No Non-Sense Transformation

‘Context’

Many years ago, when we first started setting up shared services in a major technology firm, we embarked on a journey that had many unknowns. Whether it was scope of work, projects, technology, or processes – nothing was clearly outlined. We had few excel sheets to guide us through the process of setting up shared service organization. It was no more than a simple ‘lifting’ of processes from each entity into a regional centre.

The initial days were tough – It was about power, control, and other hidden aspects in organization. The lower end resources who managed the day-to-day operations struggled to meet the expectations from the internal clients. We had ‘all fingers pointing at one direction: shared services’, and always for the wrong reasons.

‘No defined parameters’

Now, when I look back to the unwieldy phase – it appears that there were number of interventions that could have been employed to mitigate the organizational resistance. In my experience as a business consultant, I have come to understand that the following aspects are extremely important for a successful transformation: Change Management and Technology. In fact, it is more important than a well-defined project plan or a strategy document. In a transformation or turnaround projects, the strategy/project plan is absolutely critical, but the plans tend to be fluid and are attuned to the new requirements in the eco-system (Especially if the projects are more than 5-6 years long).

Let me take a step back and explain why change management and technology strategy are more important in a transformation project. The fundamental challenge with business transformation is that there are no defined parameters. The transformation strategy is vulnerable to the external environment. On the other hand, think of constructing an underground rail network across a busy city. Though the underground rail network project may take 10-15 year, it operates in a relatively defined set of parameters. This is the fundamental difference between managing a transformation project and a construction project. The transformation projects tend to be vulnerable to the external parameters every day – and hence, change management becomes critical.

Secondly, any transformation project will most likely involve new ways of working. The new ways of working form the new norms in the organization (e.g. "High-touch" culture to a ‘self-service’ culture). If an organization intends to embed new norms, just a set of principles and procedural documents will not work. If you want to walk the talk – you need the systems in place that incentivizes (or forces) the individuals to accept the new norms. Otherwise, the old habits creep in and your transformation effort stays only on paper.

‘Change Management’

Now, coming back to the story of ‘change management and technology’…Change management is not a plan – it’s a set of principles that you follow to ensure that the organization buys your idea. It is kind of marketing your idea to the workforce. The problem is that most organizations and business leaders think that the workforce will inevitably accept the idea. While it may be true that people eventually accept the new norms, it will be accepted after unwanted frustration and resistance. A proper change management approach helps to mitigate the resistance and frustration within the organization. There are several articles around change management – Lewin’s 3 step, ADKAR, Kotter’s etc. – hence, I won’t delve deeper into this topic more. But one last thing I want to say about transformation is this: Make change management process a fundamental aspect in any transformation. It is an ESSENTIAL ingredient.

‘Technology Strategy’

I recognize that technology strategy is similar to a project plan and strategy document in few aspects (i.e. it has to be tailored to the changing environment). However, we find many organizations embark on a transformation strategy or a turnaround strategy without using technology. While absence of a technology may work in few cases, if your business case is to alter organizational behaviours or norms, then I would highly suggest building the technology strategy along with transformation efforts. It is complex, yet it is required to embed new norms. Given the revolution around technology in the last few years – Social, Mobile, Analytics, Cloud – it will be nuts not to have a technology strategy with your transformation effort (Get damn good IT strategist...otherwise you will blow the whole transformation work!!!). A properly implemented technology strategy will provide an exponential performance rather than a step-change performance.

Final words….Make Change management and Technology strategy a key ingredient for transformation efforts (or screw it up or live an average life). In the shared services that we started, we finally ingrained the principles of change and used technology after 3 years (It worked like magic since then!!!).