Leading Transformation – insights from Yvette Mihelic’s experience with Sydney Trains, St George & Transdev…

In this article we draw from the experience of an inspirational Transformation leader, Yvette Mihelic.  Yvette was generous to make time to impart some of her experiential knowledge in a recent interview with 4i Founder Tim Collings.

Yvette has either led or made a significant contribution to some of the most prominent corporate and government transformations in recent years, including the customer revitalisation of St George after their merger with Westpac, the enhancement of NSW Transport’s customer experience, which flowed into her leadership of the customer side of the Opal Card roll-out and subsequent customer experience shifts for Sydney Trains.  Yvette is currently at the helm of another significant shift in the public transport fabric of Sydney, as GM of Transport on Demand, being delivered by TransDev on behalf of TransportNSW.

Yvette points to several key areas to provide a foundation and flow-through for leading successful transformation.  Culture, diversity and communication are the main ones, which we’ll examine more thoroughly below.

At the top of Yvette’s list of key factors to engage to ensure transformation is effective is culture.  In all of her anecdotes, the way that culture was assessed, modified and the methods and manner of the modification were a key underpinning to all the initiatives that followed.  Direct personal engagement with as many of the people involved as possible is at the heart of her style, and those she can’t reach directly she ensures that their engagement is felt by her reports who are cascading down into the structure undergoing the transformation. Culture must in her view always be set from the top and felt throughout, and in her experience with St George and Sydney Trains, the overall communication of why the culture was changing, as well as how this would be done, ensured that the engagement with the transformation was at a minimum understood if not immediately embraced.

Second on Yvette’s list is Diversity.  As the achievement of a significant shift in customer engagement was the desired outcomes of all her transformative leadership roles, matching a more diverse group with the customers they were interacting with was the initial move.  Beyond that, she has advocated for diversity as a benefit for improved organisational learning, that broader experiences, background and cultures foster an overall culture more tolerant of, and interested in applying initiatives based on a wider range of anecdotal origins.  She reflects this in her current leadership of the TransDev Transport on Demand business, which is diverse not only cultural and demographic range, but also in a further contextual measure – that there is a wide range of work experiences, especially very different experience to the primary mode (multi-passenger driving) and also of time in the workplace, as many of the drivers were selected on the basis that they had been out of work for over 5 years.

The final area Yvette highlights is communication, which in assessing her experience and style is candid, consistent across levels and functions of the organisation she is transforming, and open in terms of sharing the vision and feedback across the organisational matrix.  She also expects that a respectful, mutually candid level of communication be maintained throughout the groups she leads, and that this mode delivers the best outcomes in terms of productivity, innovation and cultural development.

Reflecting on Yvette’s comments, we can contend that leaders striving for transformative change in their own organisations, especially the customer-facing elements of them, would benefit from putting culture, diversity and communication prominently in their focus, and anticipate lasting, sustainable and dramatic improves as a result.

To read a full version of the interview between myself and Yvette Mhelic, click here…

Thank you again to Yvette for her time and wisdom, we look forward to staying in touch to both celebrate her future success and continue to learn with her.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the read, more to follow from 4iGroup on leading transformation.