business transformation

When James Cameron, world famous movie director, was starting the revolutionary AVATAR movie project he had t–shirts made up for his crew, with the words: Hope is not a strategy. James Cameron is known for being particularly meticulous in his leadership style, he has a plan A, a plan B, and a  plan C, and “expects to be on Plan C by his second cup of coffee.” It is for this reason that he has been asked to give lectures to NASA and the US Navy about how to manage complex and dangerous projects where devastating changes can happen in an instant. 

The Picture in this article shows what happens in nature when humans leave cities. Well, business is no different than nature.

Negativity takes over just like nature takes over when humans leave. In the case of businesses, people are disengaged. When staff are unhappy, they are in the office, but their attention is elsewhere. They much rather be somewhere else.

I’m sure you’ve heard it many times before but I’ll repeat it for the sake of context…

Communication is key when you want people to change

But in contrast…

Communication is an area that is most frequently complained about by employees

Clearly there is a gap!

Failure to understand the people side of change is akin to failing to learn to break when learning to drive. Sure, you'll probably get to where you intended to go, but you'll be battered, bruised and have a trail of angry people behind you.

All of us, at some point, have experienced a poorly delivered change. Either a technical change or an organisational change, either as the culprit or the victim.

After years of research on organizational transformation by McKinsey, the results from their Global Survey in 2015 indicated that few executives say their companies’ transformations succeed.

In that survey, just 26 % of respondents said the transformations they’re most familiar with have been very or completely successful at both improving performance and equipping the organization to sustain improvements over time. (Meaning that 74% have not been successful.)

In their 2012 survey, 20% of executives said the same.

As soon as I arrived at the conference venue, I was welcomed by a lady in charge of VIP and speakers. She seemed happy to see me & asked me enthusiastically if I knew in which seminar room my talk would take place. “Yes. Seminar room 3 & it is tomorrow” I said. “Great! I am now taking you to the VIP/Speakers lounge so that you can eat or drink something,” she added. One part of me longed for breakfast in the lounge. The other half of mine responded: “Thank you. Actually I would like to directly go to the keynote area to listen to the keynote talk.”