I think we see this popping up recently in some successful digital transformation. projects where managers say, well, you know, we'll try out some things. If it doesn't work, that's okay. We learn from it and we'll try again with something else. So that no blame environment makes that people will speak up if stuff doesn't work. And that makes it the company has the opportunity to react quickly, to repair quickly, to reduce the damage. So no blame environment is very positive for creating an open dialogue between people and management. So that's, I think, very key. And that learning aspect is another aspect. So we need to learn from our mistakes, but we also need to provide opportunities for people to develop themselves, to get stimulated by new things, new material, new responsibilities, new challenges. That's also very important. So those are a few key things about leadership. And so leadership is something that needs to be taught and learned and exercised. And once people have those skills, then suddenly the relationships with the workers improve incredibly and the openness of the communication as well.
But what you say, I will say about leadership can be applied for other things that digital transformation and will have a beneficial impact on many other aspects of the organization.
It's absolutely true. Yes, indeed. So I believe we need to apply leadership, whatever the circumstances. But as companies change anyway, you know, there is always changes. There is legal changes, regulations, new products, takeovers. There is always changes and some of those changes are digital and other changes are different, but there is always changes. So we always need to apply leadership and always need to get those relations with the people. fluid and positive and supportive.
And do you see any other ingredients that are required to succeed in such kind of transformations?
What I used myself as a manager and what I found extremely powerful is coaching. I sort of naturally discovered coaching because I had a team that was distributed over Europe and so I couldn't meet with them very easily. The only thing I could do with them is call them. At the time, we didn't have teams yet, so you didn't see each other. I could just speak with them. And the only option I had to figure out what was going on, how well things were going, was asking them questions. And asking questions is really the key aspect of coaching. So through asking questions, I was able not only to figure out what was going on, but also to draw their attention to those points that required attention and that made them change their mind, made them change their focus and motivated them to implement things differently. So coaching is extremely powerful in the context of leadership, but also in the context of teams and of digital transformation.
So you mentioned coaching. Is there any other aspect you see companies can work on to increase the success rate of their transformation?
Yes, there are a few other things to mention. So let's get back for a moment to leadership and coaching. I briefly mentioned, I think, at the beginning of this podcast that the situation in the workforce is not very positive. So motivation and engagement is low, but we have also health issues. There are mental health issues in the workforce and it's getting actually worse and worse. There is a lot of stress, burnout, anxiety, in some countries loneliness. And the estimations are that 30% of the losses of efficiency and revenues of company are related to chronic conditions, to chronic health conditions. And stress and burnout are one of the most important ones. So I think that leadership, that different attitude with respect to people, will make a difference also in health and well-being. It means that we'll be more attentive to how people feel, how people function, and we'll also be able to help people developing healthy habits. Like very simple things, taking just a minute every hour to walk around and breathe. or to provide opportunities to do sports. All those things can help creating a more healthy environment. Good, so with, let's say, a more favourable situation at work and better relationships, now if we want to tackle digital transformation, there is a key ingredient which is to engage with people about that change. And I call that co-design, co-development and co-implementation. We have seen also in the literature, and it has proven to work very well, that in engaging with people about the change and developing with them what we want to change and how we want to change it, creates buy-in, creates adoption, because people start owning the solution. We create it with them, and so it's also their solution. And therefore the implementation works much better. There are a few key methodologies. One is called human-centered design, which is designing with people. And the other one is positive change, which is very similar to coaching, but it is at an organizational level.
You started to mention solutions. So solutions are quite a specificity for digital transformation. So you just mentioned some specific aspects you need to take care when engaging in such transformation and particularly center the design of the solution around people and their use case and their usage. Do you see any other things specific to digital transformation and particularly on the way to select and implement solutions in the organization?
Well, if I say solution, then I mean it in a very broad way. I think also the The competencies and the business processes are part of the solution. So I see that in a very broad way. But of course, it's also the parameterization of the maybe a high tech solution could be also part of the story. I think teamwork and competencies are the other components that we haven't talked about yet. So in change, we will need other competencies. It means that, again, in dialogue with people, thinking and discussing about objectives we want to meet in the near term, we can define what new needed competencies could be and how we could work in getting towards those. So to me, that is competence and performance management. It's part of performance management where we also define the elements that we need to get to successful performance.
And do you see any specific competencies that needs to be developed in a current organization to be able to embrace these digital transformations?
Of course, many trades, many disciplines will need some additional IT competencies in addition to their mechanical, electronical, whatever engineering or scientific or whatever activity they have. And that may be difficult for some people. So I think there are some IT competencies to acquire. But I think that the main priority should be the emotional and social competencies. This used to be called soft skills. You may remember that term. Today, we don't talk about soft skills anymore because there's nothing soft about it. We know the hard stuff.
