Last time, we shared with you our thinking around how the concept of the rate determining factor has helped us challenge our approach to transformation. In this post, we’ll look more deeply into finding alternate paths around these factors using catalysts, and what this looks like in a typical organisation.

So, we know that catalysts are used to find alternative ways through complex reactions. They do not, as per common misconception, make the same thing happen more quickly. As real scientists know, catalysts speed up (or slow down!) reactions by finding an alternative path – a happy consequence of this is that by doing so, they expend less energy overall. If we think about this in the context of business transformation, by identifying the rate determining factor and applying an appropriate catalyst, we can get the desired result faster, and with less overall effort. Excellent!

One of the many challenges that people face when involved in significant change programmes is change fatigue – where high levels of effort are applied to drive change through existing ‘systems’ with disproportionately little success. We all know the familiar feeling of banging our head against a brick wall trying to change the status quo – the frustrating conversations, the software that takes weeks to build and months to deploy etc. The simple truth is that trying to fight your way through this kind of resistance which is typically based in embedded behaviours and processes, is not the best use of energy. Instead, we should act like a catalyst and find an alternative path.

Let’s look at some examples of rate determining factors we typically see in organisations that are transforming, and what happened when we tried to apply a catalyst:

At a public-sector organisation a new automated and digital capability to manage data was built in 8 weeks by a team using agile practices. So far, so good. The organisation had not yet automated its release processes or incorporated operations into development teams, so the usual path to live was long and separate to that of development. In addition to this, the leadership of the Infrastructure function which owned the path to live did not approve of agile practices and was suspicious of how something business critical could have been built in such a short space of time. The result was a refusal to promote the new capability to the production environment.

Here, we find that the rate determining factor was initially the process used to deploy software to the live environment. However had we removed that we would have encountered some technology factors and finally, people as a factor in the shape of the head of department. So, what was the catalyst here? The catalyst in this instance was the CTO – the programme sponsor. The suggestion was to route all new capabilities through an alternative DevOps function and to build this capability out within all new cross functional teams. The pathfinder for this was our new digital capability, which was deployed and supported by the team that built it, bypassing the established function. This introduced a new ‘pathway’ for deployment to the organisation and provided a blueprint for the future that was not based around improving an existing process, but on creating a new and more effective one.

Another organisational function that often appears as a rate determining factor is audit, and no more so than in the risk averse world of financial services. Even driven by people with the very best of intentions, this process can be a huge constraint and limiting factor to the flow of value to customers.

As part of a recent transformation, one business area within a global bank was struggling to get their software in front of customers. This initiative was marked as urgent in priority given the dual benefits of cost saving and customer delight. However, this release was still stuck in the audit sign off process 6 months after the build was completed.

The product manager knew they would have to fight to find a new way around the process by which audit signed-off the software. The current process was a quite typical gated process involving people passing round documents, ticking checklists and feeding in new audit requirements.

The catalyst in this instance was the product manager who introduced a new pathway to sign-off by created a cross functional ‘star chamber’ for products to be showcased and signed off on an ongoing basis. This was expanded as the various supporting capabilities in the organisation became more educated around agile practices.

This would have been an excellent opportunity for the leadership of that business area to break up organisational functions and align with product and service goals. However, there was a significant rate determining factor there – the lack of education the leadership team had around agile behaviours and practices, and then the support from global leadership that would have helped them remove that rate determining factor once and for all.

Here, we have talked about tackling rate determining factors with catalysts to increase the likelihood of successfully scaling successes to transform practise and culture. If you are repeatedly having to apply a catalyst to the same rate determining factor, the alternative path is not normalised and is not likely to survive scaling. It is crucial for leaders to find; acknowledge and normalise the alternative paths catalysts create through the organisation. This necessitates leadership that is both present to witness the process, and empowered to change the way and organisation approaches similar scenarios.

There seems to be a clear pattern here – while the rate determining factors can be technology, processes or people, the catalysts are invariably people. Responding to rate determining factors at organisational level necessitates courage, creativity and collaboration. It is crucial for organisational leaders to role model catalyst behaviour and encourage others to adopt this mindset.