Six domains of Transformation



In my previous article, I mentioned or rather emphasized the use of change management and technology as part of large-scale transformation efforts. In this blog, I want to highlight the important domains of focus in transformation. Most transformation efforts start with a business case highlighting a need for change, supported by financial numbers, and how cost savings can be achieved. Planning, financials, business case are best practices to start a transformation effort. However, during an implementation stage, a transformation consultant has to be extremely focused on the following areas: Organization, Culture, Communication, Process, Technology, and Financials. All these six areas should tie with overall business strategy for transformation. Any slippage in these six domains will definitely screw the transformation effort - at best provide a marginal benefit to the business.

'Organization' - Creating the right organization structure for the future is one of the key objectives for the transformation. A right organization structure will help in quicken decision making and make communication extremely swift and help in achieving the business results. If the transformation does not result in quick decision making and better results, why the hell will an organization embark on such expensive efforts and pay millions to consultants?

'Culture' - Errr....this is one of the most complicated topics. It has some aspects of psychology and some aspects of hard metrics. Personally, I believe an organization's long-term performance is only as good as its culture. An easy way to change culture is to hire a really strong leader who lives by example and let him lead the business unit or the organization. Its a psychological thing isn't it - if we have a strong leader who leads by example, we just want to follow his directions and principles. You can also hire consultants like me to help shape the organization culture...we will use some best practices from industry and compare it with your organization's culture. The analysis will show some deviation and I would recommend you with a 3-step bullet point on how to change culture. You have to note the difference between the two approaches I mentioned above. A consultant like me will be able to find deviations and provide directions and you as a leader has to ensure that culture is changing. On the other hand, if you believe you do not have control of the situation - it is better to hire leaders from outside (BTW, Don't change the leadership just for the sake of changing...Ask yourself the question whether you want to change the culture and whether you can do it?). Secondly, not all transformation efforts need a culture change...we just need to keep tab of expected norms and values in the organization throughout the transformation effort.

'Communication' - It sounds so simple, right? Well, not really...Communication is about communicating to the right person at right time and at right location. Recently, one of the organizations went through a massive re-organization. The organization sent out a communication that 20,000+ employees will be made redundant over the next two years. Fearing lay-off, some 10,000+ employees resigned from the organization and the total attrition stood at 30,000. Certainly, not a good communication. Getting the information to people and ensuring that they understand and buy-in your message is critical in a transformation effort. Its also worth highlighting that some organizations provide ample support to employees who are made redundant. For example, they provide list of opportunities with other business units where the employee can deliver value. 

'Process' - Process change or re-engineering can provide significant value to business provided they are aligned to the organization structure and the technology strategy. Quite often we find that the processes-system-organization maturity is not aligned with each other. This causes significant redundancies in the overall process and creates massive bottlenecks in the process flow. Any process improvement has into account the technology maturity and the organization maturity and build the process flow based on these maturity context. You may also need to assess what the future maturity as well...however, do not create process flows which are not achievable. I came across a project where the team members were asked to develop a 'Dream process flow'. While it looked great on paper, the 'dream process flow' just remained a 'dream'.

'Technology' - For many organizations, implementing a new system is not a big challenge. The biggest challenge is in getting the employees to buy-in your new product and use them on a regular basis. One of the organization that we were working for had a end-to-end recruit to retire process embedded in the system. However, the employees were not fully aware of the various functionalities in the tool and some employees did not trust the system. Most of them continued to maintain spreadsheet to update the records....This is such an utter waste of money, time, and effort. A transformation consultant will fail, if he or she is unable to get the employees to use the new product and embed new ways of working (This step tightly integrates with culture and communication).

'Financials' - Most transformation consultants tend to ignore this part, but this is critical aspect of successful transformation. If there is anything that gets measured objectively in a transformation effort, it is the financial aspect of transformation. Similar to culture, the key is to keep tab of investment cost and the cost savings and whether it makes business sense to proceed to the next stage. This will be an iterative process till the transformation is completed....the financials should justify the transformation effort at each milestone point during the transformation.

So which one is important of all the six domains? Personally, I believe its culture and communication. They are the two eyes of a transformation effort.

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