Business Transformation

KNOWLEDGE (THEORIES, IDEAS & CONCEPTS)

Through Professional/Personal Study Gained Through Experience

Getting the right strategic vision is critical and getting the right people behind it
Execution is the hardest part of any transformation especially those involving corporate culture

Don’t get wedded to the past success – take a broader view of customer demands/solutions

Together with Responsibilities/Accountabilities

Communicating complex change methodologies in simple terms, presentations and playbooks, and being able to re-explain it over and over again to make sure the organisation understands it, knows what good looks like, don’t get disengaged or lose interest [Engineering Deployment Manager]

·Undertaking Business Analytics and providing Insight Papers (similar to Business Cases with options and a preferred recommended course of actions) [Transformation Manager]

Together With lessons Learnt

Ensuring Strong Sponsorship throughout the programme lifecycle through regular interactive reviews with updates provided by the appropriate change agents (who have very clear roles and responsibilities) [Getting willing and capable Change Agent buy-in is absolutely critical to the success]
Organisations often under-estimate the resources need during the transformation process, especially during the initial interview/data collection stages and then again maintaining momentum while implementing change and trying to continue BAU activities [Maintain the right mix of quick wins, medium and long term wins]

Having delegated authority and capacity for the team driving the change so they are empowered to make the necessary decisions that are aligned to the corporate governance model and set at the right pace that is right for the organisation as a whole [setting the right pace and longer term initiatives are often overlooked in clamour for only quick wins, which can often be seen a political movement of proving the initial benefits rather than adding any real business value, except helping to maintain commitment towards the longer term objectives]

Together with Any 'So What' Statements or Insights

There is an issue of launching the transformation at the wrong time due to lack of context knowledge or business preparedness. A key part of any change programme is to quickly understand what doesn’t work and find other ways to fix
it. Solutions should only be proposed once the As-Is and Gap Analysis have been completed, and then socialised with
the senior management and adjusted to gain their support for the change. On one occasion, the transformation team had to re-visit a site after a partial implementation had been done, in order to help complete the exercise and fully embed the changes
There are times when organisations want to tackle all their challenges at once, however when you want to grow/develop new capabilities and try to reduce costs at the same time, they need different skill-sets and separate teams to allow the different initiatives to be driven separately. The establishment of a separate tiger team to address a specific operating issue meant that the major transformation effort could continue in parallel

Context is king and there is no single methodology or approach that will fit all scenarios. Value comes from being able to accurately assess situations, the people and the context in order to allow the use of the appropriate methodologies, adapting them and applying them with precision in order to achieve the expected outcomes that will lead to the required benefits realisation. People drive change, they accept it, embrace it and deliver it, each motivated by different factors. Understanding and dealing with the people element will dictate the success that is achieved