Business Transformations and the Heroes that Make Them Happen

A Book Review and Author Interview by Kathy Miller

TransformAble, a delightful and insightful read by Angie Tuglus, offers us the roadmap for the journey of business transformation. Her principles resonated with me and got me thinking about the heart of successful transformation and the heroes that emerge. I was recently asked by an intern how I came to be a Global Vice President of Continuous Improvement for a multi-billion dollar publicly-traded company. It was an innocent and fair question. It made me laugh out loud – because as I thought back to my childhood, there was never a time that I fantasized about having such a role. My family had lovingly gone through myriad fantasies of my adult life with me. There was the princess phase, the teacher role-playing stage, and the constant debate of whether I wanted to be Samantha from “Bewitched” or Jeannie from “I Dream of Jeannie.” There could also have been a Wonder Woman stage. Hard to remember…but there was absolutely never a Plant Manager or Global VP of Lean Enterprise dream. And yet, here I am.

So, as I answered my young friend, I thought about how I got here – I had wanted to go to school to be a psychologist or a lawyer but ended up for practical reasons going to engineering school. And then, an advanced degree in business – and a lot of hard work and being in the right place at the right time led me through Engineering, Marketing, and Operations and through a series of leadership positions with increasing levels of responsibility. There were so many transformations – as there are so many cycles of business – although I never thought about them as such, until the automotive electronics company I worked for specifically declared a lean manufacturing transformation.

When I reflect on how successful that lean transformation was, at the end of the day, it was about people – the people who agreed to implement the lean tools to improve the processes in the plant. As Angie says at the start of her book: “It’s all people systems.” They become the stars of the transformation story that Angie describes – one that shares why a change must occur, what the future will look like and how to get there. In my experience, it’s about creating a vision that people can rally behind. It’s about creating an environment that people can contribute their best. It’s about being brave and inspiring courage in others – others who have hands AND hearts AND minds. And, maybe that’s where my superpowers developed…no crown, no twitching nose, no golden lasso – just creating the story – the vision of what we could do, and then how to get there through tools and processes and environments that enabled every team member that surrounded me to be heroes in their own right. I have cherished multiple opportunities to serve as a global leader of continuous improvement to have the privilege of inspiring so many around the world to contribute to their business’ transformations.

TransformAble is a must-read for those seeking to provide business value via transformation. Not only does it provide the roadmap…but also those warnings about pitfalls that could prevent the heroes on your teams from reaching that happy ending. Thank you, Angie Tuglus, for sharing your framework of “how to perform death-defying feats of business transformation.” It will, no doubt, frustrate a dragon or two!

I had the opportunity to catch up with Angie and ask her some questions I had…

Q: When you were young, did you ever dream about being an author? 

A: I remember wanting to be an architect. This is funny because what I do isn’t as distant from that as you might think. Business transformation is about architecting or rearchitecting a system of people. I can’t recall ever thinking I would become a writer.

Q: What insights did you gain as a result of writing TransformAble?

Writing a book is a unique experience that forced me to really figure out what I believed, what I knew, and then convey that in such a way that anyone can understand it.   Writing a section, reading it, and then rewriting it many times to reduce any confusion only reinforced just how needed this book was.

Q: I understand that you bravely asked other executives to review an early version of your book. 

A: That was a little scary, but I received some great feedback that helped me decide where to elaborate more or less. Sometimes I received conflicting feedback from different reviewers, which made for great conversations. I deliberately chose a diverse set of leaders, from entrepreneurs to officers of very large global corporations. You can see many of them on the endorsement pages. 

Q: Please elaborate on an unlikely hero you encountered during one of the business transformations you led.

A: In the book, I talk about secret weapons—long-tenured employees who become active change agents during a transformation. Those are some of the greatest heroes. For example, there was a man who had spent 28 years at the same company who bravely embraced a transformation. He put himself out there, demonstrating to other long-tenured employees how he was able to change to the new world, and then pointed out that if he could change then so could they. People like that are the greatest heroes.

Q: Tell me about what you believe to be the biggest motivator for your team members during the “lock it in phase?”

A: That’s an interesting question. Because it isn’t as simple as a single motivator. Maintaining motivation is multi-faceted, and not everyone is motivated the same way. One source of motivation comes from maintaining the team’s focus on the business value you are achieving. “We are making our organization so much better, so much more successful and competitive in the market.” A second motivator is a promise of achieving a specific future state. “This new world is going to be awesome!” Of course, you can see how this one requires making sure people can truly imagine the new world—which is critical. If the team can’t imagine what the new world should look like, they will never get there. And a third motivation is the promise that the team will be able to claim success once this new world is in place, in the face of daunting challenges and nonbelievers. “We will have accomplished that which has never been done here before.” All of this is interconnected, but different people are motivated by different aspects. 

Q: I have heard you state that the rate of business transformation failure has not improved in the past 20 years. Will companies continue to fail?

The world doesn’t stop for anyone. And companies—people, more accurately—continue to not take business transformation seriously, and apply the right commitment and know-how. Those companies will continue to fail. And that’s why many no longer exist.