Meet Organizational Change Management Director Juliana do Amaral Hickey
Meet Juliana do Amaral Hickey, Organizational Change Management Director at Stoneridge Software. Juliana is passionate about collaboratively developing and implementing change management strategies. With organizational change management being an integral part of successful realization in projects, her team connects with clients to clearly define success for the technology, conduct readiness assessments, and develop change strategies that help ensure clients are maximizing their investment in technology solutions. Learn more about Juliana and Change Management in this Q&A.
Q: How would you define Change Management?
A: Officially, we define Change Management as "the process, tools, and techniques to manage the people side of change to achieve a business outcome." This definition includes a variety of components to it:
- Process, tools, and techniques: this refers to the fact that change management is a discipline with methods developed based on years of research. Effective change management takes an "art and science" approach, and this is specifically about the science of it.
- Manage the people side: this refers to the human behaviors that need to change for an organization to realize the benefits of their transition. In technology, a system can be amazingly built, but if end-users don't adapt their behavior to use it, organizations get no value from implementing it.
- Achieve business outcomes: Ultimately, our goal is to help our clients achieve the vision of success set out at the beginning of an initiative by enabling the people impacted to use it.
Q: What is the vision of the Change Management team at Stoneridge?
A: Change Management at Stoneridge empowers all team members to facilitate intentional change adoption and initiative success through a deliberate approach to the people side of change.
Q: What does a typical day of the week look like for the Stoneridge Change Management Consultants?
A: Change Management consultants at Stoneridge have very flexible days depending on how big their projects are and at what point in the implementation they are. Often, we spend time identifying and mitigating people-related risks to the implementation, developing or executing change strategies or tactics, and advising clients through the specific change challenges that they are facing.
Q: Why is this role important to a client project?
A: It's easy to think that Change Management is something that we can add to the role of one of our current project team members. Although that may be the right answer in rare instances, more often than not, the team members assigned to manage change on the side get buried in work as the implementation progresses and the people side of change becomes an afterthought. Including a Change Management Consultant in your implementation ensures that people, their behavior, and the initiative’s overall success are always top of mind, even when we are working through the more detailed aspects of the project.
Q: What do you find rewarding about Change Management?
A: People! My favorite part of doing this work is partnering with clients to support their employees through a transition that often-times feels challenging. The ability to minimize business disruption and make our client's employees' days a bit easier makes me so passionate about what we do here.
Q: What is one piece of advice you'd give to leadership at a company that is embarking on a Business Software implementation?
A: The going will get tough. I've been implementing ERP and CRM solutions for about 10 years and have never had an absolutely flawless implementation. Lean into the learning opportunities and the challenges so that the implementation can come out on the other end with, not only a new system that meets your needs but also the resilience and knowledge to make sure it’s successful in the long run. Also, rely on your consulting team. They do this every day and can help you navigate the tough spots in your implementation with their experience.
Q: What is one piece of advice you'd give to employees at a company going through a Business Software implementation?
A: Change can be difficult, avoiding it only makes it worse. Engage with the initiative, ask questions, try things in the system, raise your concerns… This will give your implementation team visibility into what is or isn't working so that they can address it. If an implementation team has no feedback, we tend to assume everyone is working perfectly, and if it's perfect, there is nothing to change.
Q: Where's the coolest place you've ever traveled to and why?
A: This is not a cop-out, but everywhere I've traveled to is the coolest place I've been! I love getting to know cultures and people that differ from me. I've never been to a country I didn't love and that didn't expand my horizons somehow.
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