The Business Transformation Network recently hosted an event on “Are Business Transformation Programmes a Waste of Time and Effort?” at the Haymarket Hotel in London, to discuss and respond to a recently published opinion piece from City AM.
The conversation was varied and covered a wide range of topics, focusing on the main for and against arguments from the article. The general consensus amongst the room was that the piece from City AM highlights the difficulties the majority of transformation projects face.
Businesses today are constantly conducting business transformation, functioning in an almost continual state of change, to do this organisations need to ensure that they take their culture into consideration, to ensure the change is a good cultural fit, and the article discussed doesn’t have incredibly different viewpoints on this.
The topic of the article and our conversation isn’t new in the business transformation world and highlights how, despite our best efforts, the industry and leaders still do not know how to conduct change efficiently.
Additionally, people do not always behave in a rational way. Even if employees are presented with information to offer them an improved way of working, evidence suggests that they won’t change their behaviour.
A study by Said Business School looked at failed transformation programmes, and found that the most common cause of project failure was cognitive bias or issues caused by personal assumptions.
Scott McArthur, a performance and transformation coach, says YES.
Alarm bells should go off in a leader’s mind whenever anyone claims to offer a silver bullet for improving employee behaviour and transforming a firm. The best any business can achieve is “promising practice”. Each organisation can only expect to succeed in its transformation if the programme is uniquely designed to match that of its own culture and people. Additionally, people do not always behave in a rational way. Even if employees are presented with information to offer them an improved way of working, evidence suggests that they won’t change their behaviour. A study by Said Business School looked at failed transformation programmes, and found that the most common cause of project failure was cognitive bias or issues caused by personal assumptions. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so undertaking a transformation programme which promises everything will deliver nothing if it has not taken the time to understand the idiosyncrasies of a particular business.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, so undertaking a transformation programme which promises everything will deliver nothing if it has not taken the time to understand the idiosyncrasies of a particular business. However, transformations can be successful if organisations consider how they define transformation and the parameters for change, the role sponsorship can play and the nature of the people within the organisation.
Defining Transformation
A point highlighted by the attendees was that transformation has been ‘abused’ and is associated with fear, job loses and insecurity, understanding what ‘transformation’ in itself means and what that means to an organisation, could make an enormous difference to the project.
Sponsorship and Buy-in
Throughout our conversation, the attendees agreed that transformation was not a waste of time, but that organisations did need to ensure that they have committed sponsorship and leaders to ensure it was conducted efficiently and maintained in the long-term.
People’s Nature
One of the recurring topics was the importance of understanding the organisation’s culture and people to ensure that you are communicating the change at a level that they associate with. Furthermore, the piece describes people as being irrational, whereas in reality they are completely rational and the fear encountered during times of change is natural, organisations need to know how to communicate change to dissipate the potential fear that it can cause. This then highlighted the problem of outsourcing transformation and how this can cause a disconnect within an organisation, with external consultants being seen to be forcing a change in an environment they don’t understand, with a basic ‘one size fits all’ framework being put into place, which doesn’t necessarily work.
Ursula Morgenstern, chief executive of Atos in Germany, says NO.
In a fast-changing world, business transformation can be crucial to make your organisation fit for the future. As long as you stick to some basic principles, you will succeed. You need close sponsorship from your top leadership team, the right people running the transformation, and a hands-on, no-nonsense monitoring of the programme’s progress, as well as the ability to execute it consistently over time. Successful programmes also need to incorporate structural change in the organisation to kick-start transformation. Many companies set up their own units to start the process, but the quarrels start if they get rejected by the “old” organisation. They therefore need to think through how that unit will drive change into the rest of the organisation, or run it as a stand-alone business. If you keep this in mind from the start, these programmes can drive a successful transformation and ensure that, with everything changing, your business isn’t left behind.
Although transformation can be successful with the right support and planning, many organistions are still struggling to transform successfully. This can happen for a number of reasons including a lack of senior leaders who are accountable for the transformation, not learing from their mistakes and the difficulty of changing old habits and set structure.
Learning from mistakes
The phrase “fail fast” is often bandied around, sometimes as an answer of how to change your business, however, the attendees highlighted the importance of learning fast (not failing fast) so that changes can be more efficient, with a quicker turnaround. Sometimes to prevent transformation seeming like it is wasting time and money, organisations need to revisit the basics, look at why they needed to transform in the first place. It was agreed that although we want the transformation to be quick, agile and strategic, organisations need to think about the long-term implications, considering the risk involved, looking at how to align with their overall strategy, vision and values to ensure it sticks.
Accountability
For a transformation to be successful, it needs champions, but also people that will be held accountable at senior or C-suite level for the transformation actions and the subsequent projects and changes. Organisations need to acknowledge their internal politics when conducting change to ensure unity internally, which in turn will increase efficiency.
Changing old habits
City AM’s article was conducive of wider issues organisations are facing within the transformation space, highlighting the significance of planning a transformation successfully, by setting and communicating a clear vision, understanding what’s important, why it’s important and knowing how to drive the business case with this in the long-term.
It was highlighted that a number of attendees felt that organisations were a little ‘stuck in their ways’ when it came to conducting business transformation, still using models from 30 years ago to conduct modern business change. Taking this into account, organisations need to change the models that they use to conduct change, as well as building a team of sponsors and leaders who will be able to ensure that they can enforce successful business transformation by bringing their people on board and connecting the purpose of this change to the individuals affected by the organisation. A better way of approaching transformation would be to build the change out silo by silo and gradually increase the reach.
Taking the above into account, for change to be efficient and successful in the long-term, losing this depiction that it is ‘a waste of time and money’, it needs to have a strong leadership team who will sponsor the change at all levels, communicating this in a transparent and authentic way. Furthermore, organisations conducting change need to consider the role of technology and the new generations within the workforce and how these could affect the way in which organisations change in the future, developing new models for change (EG. changing an organisation like we change IT, building the change in the background and migrating it into the wider organisation once completed) to increase efficiency in the long-term.
If this sounds familiar to you or your organisation, you can speak to a Consultant from Annapurna’s Change team.
Keep your eye out for more events like this at www.thebtn.tv/events
This event write-up is exclusive to The Business Transformation Network.
