Driving large and horizontal transformations for almost a decade has taught me three things.
- Transformations are hard, and most of them fail.
- There are not many transformation best practices.
- No matter how small a company, there is no such thing as a quick transformation.
Yet, most of us are in the middle of a transformation of some sort in our organizations (and for many of us, in our lives). How can we ensure that we transform? Successfully!
Here are my experiences …
Go across
Many transformations fail because they are vertical. The “IT Transformation” or the “Marketing Transformation”. For transformations to work, you need to go horizontally across your organization and make it a company transformation. Someone needs to define, articulate, own and garner the political capital horizontally in the firm, to get buy in across the c-suite for a transformation to be successful.
There is no such thing as a successful “XYZ Department” Transformation.
Go back
Many times companies fail to change and persevere because they forget the basics, roots, and past of who/what/why they are. Many transformations never go back to vision, mission, strategy, target state, gap analysis, and then roadmap. For your transformation to work, ever vertical has to go back to vision, mission and strategy (at a minimum); then these need to be collated back into an overall organizational view. This ability to “go back to the basics” seeds your transformation with the requirements to be successful. There is no such thing as a successful transformation that does not have a vision, mission, and strategy built in as fundamental raw material.
Go outside
Assuming that you went across, and back, the next question is who will help? Lets face it; if we all had the right talent internally we would not need a transformation. Going outside to source talent and resources helps your transformation succeedbecause you are de-risking your unknown unknowns. While many of us go outside for our HR resources, the majority of us fail to go outside for new vendor partnerships, and new sources of innovative ideas/solutions. If you use the same vendors and partners that you have always used, chances are you will get the same results you have always gotten.
Here is the thing, most transformations result in current vendors being paid less, so why would IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, or SDFC help your transformation succeed?
Go ahead
We are always at odds of how far out ahead we should be thinking. Recognizing that a successful transformation in a large company can take anywhere form three to ten years, it is important that you invest in the capabilities and trends that are a decade ahead. This means that many times, instead of investing in the “next thing” (because you missed it) it is more important in investing in the farthest thing. So if you are investing in mobility in 2014, stop, thinking about a leapfrog strategy and invest in ubiquitous edge computing.
There is nothing worst than a transformation that delivers results after a trend is over, or in many cases “too late”.
Go slow
Once you have the other pieces together, for heavens sake, do not rush. It is important to recognize that successful transformations come from a place of constant pivoting. Many times we tend to go too fast with a goal or destination in mind, and end up missing the street sings along the way. There is no such thing as a successful transformation that stuck to its initial target state designed five years ago.
I write as a labor of love, in exchange I ask that you share this writing if you think others may find value,
-Richie
