Building Purposeful Tech: a blueprint to make transformations operational and sustainable

Explore how technology enhances transformation success by fostering the right mindset and skills in our quest to unlock organizational potential.

Reiteration is vital: To place your people at the heart of your transformation and achieve your objectives, our extensive research with Oxford reveals that this focus can amplify transformation success by 2.6 times. But the crucial question arises: 'How can we concretely achieve this?' Managing this emotional journey involves implementing six pivotal success factors, one of which we term 'Build' or 'Purposeful Tech,' prompting us to delve deeper into this subject and offer practical insights.
 

Successful change isn't just about starting a new task; it involves cultivating the right mindset, motivation and skills over time. Let’s explain by drawing parallels to real-life experiences like renovating a house.

Undertaking transformative projects entails more than simply grabbing a drill and plunging into renovations. Such an approach wouldn't instil that necessary mindset required to sustain a considerable renovation project; people would give up real soon. Any transformation, including house renovation, necessitates an awareness of why the change matters; understanding why one wants to renovate a house and what benefits it offers. This initial step is followed by cultivating the right mindset and igniting a desire for the challenge; wanting to be part of this endeavour. Only then can individuals lay the foundation to acquire knowledge and skills, planning step-by-step renovations and determining necessary tools and abilities.

Consistently nurturing these mindsets, skills, and behaviours throughout the journey is paramount. Additionally, purposefully harnessing technology at each phase to amplify the transformative experience holds significant importance.

People will not reach the expected levels of adoption, if we do not start engaging them differently. In collaboration with clients, we implement ERP simulation games at the onset of an ERP transformation. Our emphasis is on experiential learning with the tool to cultivate the appropriate mindset and foster engagement for adopting this technology. We encourage individuals to interact directly with the new tool, incorporating immersive activities that provide them with a unique and innovative way to become familiar with the tool or adapt to the new situation.

This underscores the importance of dedicating additional effort to cultivate business engagement and preparedness right from the outset, fostering a technology-oriented mindset through innovative methods that enable individuals to genuinely immerse themselves and experience technologies such as SAP.

Later in your transformation journey, you start focusing on building the right technology skillset on top of mindset. In early stages awareness and motivation need to be generated, and people need to receive all the information to answer their questions. But a next key phase, is making sure your people are able to change towards the new way of working. They can be motivated and have all the information, but if they don’t know how to do it in practice, your transformation will not succeed. We focus on building the required behaviors and skills in order to make it possible for people to shift towards the new way of working. This can be done by immersing your people in innovative ways of learning, engaging them with interactive learning tools such as SAP EnableNow, etc.

To summarize, successful transformations are purpose-led, tech-enabled and human-centric. By combining these elements organizations can create a transformation strategy that is both effective and sustainable.

As the transformation journey progresses, the emphasis shifts towards developing the necessary technology skillset, complementing the established mindset. Early stages of the transformation require generating awareness and motivation while providing comprehensive information to address questions. However, a pivotal phase follows, ensuring that individuals can effectively transition to the new way of working. Motivation and information alone won't suffice; practical know-how is essential for transformation success. Our focus lies in instilling the required behaviours and skills, enabling people to embrace the new working paradigm. This entails immersive learning experiences and engagement through interactive tools like SAP EnableNow.

In summary, successful transformations are guided by purpose, empowered by technology, and centered around people. By integrating these elements, organizations can craft a transformation strategy that is not only effective but also sustainable in the long run.