Spotlight on Coram Williams: Leading Strategic Change as a CFO
The hardest part of strategic change is often implementation. Whether driven by threats or opportunities, it requires bringing everyone along.
Coram Williams – CFO of Adecco, and ex-CFO of Pearson – has navigated both types. We sat down with Coram to ask him what he learned leading strategic change.
In your previous role as CFO of Pearson, you were involved in a substantial company restructure. What were the challenges you faced during this process?
Pearson is an education business, and the textbook publishing aspect was the engine room of the company in terms of sales and profit. While I was CFO this was going through a major digital transformation, which impacted the wider organisation.
There were three aspects to the restructuring of Pearson. The first thing that we had to do was shift the model of textbook publishing. It sounds simple in theory, but in practice, it is extraordinarily complicated; it’s a bit like changing the wheels on a car that is moving, because everything – publishing schedules, sales – is already underway. You have to turn that on its head while not losing revenue from the traditional business. We faced two challenges: understanding the speed at which the transition would happen (change is never clear, and rarely linear); and the managerial challenge of incentivising people in the new business while motivating people in the declining business.
Second, we reshaped the portfolio: we sold the Financial Times and our stake in the Penguin Random House venture. The challenge there was to exit very strong, famous businesses in a way that obtained the maximum value for everyone involved, while also explaining to the remaining organisation why we were doing it. That was hard, because those assets were part of the identity of the firm.
Third, we significantly reduced the cost base – we knew we would have a healthy business on the other side of the transition, but it would be a smaller business, at least in the short term. We had to be in the detail of every big bucket of cost and understand the consequences of reducing it because you can have very negative consequences on an organisation if you cut the wrong cost.
How did employees and stakeholders respond to the new direction? What had to be done to get them onboard?
The first thing we were faced with was skepticism, and this was the bit I didn’t necessarily expect. But what is self-evident to you as a leader, is not necessarily evident to all the other people in the organisation. I had to manage my way through that thought of “have we messed up, have I as a leader messed up?”. I learned that you must over-communicate. What you think is over-communication is the right level of communication for the organisation, because the point at which you are so bored with your own voice, is the moment you’ve landed the message.
It’s a mix of explanation – why has this happened, where are we going – and reassurance that, while you can’t guarantee everything, you do, as an organisation, have a clear plan, a clear path and agility on how you respond to things.
As CFO, which skills and traits were important for you to be successful in driving the new strategy?
I’ll emphasise it again – communication, communication, communication. You really have to bring people with you. The second thing I would highlight – and if I’m being honest we didn’t do enough of this – is that you have to analyse and strategically understand what’s going on in your market. What is declining, why is it declining, what’s growing, and what’s the impact on how you allocate resources within the organisation? I think business prizes quick decisions, but when you’re going through a big organisational change, the consequences of getting it wrong are really significant, so you need to slow down and really understand it. I think the pressure on a CFO or CEO to just make a quick decision is huge, but you have to resist it.
Calmness and resilience are also vital because you have good days, you have tough days, you have days when the shareholders are beating you up and the employees are suggesting you got it wrong. You have to be very clear headed, not take it personally, and accept that you’re heading in that direction and you’re doing your best to bring it with you.
What got you through it?
For me, I had very clear downtime. I have a rule that I don’t look at my work phone on a Saturday – I don’t always manage it, but most Saturdays the phone is in the drawer. Everybody knows it, which means nobody tries to get hold of you, and it just gives you headspace. Exercise and keeping yourself healthy is also key.
Tell us about your work at Adecco Group
“Humans respond to threat more than…to opportunity…so one of the challenges…is how to move an organisation in the direction you think the market is going to go, before the market goes there.”
Adecco is different from Pearson: at Pearson we had a digital transition that was real and potentially threatening because the loss of revenue in the main business put us under quite a lot of pressure; at Adecco, the shift from traditional to digital businesses is not being forced in the same way. In some ways, this makes it harder, because humans respond to threat more than they respond to opportunity, so one of the challenges for us at Adecco is how to move an organisation in the direction you think the market is going to go, before the market goes there.