It's more hard to acquire, in fact, not so soft.
Yeah, indeed, it's hard to acquire, but there is hard science behind it that explains it all and also explains how to do it. And also explains... that improving those social and emotional competencies lead to superior business performance. Today, there is a very clear body of research that demonstrates how well that works for companies.
And if we talk about what you do at QYUSHA, what kind of methodology or do you support companies to go through these transformations?
If I have the chance, it's not always the ideal case, but if I have a chance, I would propose a mix of all of this. So I would propose a change track to a change. Let me give you a real life example. I mean, I'm working with a large organization who have an IT department. That IT department wants to become a service oriented organization. So they want... to develop a service catalog and provide that to their users and make sure that the users get value from those services and try to improve the impact that they make on the organization. And that's a real culture change because that organization is absolutely not used to that. Neither the IT nor the business. Okay, so we set up a technical project which has to do with setting up the catalog and defining what that catalog is and defining what the benefits are and so on. And in parallel, we have a change project. And the change project is about engaging with the users and getting their opinion about this change and brainstorming opportunities with them, what advantages could be, what benefits could be for them by using those services. And I will start with the pilot. So we'll take one particular. case, one particular service, and we'll implement that together with an organization or part of the organization that is keen on testing it. And so we do the technical track, but we also do the change track. So we keep engaging with people in a little bit more intense way than we usually do. And we keep probing if they receive the value, if the relationship is what they expect from it. And we keep... also steering towards an optimum value and an optimum relationship. And once we have done this pilot, we will extend to a next series of services and do the same thing and have business relationship managers from IT who second that process and who keep in contact with their users to make sure that they get what they need. So it's really adding a change track to a technical project.
But I'm very happy you mentioned an example such as this one, because on our side, what we see in companies that are succeeding in their transformation is they are really this transformation in the way the operations works with the IT department. And this is, I think, a really important move to be able to sustain and support this kind of transformation. I think we shared many, many aspects of transformation in organization. Valentin, do you have any other aspects you want to share before concluding this podcast?
What I would recommend listeners to listen to is another podcast that you made not very long ago with Frédéric from Accents. And I think he gives also a very practical example of... how you can succeed digital transformation in a global organization with cultural challenges and challenges for change. And I think in a very human-oriented way, but very practical and successful on the business level. So I think it's an excellent example. And I would recommend people to listen to that podcast.
Thank you, Valentin, for the pleasure to exchange with you about these key aspects of... digital transformation, which is to succeed in doing the transformation and mainly to be able to mobilize people in this transformation.
Thank you very much, Mathieu. It was a great meeting. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Valentin.
Description
In this episode, Valentijn de Leeuw, managing director at Kyoyu-Sha, highlights the key role of human factors in digital transformation within manufacturing companies. He explains that many initiatives fail not due to technology, but because of insufficient focus on communication, trust, and employee engagement, reminding us that transformation is above all a human challenge!
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Transcription
Voice of Industries.
Valentin, I'm very happy today to have you on the podcast Voice of Industries. And we will talk about all the human factors in the transformation of manufacturing companies, and particularly the human factors involved during the digital transformations. So first... Can you present yourself and give us more details about your company, Kyoyu Sha?
Yes, thank you very much, Mathieu. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. I'm very grateful for this opportunity. Kyoyu Sha was born in Belgium almost 10 years ago, but it is really a copy-paste of a French organization that I founded like 20 years ago, which provides consulting. in a technical context and the consulting is training, management, leadership, training, coaching, training, communication, conflict management and it also involves coaching of managers and helping organizations change. So that's the activities that we do.
When we talk about digital transformation in manufacturing companies, We can observe, and I think you share this feeling, that only a few are succeeding in their transformation, despite the investments they are making for that. In your opinion, what are the reasons for this failure?
Well, let's start with the basis. If we look at the statistics of how people feel and behave in companies today, even without transformation, the situation is not very positive. There is only 30% of the workforce that is engaged, that is motivated, that is enthusiastic about what they do. So now we superimpose on that not very positive situation a change. And that change is usually implemented in terms of technology, but very often companies don't pay sufficient attention to other. aspects that are related to that change. And when we analyze digital transformation in an assignment I had a few years ago, we came to the conclusion that there is at least 10 factors other than technology that are involved if you implement digital transformation. And you can think of business processes, you can think of business models, you can think of competencies. You can think of teamwork, you can think of risk management. And of course, people resist. And if you look at the statistics, at least 50% of the digital transformation initiatives fails related to what we call resistance, which is people don't like it, people don't trust you, or people don't understand. That is the very short definition of resistance. And so, you know, we have this bad situation. We impose our views on digital transformation. We don't take care of people. And now we're surprised it's not working. So those are the main reasons.
