Professor Julie Hodges is a leading expert on change in organizations, particularly the role and impact of people during transformations. Before entering the academic world Julie worked as a business consultant for over 20 years in several profit and non-profit organizations, including PwC, Vertex, and the British Council.
In academia Julie has held a number of senior leadership posts including Associate Dean. Julie has published in a number of international journals on change in organisations. She is the author of several books including ‘Consultancy, Organizational Development and Change’, ‘Managing and Leading People through Change’ (Kogan Page); Sustaining Change in Organizations(Sage) and ‘Employee Engagement for Organizational Change’ (Routledge) and ‘Organization Development: how organizations change and develop effectively’ (Palgrave McMillan); ‘Reshaping the HR: the role of HR in organizational change’ (Routledge). Julie’s latest book on ‘People-Centric Change’ was published on 3rd Feb 2024. Julie is a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Academic Fellow of the ICMCI (International Council of Management Consulting Institutes) and a Senior Fellow of the Foundation for Management Education (FME). She is also a member of the editorial board of the ‘Management Consulting’ journal.
Recently, in an exclusive interview with Higher Education Digest, Professor Hodges shared her professional trajectory, insights on the most common mistakes organizations make while implementing people-centric strategies, her favorite non-academic books, biggest stress relivers, words of wisdom, and much more. The following excerpts are taken from the interview.
Hi Julie. Please tell us about your professional background and areas of interest.
Before entering the academic world in 2006 I had a very successful career working as a business consultant for over 20 years in several profit and non-profit organizations, including PwC. At PwC I was responsible for organizational change and management development in a number of companies include Barclays, Shell, BBC, Lloyds, Reuters. I also worked with Vertex where she set up and led a commercial consultancy team. My first role was with the British Council where I was the Development Consultancy for East Asia. My area of interest is people-centric organisational change.
What do you love the most about your current role?
Teaching, researching and doing consultancy work in the field I am passionate about – which is people-centric change.
What are some common pitfalls or mistakes organizations make when implementing people-centric strategies?
Transformations are notoriously challenging especially because they are no longer a one-off single activity but are multiple simultaneous events. Despite this shift there is still an over reliance on linear n-step process frameworks, for managing change, that tend to be based on one-size-fits-all top-down strategies. The idea that a major change can be designed and managed as a discrete episode of activity is no longer fit for purpose and indeed rarely has such an approach achieved the speed or new behaviours that are required. Such frameworks don’t tend to reflect the complexity and multiplicity of most transformation initiatives but instead try to simplify what is a dynamic process that is becoming more so as change continues to happen in non-linear ways. Since organizations are filled with chaos and complexity, periods of order and disorder, linearity and non-linearity, business transformations rarely fall into a neat checklist of x number of steps. In spite of this many transformations still tend to be driven from the top down in a linear way. This typically means that the executive team exclusively makes strategic decisions, creates implementation plans, and then rolls out organization wide communication to gain employee commitment to the imposed change. Such efforts are often reduced to convincing people that what is proposed is a good idea, although it is often more like a public relations campaign, than an engagement effort, with an attempt to reassure people that what they want and need is for the proposed transformation to happen, and that the plan as presented is already as good as it can get. This common strategy might enable change where organizations are vertical, in that leaders hold all the key information and employees are structured in hierarchical reporting lines, so that the top-down change reflects the organization’s structure and workflow, but it is no longer appropriate in workplaces where there are more flexible modes of working and where employees’ expectations have moved on and staff have more access to information about their jobs, business environment, and each other, as well as there being more matrixed reporting lines and interdependencies. Top-down process only transformation strategies are disconnected from the workforce and ultimately a ‘my way or the highway’ diktat is out of date in an age of disruption and fails to engage people with the change or sustain its benefits.
What role do leaders play in driving people-centric change, and how can they create a culture that supports it?
to navigate the disruption and uncertainty impacting on their work and workplace. This requires leaders and managers being able to appreciate the need for distributed responsibility – that is responsibility being shared amongst relevant stakeholders – although simply understanding the need for distributed responsibility for change is not sufficient, leaders and managers also need to be willing to engage people with business transformations as early as possible, and to ensure locally anchored ownership of the change. To do this effectively requires clarity on who the impacted stakeholders are and who can influence the change, including those external to the organization such as vendors, partners and social groups. This means securing shared commitment and engagement from a diverse community of multi-stakeholders which is vital for enabling organizations to adapt and rejuvenate.
