Every day, business leaders walk a tightrope to maintain existing revenue streams, deliver seamless customer experiences, and enable efficient internal operations. Also, they strive to forge new ways for their company to succeed in an ever-changing situation. This means change and organizational transformation.
The companies that can navigate an organizational transformation empower their people to make quantum leaps in ability and performance are the companies that succeed, commanding ever-larger shares of the market. Most, however, don’t! 70% of large scale transformations fail. That’s countless hours of effort and hundreds of billions of dollars wasted every year.
The reason is clear: too often, leaders dictate the terms, methods, and manners of organization transformation, forgetting it’s their “team” that powers their business.
Leaders don’t always need a new methodology. Leaders need a way-finder—a tool for reflection to keep the organization focused on the things that matter most. How?
- Define your north star with a simple yet powerful purpose that every employee and stakeholder can bet behind. Whatever happens on the way, the star shines constant, unchanging.
- It would then be best if you shifted your gaze outwards, surveying the landscape of customers and trends. We all know that megatrends can sweep through and abend markets.
- Meanwhile, you should set about your internal operating system. This goes beyond tech platforms and digitalization. This is about people: organized to nonhierarchical, rapid response groups, with autonomy and skin in the game.
- Not everyone in an organization welcomes transformation. That’s why you should identify and empower volunteer champions within the organization. Thought leaders, mid-level managers, front-line employees understand the task’s power and potential at hand and feel real owners ship over the process.
- Too often, transformation is an abstract concept, filtered down from up high. Employees don’t understand how a successful transformation can change their lives. It would be best to find the emotional connection that leverages each individual’s strengths to the greater task at hand. This inside out process is the beating heart to successful change.
With the above blocks in place, an organization starts the hard work of real transformation.