Can we summarize that all the challenge is to mobilize women and men in the organization to do this transformation? but Why is it so difficult? What are the challenges companies have to overcome to mobilize their team to do these transformations?
I personally don't think it is so difficult. I think we just need to change a little bit our beliefs. I have always thought it had to do with old beliefs from old times, maybe from decades or maybe from 100 years ago, that sort of freezes the relationship between workers and management. Another is sort of, Dr. Jung would call that a cultural complex, which is a psychological phenomenon of groups that leads its own life. It becomes sort of independent of people and it continues to live on. And basically it includes beliefs and emotions and ideas and concepts and images. And so one of those images is we need to impose. what we want from people. I think that is the wrong belief. And today we see the science since 20 years has proven that this is a wrong belief and that other methods do work. And those methods are engaging people, talking with people, finding out what their challenges are, just listening to their concerns and taking those concerns into account and designing solutions with them and being capable to listen to them and be understanding and supportive. So that's the summary of what we need to do. And so it's not difficult. It is that we need to overcome this psychological phenomenon that makes that we stick into this old way of working.
So maybe what you mentioned is related to leadership and to management qualities of the organization. So the capabilities to be able to understand the needs of all the stakeholders in the organization and to motivate them. by understanding these different stakeholders. So if we talk about leadership and management, what can make the difference on that side?
The leadership skills include a few key things. One of the key things that we need is that managers speak in a respectful and conscious manner with people, anticipating what their reactions may be. Asking and making sure they're being understood and also asking questions to make sure that they understand their people. But that's a key. So communication is a key aspect. Another key aspect is creating a no-blame environment. In a no-blame environment, it's allowed to make mistakes. I think we see this popping up recently in some successful digital transformation. projects where managers say, well, you know, we'll try out some things. If it doesn't work, that's okay. We learn from it and we'll try again with something else. So that no blame environment makes that people will speak up if stuff doesn't work. And that makes it the company has the opportunity to react quickly, to repair quickly, to reduce the damage. So no blame environment is very positive for creating an open dialogue between people and management. So that's, I think, very key. And that learning aspect is another aspect. So we need to learn from our mistakes, but we also need to provide opportunities for people to develop themselves, to get stimulated by new things, new material, new responsibilities, new challenges. That's also very important. So those are a few key things about leadership. And so leadership is something that needs to be taught and learned and exercised. And once people have those skills, then suddenly the relationships with the workers improve incredibly and the openness of the communication as well.
But what you say, I will say about leadership can be applied for other things that digital transformation and will have a beneficial impact on many other aspects of the organization.
It's absolutely true. Yes, indeed. So I believe we need to apply leadership, whatever the circumstances. But as companies change anyway, you know, there is always changes. There is legal changes, regulations, new products, takeovers. There is always changes and some of those changes are digital and other changes are different, but there is always changes. So we always need to apply leadership and always need to get those relations with the people. fluid and positive and supportive.
And do you see any other ingredients that are required to succeed in such kind of transformations?
What I used myself as a manager and what I found extremely powerful is coaching. I sort of naturally discovered coaching because I had a team that was distributed over Europe and so I couldn't meet with them very easily. The only thing I could do with them is call them. At the time, we didn't have teams yet, so you didn't see each other. I could just speak with them. And the only option I had to figure out what was going on, how well things were going, was asking them questions. And asking questions is really the key aspect of coaching. So through asking questions, I was able not only to figure out what was going on, but also to draw their attention to those points that required attention and that made them change their mind, made them change their focus and motivated them to implement things differently. So coaching is extremely powerful in the context of leadership, but also in the context of teams and of digital transformation.
So you mentioned coaching. Is there any other aspect you see companies can work on to increase the success rate of their transformation?
