Building your change management plan, and how

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Welcome to our open house. Instead of examining hardwood floors, closet space, and kitchen layouts, we're taking you on a tour of what's happening across today's mortgage industry. During each episode, we'll hear from industry leaders and subject matter experts to give us an inside look into a hot topic, Cuttingedge technology, or new trend that can help accelerate your digital journey. Thank you for joining us. Come on in.

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the ICE Mortgage Technology Open House Podcast. My name is Aaron Dormio, Senior Product Marketing Manager here at Ice Mortgage Technology and I'm excited for another episode in our Culture of Automation miniseries. In this 4th episode, Building Your Change Management Plan and how I'm joined by Mia Ferrera, Director of Product Management at Ice Mortgage Technology. Mia has over 20 years experience in the mortgage industry having served in multiple operational roles including managing, closing, underwriting.

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And purchasing and her role as Director of Product for the Encompass platform. Mia is primarily responsible for the development and implementation of new product enhancements that bring efficiency and automation into customer workflows. I'm excited to get her perspective on the key steps for executing an effective change management strategy, particularly as it relates to implementing a culture of automation. So sit back, grab your coffee and enjoy the conversation.

1:22
Hey, Mia. Thanks for joining us. How you doing? I'm doing good. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Hey, so I I know that this topic is really near and dear to your heart. You know, helping customers better understand how they can leverage effective organizational change management as a means of successfully implementing things like automation across their entire organization. We talk about this offline. And so I think you're really the the perfect person to have on this episode and kind of talking through why is this so important. So we don't have time to cover that.

1:52
Full gamut of the seven top list for effective change management, I'd love to trim that down to three key points that the first point is that process of effective organizational change management. It starts you know arguably with effective timely internal communications and that business readiness. I'd love to get your perspective on that as like step one for building that change management strategy. Yeah, I think Aaron, I really do love this piece of the process flow because even from a manager.

2:22
Or top end, right. We're all looking for ways to how can we get everybody on board with us when it comes down to a change management process. Not everybody in the organization likes change. And so I've always found this piece really important for us to get the buy in from all levels, right. So you want to start with your execs, but then you also want to make sure that we're getting our management users kind of involved in that process, you know gathering some of the leaders that might be in those specific areas of the business that it's being changed for, right bringing them.

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And making sure that they're part of the ones that can help be your trusted business partner or your allies through the process and giving them a little bit part of that platform for them to then bring it back to their own teams. It really does help when you're starting to make them part of the process rather than just pushing that change management onto them. Yeah. And so and so doing that, putting in place a business readiness strategy and a business readiness plan that really opens up the communication across channels to all employees from each.

3:22
Carry within the business in each level of that business, what are some ways that they can start by doing that and in a way that explains the the with them, right, like what's in it for them? How can they be a change management agent within their area of the business? Yeah, I think that First off communications key, right. I think that what are the types of changes that you're putting in the place on top of like how can we fit that into a training and when you're doing those trainings, how does that training impact that specific user role not just overall the.

3:52
Entire business, because I noticed that when I have done trainings in the past and I'm doing not specific towards a user, but more specific around the general concept, we lose people through that, right? But when we get a little bit more down to the specific of that user role, they're more inclined to pay attention to it and to also figure out how they might be able to better that solution as well. I find that doing the more less broad scope and more user role is more efficient in that process. That's a really great point. I'm glad you brought that up.

4:22
That makes me think about from the standpoint of creating a culture of automation. There are certain user roles and we touched on this in other episodes, but I think bringing some specificity to this is would be really helpful. What are some user roles that you would say maybe two or three main user roles that would need to, you know, receive this communication at the earliest point and then other user roles? Is it kind of like a layered effect or should all users and what are those user roles that should be communicated to? I think that operationally right?

4:52
I would like to touch, I I normally touch the operational piece of this first because I always find that they're the front end of whatever change that we're usually doing. If I stick with the operations of the beginning loan file process or something of the sort, I am more focused on drilling down with them first because then everything that comes after the fact of that, whether it's the, you know, after the closing world or anything like that, I can kind of see the whole workflow first, right beginning to end if I start from another area towards the end process.

5:22
I might end up making a change towards the beginning part of the process that impacts what I just got done trying to implement at the end part of the process. So I like to start through my operational workflow of like where does it start and then lead into where it finishes coming from an operational background, I mean that makes perfect sense, right? The people that are on the front end.

