Leading transformation: Navigating changes in the environment, technology, and operations
This is a recap of a session from AiDASH Evolve 2024
Summary:
- Although their specific reasons were unique, the panelists agreed that change became necessary and unavoidable for their respective utilities.
- Change management requires planning, leadership, communication, and buy-in from front-line workers.
- Progress in achieving results from new technological solutions is usually gradual and iterative.
Considering how recent and historically extreme weather events have stricken swaths of the globe and affected utility services with increased regularity, it was an appropriate turn of phrase when Shubham Kumar, Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), described a confluence of industry challenges as “a perfect storm.”
Kumar was a panelist at the “Leading Transformation: Navigating Changes in the Environment, Technology, and Operations” session at AiDASH Evolve 2024 in New Orleans. Moderated by Azum Ali, VP of Customer Success and Transformation at AiDASH, the panel comprised:
- Don Adcock, Senior Manager, Power Delivery and Vegetation Management Operations, Entergy
- Kristen Bridges, Vegetation Management and Contract Services Manager, Alabama Power
- Shubham Kumar, Managing Director and Partner, BCG
- August Ridder, Operations Manager, Vegetation Management, Xcel Energy
The elements of that “storm” are familiar to everyone in the utility industry, but the panelists articulate echoed them. Concisely, they are:
- Increasing operational costs.
Declining reliability. - Changing customer dynamics.
- Growing renewable energy transitions.
- Increasing intensity and frequency of environmental disasters.
- Technological disruption of traditional workflows.
“I have had the opportunity to look at it in a cross-sectional manner because I’ve been supporting utilities over the last 12 years or so across North America,” Kumar said. “We are seeing challenges-slash-opportunities, and all of them have come together in…the last couple of years.”
The need for change
Each utility represented on the panel encountered their own challenges that made change unavoidable. And each turned to technology solutions.
For Xcel Energy, it was a combination of flatlining reliability and rising UVM costs. “It was a slow death that was happening over, let’s say, 7-10 years,” said Ridder. And then COVID-19 happened, work slowed, and he said they realized: “We’re heading in an unrecoverable direction. We have to change pace if we still want to maintain reliability and do it with a realistic O&M budget.”
“We came on board with AiDASH understanding that the cyclical four-year, five-year approach was not going to be sustainable any longer, and we should be targeting things that actually need to be worked,” Ridder said. “We started down that road with criticality and growth-modeling to try to target the areas that need to be working and would have the highest bang for our buck reliability-wise.”
For Alabama Power, there wasn’t a specific moment where things came to a head, Bridges explained. Instead, it evolved over the course of years. However, like Xcel, the pandemic made managing their UVM program especially difficult. “Just trying to balance [vegetation management] with the resources that were available certainly became a challenge when the labor markets were really strained during COVID times,” she said.
She said the team was already hunting for innovation to help them do things differently, but for a long time, the technology they needed just wasn’t available. “So as technology has developed, and these tools have been developed, we started to explore those.”
Entergy’s story is similar to both Xcel’s and Alabama Power’s, according to Adcock. “The funding was the main thing,” he said. Their costs were rising, but the funding wasn’t keeping pace. They were being tasked with trying to do more with less.
Entergy had already begun working with AiDASH on trim prioritization, and they found that the technology enabled them to more rapidly prioritize where they needed to trim. They were able to be more surgical and move away from a time-based trim cycle.
Effective change management
Of course, recognizing the need for change and identifying a technology solution that could help is just the first step. The real work is in change management: Getting stakeholders bought in, onboarding new tools, and conducting trials in the field. This can be especially difficult in legacy industries, like the utility space, where adaptation typically moves slowly.
All of the panelists talked about how they successfully navigated those tricky waters. Here’s a summary of their advice and experience:
- A lot of solutions are developed in response to needs in the field, so when front-line people find something they want to explore, support that by checking it out.
- Look for tools and resources you can onboard and add value quickly.
- Start with “version zero,” go down the path, and iterate as needed.
- Don’t wait for the perfect solution, and don’t stay “married” to something that isn’t working — fail fast. Build a culture where you can be innovative without being perfect.
- Set expectations with stakeholders that any new solution won’t be perfect, and encourage feedback.
- Engage the front-line people early—don’t get stuck in an ivory tower.
- Mitigate skepticism by setting the right goals for the right stakeholders and helping them understand how a new solution will benefit their team.
- Rely on “champions” across the organization, then roll the solution out to their peers.
- Wherever there is resistance or concern about a tool, field-verify the accuracy of the output.
Fundamentally, the focus should be on people and processes more than anything else. “We have a philosophy of 10/20/70. Whenever you have a digital change, technology is only going to solve 10% of the issue. Data is going to solve 20% of the issue. People and processes are going to solve 70% of it,” said Kumar.
By maintaining open communication, encouraging innovative thinking, and supporting exploration of new technologies, leadership can challenge teams to think beyond current limitations.
Measuring and maintaining technological progress
The panelists spoke about two overarching ideas when it comes to measuring and maintaining technological progress. One is obvious and practical — testing in the field and improving results with a feedback loop — and the other is psychological and human.
To the former, it’s of course critical to test and validate any technology tool. But there’s more to it. Ridder pointed out the value of using field testing to get people more bought in. “I can’t stress enough how helpful it was to take my four program managers out to oversee the Midwestern states that I cover,” he said. When they field-validated what the satellites were seeing, sometimes it was right and sometimes it was wrong, but: “Having them be able to give feedback and beat up on it a little bit empowered them — that they have control over this.”
He also noted how important it is to recognize wins and progress. “It’s easy, when you’re moving incrementally, to not realize the change that’s happening.”
Bridges has a similar mindset. “We continue to try to remember that we’re better than we were yesterday,” she said. “We’re really [aiming to keep] the communication loop open so we can give feedback and it can be incorporated into product versions in the future.”
Adcock also explained the importance of helping employees understand the value of the technology balanced against the value of the people who do the work. Some employees might be thinking, “You’re just trying to take my job and make it automated,” Adcock said. “But…they’re a necessary part to overcome hurdles and to correct and define what is going to make it right.”
He continued, “And then just understanding that [AI] is a tool. It’s not a magic bullet. It’s not going to fix everything, [and] it’s not going to make you spend zero dollars on vegetation management. It’s just another tool in the toolbox.”
The utility sector is undergoing significant transformation driven by technological advancements, environmental challenges, and changing operational requirements. Success depends not just on adopting new technologies, but also on cultivating a culture of adaptability, continuous learning, and collaborative innovation.
Technology like satellites and AI are powerful tools, but it’s people and processes that ultimately drive meaningful change.
Check out more sessions and information from Evolve 2024, and reach out to see the AiDASH Platform in action!