I was recently lucky enough to get to visit some organisations that I had worked for over the last few years. These were all transformation clients – organisations that had recognised that they were not getting the benefit that they expected from technology in the modern age and wanted to fix that. Some clients were old established organisations that just wanted to get more from their ‘tech division’, others were interested in a more organisation wide transformation focused on delivering value to their customers and thus competitive advantage.
At all of these clients I was significantly involved in helping shape their transformations – from clarifying vison & goals through to articulating transformation approach, roadmap and organisation design. A recurring theme was the compelling reason for change – the basis for step 1 of the Kotter Model – to create the sense of urgency.
Now, there is a much-debated and old statistic by McKinsey, that 70% of transformations fail to meet their stated business goals. My personal experience suggests that this is not far from the mark – my success rate was much higher before I got involved in Financial Services – which makes my recent visit back to old clients even more interesting.
So what did I find? Perhaps unsurprisingly, a number of them were struggling. They no longer had the experienced people driving change that were there at the beginning, typically they had either moved on in frustration or had been moved on because they were considered too expensive to keep. The transformation programme had often stalled and been re-started without understanding the reasons for the failure. ‘Quick wins’ lacking the intended value were often the order of the day to make up for the time and money spent. A common factor was that these organisations had not internalised the need for change and rallied around a common vision for the future. They were all still making money, though often losing pace to competitors, resulting in little urgency for change. Kotter was definitely right!
But then there was the one stand out success. An organisation that was solidly based in Financial Services – indeed part of a large bank. Success?….in FS? How could this be?
The organisation in question was very interesting – they must have had some sort of ‘existential crisis’ to motivate them – providing the urgency for change. No, not really – this was not the thing that separated them from the others. Like all of the organisations, they were suffering from problems but were doing better than most. Perhaps it was a high profile, hard charging leadership team? No, they were comparatively quiet and unassuming, while being both pleasant, approachable and effective. Was it their limitless pockets? No – they had the same funding challenges as all the others – part of the reason my time with them ended. So what was it that made them different to the others?
The simple answer was that they had belief in themselves that they could change the organisation for the better. They had a clear view of what good looked like for them (this was not unique – I had helped many of the other organisations define such), but crucially they had the conviction and commitment to getting there – because they, at both a personal and organisational level, wanted to be better at what they do.
This belief in being better was expressed at all levels of the organisation, by a majority of people in it. This was not someone at the top expecting everyone else to change. They were keen to try new ideas, and see what worked for them. They looked at structuring their teams around key elements of their business platform (cross functional product teams) which were empowered to try different ways of delivery. Some teams tried scrum, some Kanban. TTD, CI and CD were encouraged with the training, support ant tools needed to use them. Teams talked about their successes and failures and learned from each other.
Obviously, with this being Financial Services, SAFe was mandated by the parent bank but the organisation took a pragmatic approach to this – they looked at what would work for them and used it. They dumped the parts that they didn’t benefit from.
The result of all this? They moved from somewhat chaotic and unpredictable releases every 2-3 months involving significant ongoing support work to reliable, predictable monthly releases. This was a big win and forms the foundation for delivering their future business plan. Are they done? No – they are committed to getting better to provide the business with the delivery power that will allow them aim for bigger targets.
Many organisations in my experience expect external 3rd parties like me to come in and ‘transform them’, while they sit back and often take a passive or openly hostile approach to change – and then inevitably complain that ‘we have not achieved much’. It was a pleasure to go back to one and see how they had taken control of their transformation and that their commitment to improving themselves was starting to really make a difference.