Why Lasting Transformation Starts With People, Not Processes – An Interview with Dave Stubberfield
Updated: Aug 3
Dave Stubberfield is an expert in the world of Customer Experience, Continuous Improvement and Change Management. His background of working in corporate companies, on the receiving end and delivering transformation has given him the tools and capability to enable change for other organisations. He is the founder and Fractional Transformation Expert for Carter Consultancy.
Dave Stubberfield, Fractional Transformation Expert
You often talk about aligning people, processes, and purpose, so what first led you to build your work around that idea?
I would say that stems from the 15 years’ experience I have in transforming organisations. When I first started out in my first corporate role, change was attempted to be ‘done’ to people, rather than bringing them on the journey. I have also seen plenty of attempts to change processes in isolation without engaging other stakeholders, leaders or teams.
I’ve seen and felt change efforts firsthand and I have seen what works and certainly what doesn’t! Since then, I have managed change of all shapes and sizes in organisations both big and small. It’s also important to note that some organisations see change and transformation as ‘nice to have’ rather than business critical. If you're not moving forward, you're essentially moving backward.
You developed the Triangle of Truth framework, so why do Customer Experience, Continuous Improvement, and Change Management need to work together instead of separately?
I also call it my Transformation Triumvirate because, simply, you need to be considering all three to make transformation truly effective. Let’s say there is a process that needs improving, it is very easy to just go ahead and make the change that you think or maybe assume is the solution. This partially covers the Continuous Improvement side without real root cause analysis taking place if assumptions are being made. At this stage, we haven’t considered how this change will impact the team or organisation, or the impact to the experience customers may have.
If you’re focusing on one of these areas, then you need to proactively consider the impact to the other two to implement the intended change. All three methodologies are intrinsically linked and aligned, so it makes good business sense to consider all angles of the triangle at the same time. Working on one area in isolation may give you a short-term benefit, but it could cause long-term loss in confidence across the organisation. When you employ the three in harmony, amazing things happen.
After leading transformation projects across organizations of every size, what consistently separates lasting change from short-lived success?
It’s important to note that there is no silver bullet to transformation, as every organisation and industry is different and are on their own growth journeys. With that said, there are multiple things that certainly help. The key parts for me are sponsorship from leaders, appropriate preparation and planning, and communication at all levels of the organisation and relevant stakeholders.
If these aren’t considered or executed well, then the change is likely to fail or not stick long-term. Often all of these can be overlooked or not given enough attention, notably the preparation and planning. Some people sketch out a rough plan and run with it, literally, because they want to make the change happen quickly. However, being careful and considered in the approach is arguably more powerful than the change going live.
Why do so many transformation programmes lose momentum even when the strategy itself is sound?
I’m going to sound like a broken record, but it all comes down to the planning. Sometimes the strategy appears sound, but the appropriate preparation must take place, it’s mission critical. AI is so good these days that organisations of all sizes can generate a strategy for the business, marketing or even transformation, but it still needs to be executed.
Another reason that momentum can slow down or stop is because of the lack of sponsorship from leaders, or the lack of it, I should say. It generally boils down to leaders saying the right things but aren’t backing it up in their actions. The sponsorship needs to be reinforced by the leaders, showcasing the right behaviours that others can see to ultimately emphasise their commitment to the change or transformation.
One final challenge around momentum could be that the right stakeholders aren’t engaged from the beginning of the programme. This then leads to rework or duplication of effort to understand the programme and its intended objectives and outcomes. This can delay the process and create confusion in roles, responsibilities and communication.
You have said customer experience is an organizational capability rather than a department, so what does that look like in practice?
If you take a typical customer journey that starts with awareness of a brand, the prospective customer could be engaging with the website or on social media. Let’s say, for example, that this phase is managed by a marketing team or department, they need to be informed of the experience that customers are having. That feedback needs to be captured at the appropriate time and stage of the journey, it’s no good waiting to send a feedback survey at the end of the transaction, because it might never get that far.
When it comes to Customer Experience, organisational alignment is paramount. Yes, you may need a CX department, but everyone in the organisation needs to know how they contribute to the experience or customer journey. In practice, this CX team could be spread across different teams or departments to engage with the relevant teams.
This capability as an organisation also means that the customer experience can be designed in detail to ensure that the organisation knows they are delivering a consistent and trusted experience every single time.
For leaders who want to improve performance without overwhelming their teams, where is the best place to start?
This is a tough one and it isn’t as straightforward as it seems, because every organisation is different and has their own history of successful and unsuccessful transformations. However, a very simple starting point would be to give each team member a sticky note and ask this question, “If you could change or improve one thing in the team, what would it be?”
This is a simple but targeted question that engages every member of the team for their thoughts and opinions of what matters. This can help build a picture of what the team sees as valuable or important, which should then be categorised into different buckets accordingly.
From there, prioritisation of the list can begin before actively engaging the team for their assistance in improvements. This simple activity gives everyone a voice and a platform for it to be heard, assessed and implemented where possible.
Through your CX in ConteXt programme, what is one mindset shift that helps leaders create better experiences for both employees and customers?
This goes back to the organisational capability view of customer experience. One of the biggest mindset shifts I encourage is for leaders to stop thinking of Customer Experience as something that belongs to the customer service team and start seeing it as an organisational capability. Every customer experience is the outcome of the employee experience, the processes people work within, the decisions leaders make, and the culture they create. If employees are frustrated by poor systems, unclear priorities or conflicting processes, customers will inevitably feel the impact.
Rather than asking ‘How do we improve the customer journey?’, encourage leaders to ask, ‘What is stopping our people from delivering the experience we want?’. That’s why the CX in ConteXt programme focuses on aligning five elements, such as Brand Identity, Employee Engagement, Customer Experience, Systems & Processes, and Measurement & Insight. When those elements work together, both employee and customer experiences improve naturally because the organisation is designed to deliver them consistently. Moving the mindset from “managing customers” to “designing the organisation that creates the customer experience.”
How has your own approach to leadership and transformation evolved over the course of your career?
I think that sums it up perfectly, it’s always developing and evolving. I am always keen to learn, from my own experiences, from other thought leaders, new research or data, there is always a way to improve. If I look back at the start of my career, I was a very shy and reserved person. Now, I deliver training courses to rooms full of people, deliver talks to massive audiences and create videos for social media.
As I said earlier, if you’re not moving forward then you’re essentially moving backwards. Different methodologies become popular and need mastering, new technologies are developed and need embedding into organisations. All of this requires you to adapt your approach and mindset. Also, there are sometimes setbacks and failures along the way that provide the best learning opportunities. Fail fast, learn and adapt.
If every business leader adopted one principle to build a stronger organization, what would you hope it would be?
This sounds easy, but it’s often harder than people think or anticipate. For me, it’s taking a step back from the day-to-day hustle and bustle, examining how you currently work today and exploring how you can improve for tomorrow. It’s far easier said than done, because making the time to step back is the first step, and for leaders this can be tough as it means stopping or slowing down operations to a point that ‘work’ essentially stops.
However, that time invested in stepping back is often priceless as it opens so many opportunities that otherwise would have been missed or not raised because people were too busy. It leads to ‘work’ becoming more efficient and productive as a result, staff can become more engaged, and customers can have better experiences.
This is my mission, to help organisations take the time to step back. Sometimes it requires someone like me to facilitate that time and actually make it happen, because often, it is continuously spoken about needing to take place rather than the action to make it happen.
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