State of the Organization: Managing Change to Achieve Success

Monthly newsletter format “state of the organization," internal post, executive voice.

By Don Scott

Dear Team:

With spring nearly upon us in the Northern Hemisphere, we can draw inspiration from Nature’s battle against winter’s grip. A renewal and rejuvenation can be healthy for the mind and soul. Like the bloom of a flower pushing through and raising her head we, too, can derive energy. We can see light and opportunity to grow in our own lives, with our workplace family colleagues, and in our roles with PayPal. As we strive to continue transforming lives around the world through technological opportunity, we must also stay in touch with our organizational core values to be the best that we can be. And yes, sometimes that encompasses change. Spring, after all, is about change.

As President and CEO Dan Schulman said, “2022 was a transformative year for PayPal. We invested in our platform to better serve our customers, while focusing and streamlining our business.” We are focused on the end-to-end customer experience. In the past two years, we have introduced a significant number of products and services. We've sharpened our focus on strategic priorities, strengthened our planning process, and increased our discipline with respect to capital allocation. We're prioritizing engagement; increasing the activity and engagement level of these users, converting new ones, and driving more daily use is one of our greatest opportunities.

All of this could not be done without our people. In a dynamic environment, sometimes #change is asked of us. Change is not always easy. Successful change happens at the individual level. The challenges and stress that come with trying to manage change sometime seen nonstop. Change is a constant. And people manage change differently. Sometimes, resistance comes into play. When trying to effect change within an organization, for example, that desired outcome can only truly succeed when individuals buy in. That means as individuals we must understand why the change is happening; we want to know “What’s in it for me?” and the risks of not changing.

When we are informed about the change and understand what is being asked of us, we are generally more inclined to support the initiative and engage in moving the effort forward. Creating desire around a change can be helped along through transparent #communications from trusted leaders within a #changemanagement current-state to future-state transformation.

Asking people to change in a collaborative PayPal environment means making sure colleagues have the information, knowledge, and training necessary to know how to change, and then the ability to implement and execute the change being asked of them.

Lastly—once we have addressed building awareness, creating desire, disseminated the knowledge of how to change, and turned that knowledge into action and ability—let’s celebrate the successes of the change. Commend participants, pass out rewards, gather employee feedback, measure performance, and build accountability metrics into the daily operations. Doing these things helps reinforce the desired change and sustain it.

If you find yourself in a change-seeking position, what are you trying to achieve and how do you define success? Consider evaluating the impact of the change being asked: who must do their jobs differently and how? And finally, asking what it will take to achieve success will help define your approach to your ask.

Oh…and the most critical element of all to a change initiative is to have an active and visible primary sponsor. According to a #Prosci® Benchmarking Report of more than 1,800 change leaders, the most critical role of a primary sponsor is:

1. Active and visible participation through the project. This includes supporting the team and championing the change.

2. Communicating support and promoting the change to impacted groups.

3. Building a coalition of sponsorship, e.g., organizational change agents.

By knowing how to best manage any changes that come our way, we at PayPal will be better positioned to improve quality, delivery, and efficiency across the business.