Unsuccessful transformations:
1. Lack a shared vision and compelling north star. All stakeholders need a clear understanding of why an organization or business is transforming. With that purpose articulated, people also require an inspiring vision of what the future will look like. How will transforming help them better serve customers? Will this transformation enable them to operate effectively and feel differently? How will it improve their experience working in the organization?
What’s the takeaway? Successful transformations are grounded in a compelling narrative that engages hearts and minds, generates buy-in and rallies people to go above and beyond in bringing a shared vision to life.
- Don’t wait for the burning platform. Be the fire and remain willing to self-disrupt, even if you’re operating at peak performance, to explore why you exist as an organization and everything you want to be in the future.
- Define a strong north star, backed with purpose and meaning.
- ·Make that north star clear enough for everyone to understand and bright enough to guide your teams through critical decision-making and trade-off decisions.
2. Miss the mark on corporate culture. Organizations often fail to recognize that the heart of the transformation is not technology or process change, but culture change. Underlying behaviours and a change-resistant organizational culture can impede transformations from succeeding.
What’s the key takeaway? Successful transformations begin with a thorough assessment of where the organization stands today. Do existing behaviours support the kind of nimble, collaborative teamwork that’s required to move transformations forward? What values define the culture in the current state? Where are the gaps and what characteristics could pose roadblocks to making progress?
Carrying out this kind of audit before transformation efforts kick off is the first step to defining a culture that supports the critical behaviour shifts people need to make for transformations to succeed.
Starting with a deep understanding of culture allows you to proactively mitigate trouble spots and improve the underlying factors necessary to unleash long-term transformation success.
- Be deliberate and create a safe space in which new ways of working can emerge from co-creation between leaders and workers.
- Support workers to redesign and redefine their own work, facilitating everyone to identify — together — what behaviours must change for transformation to work.
- Consciously build interdependency among teams to act as a catalyst for effective teaming.
- Set boundaries for alignment across the organization and teams to manage the emotional and political aspects of change.
3. Become mired in fatigue. Transformations represent a journey towards a common goal, one punctuated by many incremental steps. When organizations and leaders fail to sustain the initial energy, inspiration and motivation that characterized the start of the journey, people tend to lose sight of the big picture. That brings transformation fatigue and can lead to disengagement. This is even worse in environments where transformations have failed to achieve optimal results in the past.
What’s the key takeaway? Successful transformations keep people moving forward together by celebrating wins, communicating progress effectively and connecting milestone achievements to resulting benefits.
- Help create a compelling story framed in the future. A transformation story must inspire, inform and convince the organization that we are on the right path.
- Focus on a collective and compelling “why” in which both leaders and workers can find purpose.
- Stimulate beliefs by revisiting assumptions and testing them regularly to adjust direction and maintain momentum.
- Constantly and consistently anchor back to the north star so the reasons for moving forward remain clear.
4. Stumble over internal silos. A transformation office alone isn’t enough to dismantle the barriers that keep teams from working together in pursuit of common transformation goals. When organizations struggle to keep stakeholders from different groups involved, aligned, connected and working cohesively, it becomes more difficult to keep transformation efforts on track.
What’s the key take-away? Successful transformations work over the long term because leaders eliminate barriers at the front end and create an environment where multidisciplinary groups of people feel supported to work together. That starts by providing clarity around roles, building transformation teams with intention, and creating regular and meaningful touchpoint opportunities that create connective tissue across stakeholder groups.
- Take action to encourage strong debate and alignment across functional areas, disciplines and teams.
- Lead by example, collectively building the transformation story, so leaders truly believe in themselves as change agents and sponsors.
- Help Identify and remove barriers that reinforce silos or siloed thinking, such as misaligned reward structures or disconnected business processes.
5. Fail to adapt to changing circumstances. Transformations unfold in dynamic environments and market conditions. Just because you’re in the middle of transforming doesn’t mean the rest of the working world stops turning. Transformation strategies must be inherently agile and capable of flexing in line with new opportunities, challenges and circumstances as they arise.
The sudden spike in interest for large language model apps and generative artificial intelligence are a prime example. An organization already in the middle of transformation must still be capable of assessing how and when to employ new tech resources — without derailing progress against big-picture transformation objectives.
What’s the key take-away? Successful transformations bake in enough flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances and capitalize on valuable developments without sacrificing the ultimate outcome.
- Address that teams are continuously scanning the complex operating environment to spot opportunities and challenges.
- Facilitate people with the runway, time and resources to be nimble — as well as encouragement to innovate.
