HEAR FROM CHAD
Chad Rogerson has been in the People and Change team at Newton for just over a year, having previously spent ten years at Nationwide as Head of Communications.
chad rogersoN
As a Director in the People and Change (P&C) team across Newton’s Consumer sector, Chad spends the majority of his time on individual client projects. He works with clients predominantly across Retail, FMCG and Financial Services sectors and is responsible for developing Newton’s People & Change propositions and capability within this sector. He focuses specifically around change management, transformational leadership and culture change.
As part of the Consumer Board at Newton, Chad plays an active role in leading the sector of 100+ consultants. The team is growing rapidly and Chad is involved with recruitment, building internal P&C expertise and placing specialist P&C consultants into the right project roles where they can add maximum value to clients. He also leads client delivery work which has a strong P&C dimension, often with project teams combining consultants with diverse Operations, Digital and People & Change skillsets.
Chad’s role as a P&C specialist is hugely varied, putting people-centric thinking at the heart of how Newton tackles any client problem. This may be deciding how to motivate people to adopt new behaviours as part of a complex change or working alongside leadership teams to mobilise and align them. It could be considering how to change an organisational culture to enable transformation or creating compelling and engaging communications to support this change. No two days are ever the same and having the ability to adapt and adjust is crucial.
Chad is currently working on one of his largest Newton assignments with a leading UK retailer that has over 80,000 employees. The programme involves transforming the whole business end to end, with many employees having to adopt completely new ways of working. The ability to engage and inspire employees, pinpoint specific behavioural adjustments and carefully plan and manage changes across hundreds of sites is critical.
“Every transformation project has a cultural dimension to it, but one of the biggest challenges I face in my role is helping people understand what it takes to deliver sustainable behavioural change, from leaders down to employees on the shop floor”
Implementing such a large-scale change would not be possible without knowing the working styles and values of the organisation. Therefore, Chad and his team started the project by building an in-depth understanding of the company. To do this, they began by assessing the company’s unique culture, the blockers and enablers to delivering successful change, and how aligned leaders were around transformation.
They then went on to coordinate surveys, focus groups and interviews in order to analyse 20,000 data points. This enabled them to pinpoint the cultural shifts needed to power transformation and identify areas of misalignment among the leadership team. These insights were fundamental factors in how the programme of change was designed and delivered.
Having identified the key areas of importance for implementing change, Chad and his team are working alongside the company’s leadership team to build the correct alignment, motivation and capabilities to lead the transformation. They’re working with the company’s Communication and People teams to make sure they engage all 80,000 employees and are able to deliver a long-term strategy to shift the organisational culture.
By uncovering people-centred insights, Chad and his team are able to bring the personal and emotional elements of business transformation to the table. This approach is valued highly by the client along with the internal Newton team who are able to make decisions from a more considered standpoint.
“The bigger the transformation, the bigger the people impact - the emotional, qualitative and subtle aspects of change become more important”
An equally exciting part of Chad’s role is growing Newton’s presence across new sectors. Drawing on his previous experience from his position at Nationwide, Chad is developing Newton’s market proposition for the financial services sector. Much of this work involves pioneering Newton’s brand awareness among new business and facilitating engagement opportunities with key industry players in financial services. Most recently, Chad hosted an event with influential speaker and The Sunday Times journalist, Matthew Syed, on the theme of divergent thinking with C-Suite guests from a range of insurance and banking firms.
Chad also enjoys improving the capability of Newton’s own consultants by teaching the fundamentals of a people-centred approach. By hosting training sessions and workshops internally at Newton, Chad is able to meet people from across the business and help build their knowledge and experience. P&C consultants at Newton are always working alongside clients and the wider team and it is this variety, matched with such interesting people and the opportunity for flexibility, that makes Chad’s role so enjoyable.
"Life at Newton is varied and full on, but I do have the flexibility to make this work with my home life. As a father of three young children, I feel I am able to strike the right balance. I do work away from home at points during the week, but the flexibility I’m allowed enables me to have quality time with my family and an incredibly fulfilling job role, for which I’m very grateful.”
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