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20 | 16th - 22nD JAnUAry 2015 | UtILIty WEEK Change is all about people. It takes honesty, clarity, leadership, and, vitally, communication and speed. Things do not get better with time. Drip, drip, drip change makes people fed up, and they start to question the manage- ment's leadership skills. Change in the context of changing people's behaviours is difficult, and if you can't take people with you, you've lost the plot. You've got to convince them that the change you're going to put in place is for the benefit of the business and them as individuals. You walk into a room and explain what you're going to do – you don't know whether the people there are fat and happy and don't want change, or whether they're frustrated. In my experience, if a business is inefficient, people are generally frustrated. We're been through three big organisational changes, starting in 1995 when we came under American ownership. That was the first change process we went through and it was fairly traumatic – 600 engineers walked out the door in April to be replaced by crasmen trained to a new technician grade, and by October, I had more senior authorised people than I had before and our storm and general fault response was better than it had ever been. Later, we purchased Hyder, a business five times our size, and committed to sell everything in the busi- ness apart from the distribution network. When I waked through the door that day, I had 1,700 employees; when I walked out, I had 13,000. Finally, in 2011, we purchased Central Networks, and achieved a reduction in op- erating costs of £119 million per year. We reduced direct staff by 800 and contractors by 700, halved the time customers were off supply, changed all the IT, and acquired 18 new offices. As a leader, you've got to show commit- ment to the change. The leader can't sit on the sidelines and get other people to explain to staff what's going to happen. If you're leading the business, you need to get up there and explain the change, and that's what I've always endeavoured to do. When we bought Hyder, we had water people, utility people through and through, who were sud- denly going to change from being employed by a utility to being employed by contrac- tors. In week three, I went and talked to every single employee in Wales. I didn't know what my reception was going to be – I didn't know if I was going to be lynched. They said, "we don't like what you're saying, but at least you've come out and told us". Not being told directly is what frustrates people more than anything: good news, bad news – you've got to deliver it yourself. I don't think there are many barriers to change except the ones you invent yourself. When Robert Symons "Not being told directly is what frustrates people more than anything: good news, bad news – you've got to deliver it yourself." you go into a business, you're got to have the confidence to say what you're going to do. Once you've done that, you find ways of doing it. If you start from the point of debating the issue and saying, "what if?", you're al- ready defeated. If you start from reasons for failure, you're not going to win. The day we walked into Central Networks, we bought thousands of new PCs so we had the certainty they would work with our systems. It might be we wasted a million quid, I don't know, but the point is I had certainty that our soware would work on those machines. You don't have to have an MBA or PHD to make this stuff work. When I talk to people, I say 'if you're got an MBA and PHD, stick it on your applica- tion, but we're not going to take much notice of it, the question is, can you do the job'. We want people who are going to talk in a language that everyone can understand, we're more of an entrepreneurial culture than a staid utilities culture. Other than those changes com- ing from the outside environ- ment, I can't see the basic struc- ture of the business changing. Would I relish taking on another one? Yes I would. I'm sure most people in my business would relish the chance to do the whole thing again. Robert Symons, chief executive of Western Power Distribution, will be speaking at the Utility Week Live keynote conference UtilityWeekLive www.utilityweek-keynote.com NEC, 21-23 April 2015 What I know about change... Change UtilityWeek S P E C I A L R E P O RT: PA RT 1 / JA N U A RY 2 0 1 5 The Utility week Live keynote conference is the premier gathering for senior elec- tricity, gas and water executives. Sitting alongside the free content on the exhibition floor at Utility Week Live, this exclusive VIP conference gives delegates the opportu- nity to review and discuss lessons learned from other sectors. " "