Organisational transformation is fundamentally about people. From executive leadership through to individuals delivering services to customers, it is about changing the way the people think and behave, shaping and driving the culture in which they operate. Structures, processes, practices, tools and technology are of little value without the people in the organisation they are there to support. For our fifth and final key to a successful organisational transformation, we will look at the importance of having the right people involved to drive the transformation to success.
Resourcing the best people
As we have already outlined in keys 1-4, organisational transformation is itself a challenging activity, often initiated due to challenges in the organisations operating environment. As such transformation creates a demand for resources, most notably in terms of the most able, knowledgeable and flexible people. This comes at a time when these same people are also seen as critical to the continuity of the business in order to simply ‘keep the lights on’. Organisations that are serious about transforming recognise this, and set their best and most able people to creating the future state. Where additional capacity is required to do this, they look to promote from within their existing structure and supplement with 3rd parties to ‘keep the lights on’. The right support from the right transformation partner or partners is also a critical factor for success. Leaders should
carefully select credible and experienced partner organisations to work with their best people to provide capacity and experience. Recognising that the partners are there to build capability and expertise, not to ‘do’ the transformation to the organisation, is a foundational principle for a successful working partnership.
Where transformations are not actively resourced with the best people, they tend to be resourced with those who are available or those who can be ‘spared’. 3rd party support is often selected on price rather than capability or by procurement decisions based on little understanding of the challenge at hand. Capability building within the organisation is not a core activity, with much of the transformation work being completed by the 3rd party. This results in transformation being ‘done to’ the organisation, rather than the organisation owning the path to its own future. With little internal ownership or capability building, the transformation will typically stall and fail when the 3rd party ‘partner’ leaves.
Looking after your people
Since having the right people is a crucial part of a successful transformation, looking after them should be a high priority. Even when going well, transforming an organisation is challenging and hard work and if things are going less well it can be exhausting and frustrating. Oftentimes, individuals who are energetic and enthusiastic change champions at the start of a transformation are no longer present in the organisation at the end of the programme. Where organisations lack some or all of the common factor outlined in the 5 keys, people become disillusioned with the organisations commitment to change and move to organisations who are already aligned to their desired ways of working.
Organisations that are committed to a successful transformation recognise that it is those people who are enthusiastic, energetic and engaged in moving to the new organisational target state, who are critical to that success. They go out of their way to identify, nurture and protect those individuals as they show how good the new world can be and infect others with their enthusiasm and creativity. They empower them, remove or escalate blockers so that these are quickly resolved preventing frustration and burn-out. Where this is not possible these transformation ‘champions’ are given the freedom to find other areas of the business where their skills are of better use. Where organisations do not explicitly look after those people who are driving their transformation, we see a common pattern of failure. They start with high levels of energy and enthusiasm which then turns to fatigue and cynicism as blockers to change are not dealt with effectively and small positive steps to the future state are hard to make. Those people who have driven and championed transformation are held accountable for the high cost and slow rate of change, becoming disillusioned and burnt out. This situation results in those who cared most about moving the organisations to its desired state losing faith in the commitment and ability of the organisation to change, leading to people with high levels of capability leaving for pastures new.