Session Information:

Managing Turbulence and Delivering Results during Transitions, Crisis, and Disruptions

How to prepare an organization for upcoming transition times-change in leadership

• The Transition Gift Package-how to prepare it, give it and get new team to buy in
• Slaying the Dragon-managing your first crisis under new leadership
• Balancing Fighting Fires and Medium and Long Term Wins
• People Managing during Innovation, Transformation and Crisis
• Pushing your Limits-COVID 19 Teleworking Implementation
• Your Crisis on the Front Page of a Newspaper
• Discovering your Political Self

Session Transcript:

I'd like to welcome Gretel Zamora is Strata Gretel, Please turn on your camera, join us. Grow is the Innovation and Transformation leader in government. She was the former Innovation and Technology Director of the Ministry of Economic Economy and Financing Panama. She has been leading transformation project since 2000 at General Electric.

She led, let them transformation of processes, Adele, and has been working on projects that impact Panama in the Panama Canal hub of the Americas, should they should share with us her experience with government transition, colvin and other prizes at The Ministry of Economy and Finance Gretel, Real pleasure to have you with us to talk about you know, not only transformation but transformation in difficult environments. Where there is government and their politics and the And how do you drive transformation environments like that? I've missed pandemic and crisis so this should be a lot of fun. So looking forward to it. Thank you for taking the time to be with us.

Thank you very much, Joe. And this. This is a very interesting story that I wanted to share the journey of transformation. I wanted to take some time on. Thank you very much for the invitation. I wanted to take some time to share. How do you manage turbulence and deliver results during transition times and crisis and disruptions?

Because that's not something that you normally no one teaches you how to handle crisis.

It's not something that it's start even in MBA schools as entry level. You know, it's it later on. You'll become good at it by other things. So the main topic is how to manage turbulence while you deliver results during transitions and disruptions.

OK?

This journey, as you see, it's a train that subordinate to train. It talks about how you drive innovation, and you transform government services.

In this case, it was the Ministry of Economy. It was all the part of economy. Finance. Hogland the money of a country which in the Panama budget is 27 billion on per issue for this year.

First of all, on, I joined the ministry as a consultant, dealing with all the government transition, getting the direction I was in, the innovation and technology direction ready.

And then, most important thing is, how do you get ready for a transition and government transition? Or it can be new company taking over, It can be a buyout.

There are many transitions, or send your boss or a new CEO, your slowest transitions. There's always choose, there's an organized way to manage that.

So the first of all, you have to acknowledge the fear and the pain, People, all our people are dealing with fear, they are dealing with pain there, they don't know what to do.

And they, a lot of times, the biggest concern is that people are afraid they're going to lose their jobs.

So, the most, I will say deal with change, acknowledge that it's not easy.

Once you are able to tell people, Yeah, this is It can be complicated.

Then you will end up getting the buy in from them and also be beri beri beri exclusive.

I grabbed all your presentations, came off of presentation mode. I think you must have hit Escape key so your PowerPoint presentation mode now. So if you can logon, not working.

Yeah, nowadays, thank you, OK. Thank you so much. So also, to be very inclusive, in order to get 100 people out of 3000 of you Search Ready Furniture Session on I had roundtables with the hundred people that were impacted, as well as all the key customers. To make sure that we understood where we were and why do we need to do that?

We listened to the people, because a lot of the times, as I explained to them, and I'll go into that in the next slide there, there's the limit the, there are limited things you can do, But you people can feel heard, and they can also feel that you are giving them as much information as you have.

This is my favorite framework of all times, is the circle of control, the circle of influence, and the circle of concern. Sinkhole, score, control this. What can I do?

Circle of influence, is, what can I influence that I don't directly control, But that will help me get the outcome that I want? And the circle of concern is, or, for me, it's out of control, So I don't have to concern about it, is things that I have no control off.

For example, we had a group that was dealing with a very expensive ERP and they were concerned that their job wasn't gonna go away. That's just gonna go away and I told them, OK, what can you control? You can control Being on time.

You can control, knowing your staff, be responsible, having the knowledge, So if, even if the system changes, you can stay on.

The impact will be minimal. What can you influence? You can influence it.

Providing cases of whites', It will be very difficult to make the change.

