Board Member of Castorama Poland (Kingfisher Group)

Michal Zych

1. Kindly elaborate on the factors that influenced your decision to pursue a career in change management and provide insights into the events that led you to your current position at Castorama Poland.
Last years I had a privilege to undertake similar role in different companies and it gave me confirmation of following thought:as society and users,we are getting more savvy in Tech, indeed. At the same time paradoxically, the gap of mutual understanding between business and tech dev I say is getting bigger. That is why I continuously do believe in great role from BAs and Change Management competencies to bridge Biz and Tech to deliver value within good time to market ratio. I feel so rewarder to see how from “who’s right and I know better” way of working, I am able to bring teams in one room to work as “what is better to our customer and can be released smooth”. That is something I call internal change management, where I name myself as enabler. There is of course “traditional” change management that is covering all employees, and I think it is easier part to be honest. Why? Because there is execution side, you have your product or new operating model, so you explain it, conduct trainings, leading by example, etc. When you got the concept, design/development right (with real collaboration of leaders behind), then execution is rewarding and with qualitive outcomes.

2. What do you see as the most critical factors for successful technology and transformation leadership in today's rapidly evolving business landscape?

Mindset and integrity – always.The rest is just a repetition of all commonly known ideas of having strategic vision, fostering collaborative and adaptable culture, leading by example, empowering teams and individuals. There are books about it, methodologies behind. Just for me it’s all about coherence with what you say and do, it’s all about courage and consistency with what you truly believe. And if you have it as mindset, if you are fighter with ethics inside, then you will find knowledge, skills, experience, just the key is that this knowledge, skills and experience will come with people of similar mindset. I compare my leadership with Ultra Mountain Running I do: sometimes I run alone to cross the line after 240km and 52hours to give inspiration. I learn as I meet people on my way, supporting and sharing experience or I do smaller distance with the ones I just inspired, giving them on the run training and showing them how it is to cross boundaries and cross finish line in such tough runs! In both cases - mindset must be there, it’s no brainer, this is not physical journey it’smindset and head running exercise.

3. How do you measure the success of your technology and transformation initiatives? Could you share the key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics that you use to evaluate the effectiveness of your operations?

There are two bigperspectives of tech and transformation initiatives:one is how tech is enabling company performance (external transformation, mostly quantitative) and second is how we change in ways of working/operating model(internal transformation, mostly qualitative).

Let’s take the first perspective. In retail industry I believe in 3 areas of measuring quantitative outcomes: customer-reve-cost. First is customer satisfaction – how we are improving customer journey, how we make it seamless and personalized. Second is sales obviously – so how we increased sales (not having linear growth in cost base), conversion rates, and other standard sales indicators related to introducing new tech. And third is colleagues/operational productivity – how much time we improved certain piece of process (not decreasing quality in data or error rates), reliability of tools is here as well (minimizing downtimes), onboarding easiness, etc.

4. How do you identify and mitigate risks in technology and transformation projects?

We can say that tech and transformation projects are also based on standard triangle: cost, time, quality. Similar to project cycle, how you design is a key starting point. Concept and design should give clear direction so you can start communication which is key to any hidden agendas or mis expectations later on. Design, phasing (deal with complexity), planning is great risk mitigation method – step out a bit from day-today project realization while everyone is so absorbed with daily tasks that we tend to miss our focus – are we still supporting our goal? By such pause there is also opportunity to re-check strategic alignment with market and overall company strategy.Then how you develop and execute depends if you chosen right technology, partner/internal dev team. How efficient are your ways of working. For that mostly standard risk identification techniques are sufficient, as they cover technology risk, cyber, data leakage, privacy, regulatory etc. If I would choose one risk to track on leadership level that would be risk ofmisalignment.I mean here in particular meeting project team expectations from tech people about tech itself with business requirements and expected valuewith finance responsible and impact on balance sheet. Another is adequate change management and buy-in between project team and rest of organization.I think is one of key risk to tackle at any stage of the journey, so earlier you start to think about it multidimensional, better you do that – more certainty you gain in successful end. At the end, leadership role is there also to leave or significantly change goals the project at the right moment, with courage instead of “we are almost there” mindset.

5. In the context of your role, how do you leverage data and analytics for making informed and data-backed decisions?

Effective leadership in tech or transformation projectsrequires asking uncomfortable questionsabout ROI. That is ultimate why we do things (even regulatory/compliance can be translated into ROI impact).This part is toughest, during good times in retail there is tendency to say ‘go on, we must have it, we grow!), while during bad times ‘we don’t have money to any investment’.Datadriven decisionsand mindset numbers helps me to challenge if we do the right things. Of course I must be careful to drive sustainability into business domains, so it’s not only about ROI, it’s also about demand and supply –challenging capabilities with appetite and rationale. Metrics over how we calculate benefits and costs are not only perspective. Hard part also is to align company operation metrics with new projects ones. Ask yourselves if you pay attention to PIR of your business cases? Do you track impact on BAU after few months? That is true art!

6. What advice would you offer young professionals interested in pursuing a career in change management?

Not every expert can and should be team leader, not every manager can and should be change leader. And organizations tend to think like this! First think about your mindset, as I mentioned earlier I believe mindset is key, competencies can be bought or taught – are you outcome driven, do you like to be in the middle with honours but also can you handle finger pointing? What is driving you to be better every day – know your why! I think there are also some other behaviours that can be helpful in being good change manager/leader like openness (to listen to others), empathy (to understand perspectives), authenticity (to convince others so they can also believe in certain goal). Second thing is of course learning and experience. Experience you will get with time, but learning you can start today. First to understand how tech or transformation projects are managed, what steps are on the way, what competencies/stakeholders are involved. Second to understand business you are dealing with (basis about operating model, definitions, etc). Finally third to build your workshop – there are many good courses and methodologies (most known probably Prosci), where you can get tools and systematize approach. Good luck!