5:41
Need to be brought in and being given what's what's the big picture, right. What are we trying to accomplish here. That's something that they are going to be dealing with day in, day out. If you make this change management whereas someone who might be getting different forms of that data from that piece, right, they're not going that might not be a day in, day out. That might be something that's being done on a quarterly basis, a monthly basis. So really getting the buy in and help from those that are actually doing day in, day out for that where that change is being made. That's right and that's that's.

6:11
That's great context and that that dovetails nicely into who would be those evangelists. We have a better idea of whom to communicate with, but who are those people that would be evangelists and advocates and change management agents to keep this process going right and keep that positive message going? Then you just mentioned that those people that may not be in the front lines may not be managing the daytoday, but there's certainly people that are influencers in this process, right? Maybe you could touch on that as well. So like even the people that are on the back end framework, we don't want to leave them out because.

6:41
That some of times this change management processes actually do impact them and maybe we aren't thinking about how it might impact them. Some of the changes that we make might impact how we pull our reports or what's inside of those report mechanisms or the data that's being passed over to another third party.

6:57
Service or or provider or something of the sort, right. So we really want to keep in mind wherever that change management is happening even on the front end still can impact some of those back end components for people who are still there doing other parts of the job. So bringing that why like which brings in that whole process low, right. You have to get the full end to end spectrum when you're doing a change management, not just the frontline. Here's what we're doing, here's what we're changing. This is going to help you because it may actually impact somebody else down the other part of the.

7:27
Are there any steps that we should be mindful of when it comes to, you know, full scope end to end, particularly those people that you know are part of the process, but maybe not, they may not be part of the day today, right, but they certainly are essential to what makes up that entire workflow. Are there any steps that we should be mindful of as it relates to, you know, now that we've communicated to these different people, where do we go from here in terms of getting full buy in and full advocacy on making sure that this thing has legs to it and we're successful in implementing this?

7:57
All culture and implementing this solution right that we're trying to build a culture around. For me I used to have working group sessions that I would consistently do. We do them on it. You know sometimes we start them on like an every two basis turn it into an every week basis depending on how close we're getting to like finalizing finishing up this project itself. But I think that the communication and making sure that each area of the business is kind of involved that is required here are showing up to those sessions that.

8:27
You're having, right, Because without having the knowledge of what's going on on their end, we might still end up missing that gap. The whole point of those group sessions is really to kind of clear up any of those gaps that we might be coming through. And then as we're walking through these change management items, I get down into the trenches more of like actually let's walk through the actual true process and watch it get all the way to the end. So we really confirm that we've either, did we cover all the gaps that are required or is there something else that we still need to kind of tweak?

8:57
In order to perfect it and granted we always have to remember that whatever we're putting together isn't always perfect. We can gradually enhance that as we go through. Even after we've released out that change management process. We just don't want to do something that's going to break a process. You made a really important distinction there is to you know convey to the, to the group at large of, you know in these user groups, what is it that we're trying to accomplish right, what's the, what's the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe we don't have the full scope mapped out, but we certainly have an.

9:27
Idea What's the expected output of of this to kind of give people an idea of what are we trying to accomplish, where they fit in, they, they fit in broadly, right? So they can kind of get a feel for overall, what is this supposed to look like and how is it supposed to impact me So and so and so and so in different teams that really that that vision comes from the top, right from the executive team and how they cascade that vision down to those different business units.

9:53
And the leaders within it, within each business unit, maybe you can touch on how that area of execution, how that starts, how that shared vision is conveyed across teams. To me this really comes down to defining the why. But because we're into the why, it's also the how. So for me, the the users when you're trying to explain like why is this, why are we doing this?

10:15
It's also like, how are we going to do this and how are, how is this going to help this person? Because especially when we're talking about automation, it's really hard for a lot of users to let go and to believe that whatever process we're putting in is actually going to do what it is that they would have done themselves right as a manual process. It's really hard for users to let go of that piece. So getting the why, why are we doing this? When I explain to users, we're putting this process in place so that way you can focus.

10:43
On a whole nother area that we don't normally always focus on hard enough, they get lost in the but I have to manually do it. But if they realize that they can.

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Instead of taking 30 minutes to do this piece, they can now take 30 minutes to do all and more than what they were doing originally right? Because this automated process helps them. So the why, the how and and then them being able to visually see it is probably the other piece of this, right? You're not going to throw an automation piece in and then all of a sudden a user just use it.

11:17
They're going to want to see the automation happen and then they're going to want to confirm it did exactly what they would have done manually on multiple occasions until they can trust it enough to just kind of back off and go OK, it's doing what it needs to do. That's right. That's right. And and as part of that like you like you said earlier including the different user groups, right that including the different business units including people from that you may not normally think of in a day-to-day basis, but are really essential to making this work not only making the the strategy work in and and bringing by.