What, you cannot control, you cannot control. The new government decided that they don't want the system. So, because you cannot control it, you cannot waste time in the red sawn because you are wasting your time.

So, we need to really focus on the blue and the green area, which is the circle of control, and that's not only for eviction just like that But, even I use it as a framework. Whenever a problem landed on my desk, I will go ahead and say, OK, what can I do about it? What can I influence indirectly? Everything else? It's, I don't my control. I let it go. Because there's so many problems in large organizations. You don't have time to concern over every single little thing.

That transition gift package, I think that that was very, very interesting, because you have to go ahead and share with people how will start getting session before. It's like a gift or a given. What are you given the next person now? So these are some of the elements that should be considered, are included. one is done. What has been the one thing you do? You know, any trends, anytime you're doing a Hannover transition.

What did you do? completed to 100%? What spend it? What's at a 50 75 percent? That needs to be done quickly.

The risks: You need to share what the risks are so that they know to avoid crisis, and in some cases, the crisis is there, and you just have to deal with it.

What are the most important for you, or it is?

Because, again, when new management or new leadership takes control, how are they going to know what's more important? And you give them 10 things, But then you have to say 1, 2, 3 is this, and then the rest of you go step by step, because otherwise, it's overwhelming, nothing gets done. Who are your key people, and you need to provide the new leadership, who are the people, the 30% or 40% of the movers and shakers that make everything work.

The new leadership needs to know that want to save their jobs in case there's any re-organizations because you don't know what's going to happen.

And second to this, they keep the dead place running, no? Recommendations.

You need to tell them, what do you think are the next steps?

And then they can decide what they're going to do. But you cannot do all this work, and then don't give a recommendation because.

Then it is kind of doing the whole due diligence, and finally, the financials.

Sometimes people think, OK, I'm given a department, does not finance department. But, anyway, you have to come up with all the numbers, the budgets, and then transition that in a transparent manner to the next person.

And all that, it's to avoid having crisis. I'm sometimes, in the package, this crisis, in my package, I had a few crisis handed to me.

I can't. Joe, I can go to the next page.

Yeah, try to click on it, because sometimes it's, it's where your cursor is. There you go, OK, OK, great, OK, so.

As I was talking about financials, the gif I have in this project are, in this transition, was that I only have five million budget million left in the budget debt.

There were 15 million money owed, at least so the deficit of the Western millions.

So, when that's the situation, when you have something that are really bad news, because this is really bad news, This is the worst use I've ever had in my whole entire life, in any business units.

Just come out and just, say, I put it. Put it, there is very graphic, People can see what's going on, Right? So, just to tell the story, Button use as soon as possible. Because what that gives is that, whenever we talk about the risks, it gives the alert, What's what's wrong? So, your ... can help prioritize this risk over something else.

And at the same time that you gave all this transition information, go over. Your new boss, says, the new leadership priorities.

Select what, What are the critical things for them, because they are going to be different to the ones that you hot and the recommendations, because you're coming with a mindset from before, now's view.

And then based on the issues, they have their needs. They have, you offer solutions, but did you have knowledge of the organization? They do, they, they, they do not have.

After that, that's when I say, you have to show your target or where are you going?

You have to grab a vision board and come up with a plan. In my case, we created a plan. I create our plan with all the different leaders of my direction.

Are they innovation direction?

And we, we spent two days just working on the plan. So it was a joint planning. It was a joint effort. And everybody felt that we we did, while we were going to do, it was a common idea. We did two different approaches, one, the year plan, and then we'd have the hundred they plan. Because in government, a lot of times you do the first 90 day plan, or 100 days is in government.

And we use a stretch approach, which we asked for impossible, everybody sign up for impossible fence. That's something I learned on a ... under Jack Welch.

And we didn't accomplish 100% of what we said.

But we accomplish a lot more than we will have originally accomplish if we had just done some traditional planning just in time and nobody can change a lot of conscience. The lesson learned is that when you have momentum, you can do things like that, you know, do the stretch but you cannot run on undergraduate session on a stretch for their long term. It's something you do for certain times in. Transition is beautiful. During carpet you can run on organizational stress. Is beautiful, if you can manage that, taking care of the people side, of course.

