Imagine if the Post Office’s leadership team had really considered the impact that the introduction of the Horizon system would have on their people, at every level.
It’s unlikely that the mess we’ve slowly seen unfold would ever have happened.
Krisztina Papp, unsplash
The change would have happened smoothly and most likely been delivered on time and on budget. Any glitches in the system would have been ironed out effectively, so that both people and profits were protected.
That’s the way successful change happens.
The very worst of the scandal could have been prevented by following straightforward people-focused principles of change. Here are just a few of the things the leadership team could have considered, instead of simply ploughing on…
Think people first
Whether that’s your own teams, your customers or your sub-contractors. I totally get that there are commercial and financial drivers to any change but looking at these through the lens of how all this will affect people makes all the difference. The Post Office experience is a great example of how not to do this.
Think about your culture…
What’s your organisational culture like around the idea of change? Will people be able to put egos aside and challenge themselves if things get tricky? Reading the book ‘The Great Post Office Scandal’, I have been repeatedly reminded of the importance of organisational culture, senior leadership behaviour and its impact in times of change.
The Post Office leadership’s priorities were firmly on following process, compliance, and (wrongly) protecting revenue at all costs. Many people in the organisation had a belief that the Post Office’s heritage made it invincible. The result? A complete lack of compassion or focus on people saw hundreds of Sub-postmasters wrongly convicted.
Senior leaders were paid bonuses throughout this time, setting the tone that getting results with this type of behaviour was acceptable.
Ignore culture as part of your change considerations, at your peril.
Talk to your stakeholders - continuously
Involving stakeholders in decision-making processes, means asking them for their inputs, addressing their concerns and incorporating their feedback into your plan. Continuous conversation makes any transition run more smoothly and a change will be more acceptable to everyone impacted by it.
Get an organisation-wide view right from the start
Whatever the size of your organisation, establishing a cross-functional team from the beginning – folk from legal, finance, marketing, customer service etc – will help to spot and address issues quickly. Make sure each of them is empowered to make decisions on behalf of the team they’re representing.
Create clarity
Making things clear right from the start is vital to avoid ambiguity. When everyone knows where responsibility and accountability lie, it can stop things being either overlooked or duplicated.
In the case of the Subpostmasters who were so badly impacted by the glitches in the Horizon system… greater clarity could have helped them establish what they were responsible for and not. This could have led to appropriate amendments to their contracts being agreed so everyone was clear who was accountable for what.
With this clarity, when the system didn’t work as it should and showed up financial shortfalls, the Subpostmasters could have avoided being contractually obliged to close the gaps from their own pockets. Which so many of them were forced to do.
Try pilots, phase implementation and trust the feedback – not the system
Try things out, see what works and capture feedback at each stage, making sure everyone who needs to know is aware of any issues. Roll things out gradually so people have time to adapt and learn without being overwhelmed. Get regular feedback from your employees, key contractors and any customers you’ve asked to support you through this early implementation phase. You’ll be able to deal with any changes that need addressing, based on real-time feedback.
And whatever you do, always put your trust in people over technology first.
Recognise that change brings extra effort
Most changes in ways of doing things – whether that’s processes, technology or something else new – means that people have to invest time and resources to learn and adapt to a new way of working. Recognising and acknowledging (saying it out loud!) that this will happen takes pressure off people who are trying to do their day job while dealing with the challenges of getting to grips with something new.
Always think bigger – question what you see or hear
It can be easy to get drawn into meeting milestones and following every step of the process, by the letter. Sometimes though, you need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of what’s really happening.
In the case of the Post Office, it seems that no-one questioned why previously trustworthy people, some of whom had been Subpostmasters for decades would suddenly commit fraud. And lots of them too. As a result, the new technology was trusted more than them and people went to jail for no reason.
Your own team may struggle to take an objective position, so consider investing in someone external to support you with this if needed.
Don’t delegate accountability
How do senior leaders make sure they have the right oversight in place over big changes in their organisation? By not delegating the big-ticket items. Although there may often be technical issues involved which demand technical input, leaders need to get regular updates and insights into how things work and what that looks like for employees and customers.
They need to be aware of any risks, any corrective actions that might be needed and be part of key decisions and understand what the impact of all this is on people. This can’t be delegated.
One of the big lessons from the Post Office scandal for me is that the greater the scrutiny up front from leaders, the less scrutiny they’ll have to face from others later if things go awry.
As there are more and more discussions about the opportunities and threats of AI and increasing levels of distrust across our society, the Post Office scandal is a very real example of why we need to put people first in any change.
In a nutshell… don’t trust technology more than you trust real people. If something does go wrong, prioritise the people involved. Don’t wait for your change to become a TV drama.
If you’d like to chat about how to make people-focused change work in your organisation and avoid a scandal, let me know.
The Fujitsu Horizon system was introduced by the Post Office in 1999. It’s fair to say that its implementation didn’t go smoothly. Subpostmasters (who are self-employed and run post offices under contract to the Post Office) began experiencing and complaining about bugs in the system after it began reporting discrepancies, including shortfalls – often for thousands of pounds. But no-one did anything about this. Subsequently, the Post Office experienced unusual levels of fraud instances by its Subpostmasters and successfully prosecuted over 700 of them, many of whom went to jail.