Dan McCambridge - Specialists in Corporate Transformation

Dan McCambridge
Partner, Project Executive

•	Former VP Business Engineering/International Business Development at Bell Canada and CGI
•	Transformation clients include Bell, Saudi Telecom and British Telecom
•	Led Network Inventory Management and Service Provisioning transformation projects for Bell Canada
•	Developed ‘case for change’ for transformational outsourcing transactions
•	Growing Totem Hill’s London, UK operations

‘A Culture Of Asking Questions’

How did you come to the field of transformation? It was at Bell I got my first taste of transformation, developing the business case for automating the company’s planning and provisioning processes. It was a $70 million project with huge stakes. It had to be done for all sorts of compelling reasons—which the business case showed clearly. That exercise got me hooked. I learned you need a strong rationale for organizational transformation, you have to understand why you’re doing it. At Totem Hill one of the things that makes us different is that while we’re very good at developing that rationale, coming up with a strategy, we also do the implementation. We see the work through right to the end.

What’s the most challenging transformation project you’ve ever been involved in? I would say it’s more a category of transformation. The transformation projects that pose the greatest challenges are those with large numbers of diverse stakeholders who have distinct and sometimes opposing agendas. The less well-aligned the stakeholders, the harder it gets. Multi-organizational transformations are the most difficult for that reason; there’s often resistance within the organizations. Those projects have the greatest inherent risk. Yet they’re by far the most interesting. Culture is another challenge. I think that’s why I consider the work I did with Saudi Telecom to be one of my most successful transformation projects. There were a number of organizational and operational hurdles, and on top of those were all kinds of cultural issues that made the work even more complex. But we did it. By pulling together, focusing on the goal and cultivating genuine care for one another among the people involved, we brought it off.

Is culture an important factor in transformation? Oh, hugely. There’s social culture and there’s corporate culture. There are aspects you can’t—and shouldn’t try to—change. Differences you have to accept. And you have to be respectful, always. When you do have to change culture, you have to do it carefully and patiently. You can’t force it. It’s not about one way being wrong and another being right; it’s about revealing how a new way of doing something has benefits for the individual, the organization. When people see that something’s truly good for them, they tend to get on board with it.

It sounds as though relationships are important. Building strong and trusting relationships at every level of the client organization (and among ourselves at Totem Hill) is of prime importance. There’s nothing like a transformation project to put the supplier/client relationship to the test. Every day presents new challenges that have to be addressed. If you want to succeed, you have to address them in a spirit of true partnering. Every member of the team—our team, the client’s team, the team we form together—plays a critical role in forming and nurturing positive, trusting relationships capable of coping with and managing change.

Is there any client expectation you can’t live up to? Ha. There is one, yes. Sometimes, as the experts, we’re expected to have all the answers. When you start a transformation project, you don’t even necessarily know what the questions are. Nor does the client. There’s a process of discovery you have to go through, together, determining which questions to ask, which answers to seek. Because with transformation, you’re doing something that’s never been done within that organization before. There’s no precedent. And even though we’ve done countless transformations at Totem Hill, every one really is different. There’s no standard methodology to apply, no prescription. So in fact I would say a big part of our job is working with our clients to determine which questions to ask. They—our clients—are the ones in the end who have the answers.