Next, how do you handle your first crisis? Remember, I was sharing that with you.

I had approximately 5 to seven big crisis I Maybe you made it to the newspaper. Thank you, Lord.

But on in this situation, the priority when the office was taken by the new leadership was paying debts.

We had to pay $2 billion of debt from the previous government, and I saw this news the new press into cobra disorganized assessor.

Truly, there's no better way to this cry for the law, the inheritance to us.

And we have to pay depths, but then we're going to interrupt the payment system because the contract was overdue. So, it was an administrative matter.

I got a phone call of 9 0 PM at home from the vendor, um, I use negotiation and just leverage the relationship. And then I did a lot of team work. one is building goodwill is important with vendors and all the different people that work with you.

Foreigner I partnered with the Treasury Department so Innovation and Treasurer work together to get all the different work done, make it a priority, and create the win-win scenarios.

We created a contract for a new vendor that helped them through the whole.

To recover all the losses they hot. And at the same time, we were able to re-activate. And then your reputation is to be preserved when you are dealing with Fortune 500 government.

The whole reputational risk is very, very high, and it can actually shut down a company or shut down a billion dollar product. So in this case, we manage it very quietly and we were able to accomplish a solution without.

Interrupt in the service, so that was a first week, it's important to get the wins early on. That's really critical, and that's what we did in this situation.

At the same time, you have short term and the long term in the short term you have.

As I mentioned, five mega fires, you have to turn them into quick ways.

one of the easterners I had on we had a cyber attack, had some, um, maintenance issues in the servers were, I had my server farm, almost is not working for arm 2 or three days.

Almost, we almost lost 100% of information got, yeah, that's just an example of some of these have happened. So, you have all this mega fire, so at the same time you have that, you have to turn them into quick ways and then also do quick ways, which are, go back to origin only what the new leadership tell you.

For example, We help create new process and procedures for the whole Minister Office and we were able to do that because we had the innovation, the process, business, excellent approach, and really partner with all the different sectors.

Did all the different leaders to give them what they needed create solutions to their business needs when they were coming into the organization. So, you balance the fighting fires with a quick ways, or make the every race, you turn it an opportunity to how you handle it. Then, on the, on the other side, you have the long term.

It's important to do the capability, create capability in the organization, when we have to do that.

Um.

We had to make sure that the whole organization, we were at 100 people on core meal, while were the next steps on What to do. What was the training?

Provide them with trainees, so they cooled.

go to the next level, because we were transitioning from a bits and bytes organization to a more innovation where you manage a project.

And the technical part is only 20% of what you do sharing the vision.

I will have Every month I will have training for them every month for the team. one was technical.

one was administrative and I will be in what any one of those trainings on sharing with them for half an hour was the vision.

I will always connect, cut a spacewalk connected with the hundred people in my direction every month. So, it was very, very important that they felt I was close at open doors, and they could come up to me.

And speak their minds. Say what they like. Say, whether they liked and bring up ideas. Most of the ideas were beautiful.

There were, these, that needs to be done, and they call they were the right people to quickly implement, implement them.

Monitoring the cultured burglaries. We had a very strong culture of the birthdays.

And it's important to assign people to the long term issues, because when you have all these fires in the short term, you sometimes don't accomplish that this, in the long term, and what worked for me there was having dedicated resources to the long term, and that's what will help the most.

in order to accomplish that, is such as setting up their organization, so setting up roles, responsibilities, brushy the years of the new way to work. Setting your budgets, just setting up all the administrative stuff. That was very critical.

OK, How you Manish Transition times?

Obsessive participation of everyone.

I'm gonna repeat it. Obsessive parts of this participation of all.

We, I wasn't. I never worked on my own. I don't recall ever, except maybe half an hour a day. I was on my own, the rest of the time. I was always, with other people.

We were always listening to others, very important to cascade info down.

I will pass on information, wants to be seen as days at the most, so everybody, everybody knew what was going on in direction, and in the Ministry. What was the overall direction?

Every time there was a change, it was cascade down.

And besides me moving that down to the leaders or the managers, they got cascaded down every Friday, in a weekly meeting to all the different stuff, so we're always stashing the 100th people, everybody that was clear. Transparency.

I had a monitor in front of my office that projected outside.

