COMMENTARY: How to Spark Successful Organizational Evolution

Change. It’s one of the most feared events in one’s life; personally and professionally. People are scared of the unknown, which makes them naturally resistant to change. This fear is one of the primary reasons why evolving, or changing, an organization is one of the most difficult leadership challenges most senior-level professionals will face in their career.

Yet continuous evolution is key. For many, that means ongoing organizational changes. In the world of payments, we’ve been experiencing this movement, or “new normal,” for the past several years. There’s been a wide array of mergers and acquisitions—big companies merging together, big companies buying smaller ones, smaller companies merging together. It all leads to an enormous amount of change within those organizations.

There’s also the evolution of independent sales organizations (ISOs), third-party agent resellers, value-added resellers (VARs), and even independent software vendors (ISV), too. These individual groups are challenged with meeting new customer demands, becoming more value-based, and selling more products and services than they had historically. In the end, it means change to the existing business.

Throughout my career, I’ve been keen to the challenges around driving change within a company, especially an established one. I’ve had the good fortune of being a part of teams that were able to evolve methodically and, in the end, with ease, to expand their footprint and focus. And, I’ve been a part of teams where change was vehemently resisted by the organization, which in the end created massive hurdles for the company that prevented it from moving forward.

When you sum it up, leading through change is really, really hard. As I write this, our leadership team is driving change in our organization. We have to evolve into new business channels, while expanding the ones we have. We need to continue to be more customer-centric and value-based, while deepening our engagement with our customers, both partners and merchants. We need to be accountable to our goals and our shareholders.

As we continue our efforts, and others embark on or are in the midst of evolving their organizations, I’d offer the following advice and reminders.

• Leadership is key. Evolving an organization must be hands-on. It cannot be a directive. It’s imperative that everyone be engaged and all levels in the organization understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and what it means to them.

• Set goals and hold team members accountable. Team members must be engaged in the collective effort, but they also must understand their accountability and responsibility to the goals and the key tactics required. Leaders must work side-by-side with team members to develop road maps and success metrics, continuously fueling the movement with positive response and praise.

• Celebrate successes. Have fun. How this is presented to the team is paramount. Celebrate each milestone as it’s achieved and recognize and reward those who stand out as change agents or champions within each department or group.

• Adapt the culture. Embarking on an initiative like this often requires an assessment of your corporate culture, and it sometimes presents an opportunity to shift that culture to one that is more agile and flexible. Companies and individuals naturally get comfortable, so when things shake up, there’s an immediate sense of panic and resistance. Leveraging a bit more of an entrepreneurial spirit in even an established company’s culture will pay off in spades over the long run.

• Mitigate Risk. Key to evolving an organization is to not throw the baby out with the bath water. Evolution must be precise. It’s 10, 30, or 50 dials, not two or three. And everyone must have clear visibility into how their actions and efforts impact the overarching objectives.

I came across an article in the Harvard Business Journa l on this topic, written by Douglas Ready, a senior lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and I think he says it best: “[The] transformational journey is never-ending today.”

In the end, engage your entire team. Envelop them in the excitement and the opportunity that will come from a successful evolution. Over-communicate, and establish clear goals and associated accountability.

—O.B. Rawls IV is chief executive and president at iPayment Inc., Westlake Village, Calif.