At Adecco, we have created digital ‘twins’: EZRA, a fully virtual democratised coaching tool, and HIRED, a subscription-based professional recruitment business. With EZRA, clients connect with coaches for short, sharp 45-minute coaching sessions, anytime, anywhere in the world. It’s all scheduled electronically. It’s unbelievably successful, to the point that it’s likely we will shift our traditional coaching business to that model in the future. With HIRED, employers pay a subscription for access to the platform and can recruit as many people as they like.
“EZRA came from a workshop entitled ‘How do we cannibalise our own business?”
EZRA and HIRED had very different development paths. EZRA came from a workshop entitled ‘How do we cannibalise our own business?’; with HIRED, we set it up and then acquired a small business that had a better brand and more effective tech platform, to sit on top of it.
With these ‘twins’ we faced the familiar challenge of traditional versus new business – very exciting for the new business, but a struggle for the traditional business, which believes the new venture will cannibalise its market. So, we ring-fenced the digital twins to allow them to grow: the businesses shared the commercial front end – leads, market, sales processes, incentives etc – but the rest of the organisation was effectively put off to one side and incubated, like a digital venture capitalist business. This allowed us to share the piece that’s commercially valuable, but also preserve the agility that is needed as a digital startup.
One of Adecco’s key focuses is reskilling/upskilling – why is this so important for big organisations, especially in the current climate?
The pace of change in economies and work environments is accelerating, and this makes it hard to lead and operate as a worker, because you’re dealing with more rapid and more fundamental change. While I think the pandemic and the current geopolitical situation are contributing to it, it was a trend that was there before, it’s merely been accelerated.
When the pace of change accelerates, the need for organisations, employers and employees to keep pace also accelerates. These days, employers are looking for skills they weren’t five or six years ago, such as data analytics, social media optimisation and digital marketing. I think that’s why upskilling and reskilling have become so important – they are effectively the currency by which organisations compete, and it’s more efficient for a business to retrain people who already work there, than it is to recruit or transition a workforce.
Additionally, people who have the right skills feel good about their job. In my opinion, correctly skilling a team creates better engagement and job satisfaction, and there is a clear correlation with performance of an organisation.
The pandemic has completely changed the way people want to work; people have reevaluated their careers, and have different priorities now. How can organisations make this an opportunity rather than a problem?
The pandemic has changed employee attitudes to work, but it’s had different impacts in different countries, so it’s key for an employer to understand what it is workers want, in each of the business’s key locations. It’s not just about money; money does matter, but it’s quite often the reason people move, not the reason they stay.
The reason people stay is increasingly work-life balance, something the pandemic has brought into sharp relief. To me, this means flexibility, it doesn’t mean remoteness. If employers give their workers an environment that allows them to operate in the way they want, they will have a much more engaged and productive workforce.
At Adecco, we don’t dictate that our employees are in the office, but we suggest that they should probably be there two to three days a week, and the feedback on this has been very positive. If you give employees the ability to choose, and the autonomy and authority to be able to do it, then you’re in a good place.
How do you encourage innovation at Adecco?
“We don’t blame people when things go wrong… we give people the space to experiment and reward them for it.”
We have a very entrepreneurial culture, and we encourage that – we don’t blame people when things go wrong (because they will), but recognise and reward them when things go right. We also really recognise the value of what people do within the organisation. All of us as leaders within the group are people-orientated; we give people the space to experiment and reward them for it.
Key takeaways
Implementing strategic change is never easy, and requires bringing everyone – colleagues, stakeholders and employees – with you on the journey.
Communication is everything. Explanation – why this is happening, where the company is heading – and reassurance – there is a clear plan and path – are vital to overcoming skepticism and moving the organisation forward.
Organisations are better placed to compete if they focus on upskilling and reskilling existing employees, rather than focusing on recruiting or transitioning a workforce.
Be flexible. Work-life balance is becoming increasingly important to people worldwide. Listening to what employees want and allowing them autonomy to work the way they want fosters engagement and productivity.