So, anything I wasn't doing, anyone in my office will see what I was working on, and I did it on purpose to make sure that everybody understood the message of transparency. That's the way we work.

We do things the right away, You're ... really, listen.

I wasn't a very, um, I had to be humble, because I have just arrived, too, the ministry in January and then in July, I got promoted. So, it's 5 or 6 months.

Everybody in my team has 10, even 30 years of experience in the ministry.

So, I had to be humble and really listen to them and find out from their knowledge, while we could do to get on the new vision of what we needed to do. Which was innovation.

Participating innovation on nation, that an accountability, really?

Yeah, in government, you sometimes do, You have to do write offs, which I hadn't dances.

Um, when I went to factories in the nineties but, sometimes you have to grind the write offs.

Did it as nicely as I cool, but there's so much sensibility that needs to happen when there's changes.

Because, need to make sure that everyone is aligned in the right way. And that only occurs after you have done verbal change, verbal warning, this, you know.

But accountability, this also, having the meetings every two weeks of worries, everyone going, where do you need help?

now making sure that you're running a type CIF.

OK, so then after all that story you'd go in, on March nine, I think we had the first coronaviruses that very, very interesting.

You're operating on there high uncertainty, you have to provide recommendations to the minister of what to do. For 3000 people. We had to set up telework for one thousand people in a week.

I create a plan for 3500 telework, no weekends.

So, partnering with vendors, as I mentioned before, managing the fear, I had someone come to my office and tell me, You want to be here, and I had him close the door, and I told him, yeah, nobody wants to be here.

It's a situation, and I explained to him.

I compare with 911, which now, look at me, hindsight maybe wasn't the best, but if that was all I had, you know, I tell him, situations like this. No one wants to be here. Everybody wants to be home with your family and safe.

But for some reason, you ended up in a job where you have very, very high stakes in the national economy.

So, we have to be here providing support to the technology for everybody. So everybody can go to work from home. We need to do that for a month, or two weeks, at least. And, the only way to get through, through the oldest changes is, take care of all the different.

safety, this, then, seen all the hygiene and pray, and, also arm.

Do what you need to do for the time you need to do.

And, then, on, after, you know, when we finished, while, we need to do, think of all the, all you're giving back to your country, You know, so, motivating them, but also beans.

When I will go to the office, what you can be doing telework, and take care of people.

I send everybody home on March 12th before he was announced in the news that that people were going into lockdown just because I I made the call, I mean, as anyone and I didn't care, I need to take care of my people. And now, man, everybody going home and work your remote and they did that for almost three months.

And sending up telework for a thousand people, because then you have to, while you're doing things, you have to deliver results. And that's all we do.

Last, but not least, when you're handling, um, lot of situations that are difficult because we mentioned before you had at least a disorganized ... disaster.

You make something in your arm, overman, or your ministry may make the front page of a newspaper when that happens. The first thing is to panic, and after that, do, go ahead. I'm tall.

Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen.

It looks to me that, uh, that gretel had a problem with her transmission, as she was going through her presentation. She may have had an interruption in her service, so we apologize for that.

She was building on, on the, the real challenges that you have on the doing cultural transformation in the government sector. And, I missed political changes. And then, on top of that, as you saw for her presentation, so far, multiple crisis. We're gonna, We're gonna work with gretel on her transmission. But, at this point, we'll wrap up this segment, and we'll introduce the next segment that's going to take place at the top of the hour and a top of the hour, we're going to have Karen Telstra and ended Tills Trip talking about creating cultures that create doctor. Karen Telstra is an expert in the area of cultural creation and cultural transformation and she's going to be sharing with us.

what are the best approaches from not only a theoretical standpoint, but, from a very practical standpoint, How do you create a culture that is creative, that is innovative and, of course, that's creating value for society and for the organization. You do not want to miss that. Karen, Karen and add ended Telstra at the very top of the hour. We look forward to seeing you then. Remember, you can follow up on all of this work, presentations at the LinkedIn profiles that we have shared with you during the presentations. And you can ask questions there, will follow up on those questions as well, and at the top of the hour, we'll meet carrying and Andrew on how to create cultures that create, as you exit the session. There is opportunity to provide feedback, and that will see you at the top of the hour, Thank you very much.