Changing mindsets
Change is only embedded when individuals and teams in the organization begin to work in new ways, adopt new mindsets, display new behaviours, use new tools, apply new processes and procedures. Yet the role of individuals has often been ignored in the change management literature; those studies that have examined individual roles have often favoured a leader-centric perspective that focuses on the strategic and/or personal nature of transformational leadership. This has often been
The scale and speed of change that organizations are facing requires agility and adaptability. Engaging people in an organizational change has never been more important but to do that effectively the organizational culture needs to enable transformations to take root through a people-centric approach to change since culture shapes the way that business transformations are done. When organizations create a culture that supports people-centric change and opportunities to develop the skills to do it effectively, they are able to take forward new initiatives and to respond to external trends and forces of change. Consideration needs to be given as to what needs to change in the culture to make it people-centric so that it shifts to a collaborative, engaging approach with a focus on seeing the opportunities of change and enhancing wellbeing and EDI. A starting point for this is to update the organization’s mission statement, values and purpose to ensure that they reflect an explicit focus on people during business transformations. It is also crucial to ensure that the culture is rooted in the business context in which it operates so that there is a clear link between the need for change and how it will impact on the strategy, purpose and stakeholders of the organization.
Changing an organization’s culture is inextricable from the emotional and social dynamics of people in the organization which means that it can be very difficult to change the entire culture, instead a more achievable approach is to change parts of it which then, in turn, affect the whole culture. This is like dropping pebbles in a pond where the ripples from each pebble create interconnecting ripples across the pond. In such a way changing elements of the culture can happen through incremental changes which have a cumulative impact on the whole culture of the organization rather than a massive culture change programme. Changing elements of the culture starts with a clear understanding of the organization’s purpose and then driving behavioural change to match that purpose which can only be truly effective when leaders and managers take accountability for shaping and nurturing the culture since the fundamental elements of an organization’s culture are not changed by new thoughts or words but are changed by behaviours and actions that reinforce desired cultural attributes. This takes time and the message needs to be constantly reiterated in person by leaders and managers role modelling the behaviours that they want their workforce to demonstrate by adopting a ‘do as I do’ way of behaving and working.
Training and development practices can help to change behavioural elements of the culture by creating an understanding of the drivers for a transformation, the implications of not changing, a recognition that new behaviours and practices are required, and explaining how these new behaviours will have a positive impact on the culture. To ensure new behaviours stick training and development interventions need to be followed-up with ongoing support and coaching especially for individuals who find it difficult to move out of their comfort zones and change their behaviours and ways of working. For some people such a move can be very challenging, and they may need additional help, while for others who just blatantly refuse to make changes to their behaviour despite support and development, there may well be a need to exit them from the organization. Furthermore, it is important to recognize when the new behaviours are being enacted and provide subsequent positive feedback to individuals. Observing people doing things right and rewarding their positive behaviours is vital for ensuring that behavioural changes stick. Ultimately, integrating a people-centric approach to change into an organizational culture must be rooted in actions, norms, behaviours, and practices over time.
The fundamental elements of an organization’s culture can be changed by changing the behaviours and actions that reinforce desired cultural attributes. This takes time and the message needs to be constantly reiterated in person by leaders and managers role modelling the behaviours that they want their workforce to demonstrate by adopting a ‘do as I do’ way of behaving and working.
How do you stay up-to-date with the latest research and trends in organizational change?
Reading journal articles about the latest research, networking with business leaders and managers.
What are your thoughts on gender equality and inclusion? Do you think there is a gender bias in your industry?
When I first joined academia there was much more gender bias than there is now. Although there is still bias in terms of males in senior academic positions, publication output, and funding for women. Not all institutions have made the positive progress that has been made here at Durham University.
Is there a particular person you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are?
I have had mentors, at different stages of my career, who have been helpful. I am especially grateful to the mentor who gave me advice and support in transitioning from business to academia.
What is your favorite non-academic book and why?
That is a difficult question for me since I am an avid reader and narrowing it down to just one book is hard. Recent non-fiction books I have read which I have found thought provoking include (but are by no means limited to):
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: Peter Handke Paperback
by Peter Handke (Author), Ralph Manheim (Translator)
The Blue Between Sky and Water Paperback
Mornings in Jenin Paperback
Wandering Souls
by Cecile Pin
Dust Child: The International Bestseller Hardcover
What is your biggest stress reliever?
Running every morning before breakfast.
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
Building on what I am doing now – continuing to improve my teaching, sharing my knowledge and research into organizational change. Writing my first novel.
What advice would you give to leaders looking to embed people-centricity into their organization’s DNA?
A people-centric approach to change is founded on stakeholder engagement. This means involving people in what needs to be done and how it can be done better rather than just telling them this is what has to change. Stakeholders, therefore, need to be involved in idea generation and in discussions about the specifics of the transformation and what it will mean for them. This requires a focus on: Who the key drivers of the transformation are; Who will be affected; Who needs to be involved; and Who the key stakeholders/groups are who need to be involved and how they will contribute to it. This assumes engaging stakeholders in all the elements of the Business Transformation framework, whenever feasible to do so. Engagement is, therefore, about having the right diversity, equality and inclusivity of people involved and then ensuring that the right people have the right capabilities and capacity to take ownership of making the transformation happen.