11:47
In, but they're really essential to how we're going to adopt this new solution as an organization, right and how that ultimately will benefit the borrowers. What are some of those communication channels aside from e-mail, you mentioned user groups are really helpful. What are, what are some other channels that can be utilized throughout an organization to not only get buy in to pull people in the communication, but to also kind of keep them up to date on what are we doing, what's coming, what's upcoming in this process. I very much love the engagement, the engagement of implementing a change.

12:17
Changes, right. It's not the I'm just going to push an e-mail to you and here's what's changing, here's why, here's how, right. What I usually do on my end is I like to connect with my training department. I always find that my role with the training department is to help give that that creative engagement that we can bring in to this process. Because spitting out words on an e-mail or spitting out words and you know into a policy or a procedure, it doesn't always mean the same. But if somebody actually.

12:47
It has the visual or there's more of a training mechanism behind it with a video and they're actually going through it and keeping it specific. Again, if you're keeping it specific to the user role, this is where those trainings really are more efficient that to me. And then in my role to accept feedback from those that are doing this right. I sometimes we're not always 100% right, sometimes there was something we missed.

13:13
And a lot of time, our users are the ones that can provide that, that that type of feedback. So make sure that they understand that after they go through their training, if they have something where they feel like it's still not going to do what they think it needs to do, that they have that open line of communication with the team that's working through this process. And really that's arguably the most important part of this is to have that feedback loop mechanism in place for people throughout each step of the process to kind of circle back and say, hey, this is decreasing efficiency. For me, it's not.

13:43
Really working as we expected or it's helping to increase efficiency and here's why. Maybe there's an opportunity for us to optimize this even further. I I love that that distinction that you just made. One more point I'd like to touch on here before we jump here. I I love how you're you're really going back to what's the why, why are we doing this? What's in it for me? Why am I part of this process? Because a lot of people don't really know where they fit in a lot of times.

14:07
As it pertains to, especially as it pertains to organizational change management, a lot of organizations don't even do that, right. They don't even have a change management function. Everyone's just kind of told here, do this, here's what we expect of you and there's not really clear a clear vision of why we're doing this. I I'd love to kind of get from you some parting thoughts on what people should really be looking at when they're identifying the why for their organization. Kind of touch back on that. Yeah, I I definitely think that for me it really it really.

14:37
Comes down to the teammates that you have to back you on these types of things. You know, in most organizations we have those teammates. We know who those teammates are when we're making these types of change management items. And so when we kind of get together and we're doing this as long as we're promoting it in a very positive level to those right. And we're not just pushing it off as the this is what we're doing and this is how we're going to do it. And if it doesn't, you know if you don't utilize it this way then it's you know, a problem. It's more long lines of.

15:07
We're here to help you if we're presenting these change items, which majority of time when we're trying to do automation, we're really trying to increase the efficiency for a user where they can kind of let go of doing very simple items that have been on put on their plate, right that may be backing up originally. If you think about it right back in the day when and I'm going to go back to like paper files really quickly, we did a lot less input of data that we were doing and you know when we're looking at files and now today we're required.

15:37
To provide a lot of data and so for me that whole manual process us finding ways to take that onus off of that user again the way that we used to basically, but but still providing that data, we can do that, but we have to just make sure that we're presenting it in more of a positive note to our users. Bringing them as part of that process is really how you're going to gauge them to want to take more of that change. That positivity then pushes positivity out to their own teammates because of it.

16:07
That's right. That's right. At the end of the day, you know, how is this going to make my job easier? And and how can we work with the rest of our team to show them the same, right. And how can we get it, get a feedback loop going as to OK, here, here's how you can be a change agent. Here's how this is going to improve your job and ultimately improve the lives of our Bowers and make it easier for them to work with us. Well, thank you, Mia. I think this was an extremely helpful episode. I think your listeners are going to get a lot out of this. And I think this would be really helpful for them to kind of take.

16:37
What we've been talking about in the previous episodes and now put that pen to paper and put the execution in place as to how they can leverage change management to really implement this culture of automation. So I really, I appreciate you being here with us today and helping walk us through that. Yeah. Thank you so much. I, I appreciate being on here. This is incredible. And I'm super grateful for being able to provide at least the insight that I've had in my own change management process. Thank you. You bet. Thanks, Mia. Take care.

17:04
Thanks again for joining another episode of the Ice Mortgage Technology Open House Podcast. Be sure to be on the lookout for future content as well as the next episode of the Culture of Automation miniseries. We look forward to having you. Thanks again and be safe out there.