Pekin Insurance

Katie Williams

As an organizational change leader and advisor at Pekin Insurance, Katie Williams builds highly effective teams who use organizational change management tools to enable the business to achieve results. She has 25 years of experience in combined organizational change management, specializing in communications strategies, executive speechwriting, crisis communications, strategic learning, employee and leadership development, team building and coaching. Katie is also Change Management certified from Prosci since 2007.

What are the challenges currently prevailing in the industry in regard to Organizational Change Management?

The misconception about Organizational Change Management is the biggest challenge. Many times people think we just help with communication which is not true. But, there is nothing to blame people as it’s still not so developed. There is an immediate need to have good communication background that will help them understand what else we offer. It will save a lot of time to do true work changes on some projects.

"There is an immediate need to have good communication background that will help them understand what else we offer"

Another pain point is having a different vision for organizational change management. The traditional method is kind of separate from today’s communications and training. I struggled when I recruited people and made them understand that model. I had an org change lead and a specialist within my staffing model, which was a different approach that we took. Hence, it’s a hurdle asking for funding or staffing as a lot of education and awareness needs to be imparted to help them understand what we do. As a team, it’s important to understand the work change within our company. At Pekin, we’ve got talented people who support and understand what we can provide.

How do you envision the future for the change management space?

I envision organizational change management with more exposure on the HR side. It should be a blending of both where we can understand how we need to work together and solve employee issues more holistically. As Pekin is looking to become more agile in the business area, I believe that blending both processes can expand the traditional org change methodology and will help us to become agile too. In coming years, we tend to have the foundational pieces in the learning development space and more capability to help our managers, coaches and employees improve as we build more career opportunities.

What would be your advice for the upcoming professionals to be successful in this field?

My advice would be to keep evolving, challenging and looking for what makes sense in the org change practice with the agile mindset. Also, focus on blending the processes with the HR side because you need to be a cohesive unit.