Yes, there are a few other things to mention. So let's get back for a moment to leadership and coaching. I briefly mentioned, I think, at the beginning of this podcast that the situation in the workforce is not very positive. So motivation and engagement is low, but we have also health issues. There are mental health issues in the workforce and it's getting actually worse and worse. There is a lot of stress, burnout, anxiety, in some countries loneliness. And the estimations are that 30% of the losses of efficiency and revenues of company are related to chronic conditions, to chronic health conditions. And stress and burnout are one of the most important ones. So I think that leadership, that different attitude with respect to people, will make a difference also in health and well-being. It means that we'll be more attentive to how people feel, how people function, and we'll also be able to help people developing healthy habits. Like very simple things, taking just a minute every hour to walk around and breathe. or to provide opportunities to do sports. All those things can help creating a more healthy environment. Good, so with, let's say, a more favourable situation at work and better relationships, now if we want to tackle digital transformation, there is a key ingredient which is to engage with people about that change. And I call that co-design, co-development and co-implementation. We have seen also in the literature, and it has proven to work very well, that in engaging with people about the change and developing with them what we want to change and how we want to change it, creates buy-in, creates adoption, because people start owning the solution. We create it with them, and so it's also their solution. And therefore the implementation works much better. There are a few key methodologies. One is called human-centered design, which is designing with people. And the other one is positive change, which is very similar to coaching, but it is at an organizational level.
You started to mention solutions. So solutions are quite a specificity for digital transformation. So you just mentioned some specific aspects you need to take care when engaging in such transformation and particularly center the design of the solution around people and their use case and their usage. Do you see any other things specific to digital transformation and particularly on the way to select and implement solutions in the organization?
Well, if I say solution, then I mean it in a very broad way. I think also the The competencies and the business processes are part of the solution. So I see that in a very broad way. But of course, it's also the parameterization of the maybe a high tech solution could be also part of the story. I think teamwork and competencies are the other components that we haven't talked about yet. So in change, we will need other competencies. It means that, again, in dialogue with people, thinking and discussing about objectives we want to meet in the near term, we can define what new needed competencies could be and how we could work in getting towards those. So to me, that is competence and performance management. It's part of performance management where we also define the elements that we need to get to successful performance.
And do you see any specific competencies that needs to be developed in a current organization to be able to embrace these digital transformations?
Of course, many trades, many disciplines will need some additional IT competencies in addition to their mechanical, electronical, whatever engineering or scientific or whatever activity they have. And that may be difficult for some people. So I think there are some IT competencies to acquire. But I think that the main priority should be the emotional and social competencies. This used to be called soft skills. You may remember that term. Today, we don't talk about soft skills anymore because there's nothing soft about it. We know the hard stuff.
It's more hard to acquire, in fact, not so soft.
Yeah, indeed, it's hard to acquire, but there is hard science behind it that explains it all and also explains how to do it. And also explains... that improving those social and emotional competencies lead to superior business performance. Today, there is a very clear body of research that demonstrates how well that works for companies.
And if we talk about what you do at QYUSHA, what kind of methodology or do you support companies to go through these transformations?
If I have the chance, it's not always the ideal case, but if I have a chance, I would propose a mix of all of this. So I would propose a change track to a change. Let me give you a real life example. I mean, I'm working with a large organization who have an IT department. That IT department wants to become a service oriented organization. So they want... to develop a service catalog and provide that to their users and make sure that the users get value from those services and try to improve the impact that they make on the organization. And that's a real culture change because that organization is absolutely not used to that. Neither the IT nor the business. Okay, so we set up a technical project which has to do with setting up the catalog and defining what that catalog is and defining what the benefits are and so on. And in parallel, we have a change project. And the change project is about engaging with the users and getting their opinion about this change and brainstorming opportunities with them, what advantages could be, what benefits could be for them by using those services. And I will start with the pilot. So we'll take one particular. case, one particular service, and we'll implement that together with an organization or part of the organization that is keen on testing it. And so we do the technical track, but we also do the change track. So we keep engaging with people in a little bit more intense way than we usually do. And we keep probing if they receive the value, if the relationship is what they expect from it. And we keep... also steering towards an optimum value and an optimum relationship. And once we have done this pilot, we will extend to a next series of services and do the same thing and have business relationship managers from IT who second that process and who keep in contact with their users to make sure that they get what they need. So it's really adding a change track to a technical project.
But I'm very happy you mentioned an example such as this one, because on our side, what we see in companies that are succeeding in their transformation is they are really this transformation in the way the operations works with the IT department. And this is, I think, a really important move to be able to sustain and support this kind of transformation. I think we shared many, many aspects of transformation in organization. Valentin, do you have any other aspects you want to share before concluding this podcast?
What I would recommend listeners to listen to is another podcast that you made not very long ago with Frédéric from Accents. And I think he gives also a very practical example of... how you can succeed digital transformation in a global organization with cultural challenges and challenges for change. And I think in a very human-oriented way, but very practical and successful on the business level. So I think it's an excellent example. And I would recommend people to listen to that podcast.
Thank you, Valentin, for the pleasure to exchange with you about these key aspects of... digital transformation, which is to succeed in doing the transformation and mainly to be able to mobilize people in this transformation.
Thank you very much, Mathieu. It was a great meeting. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Valentin.
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