Engineer The Transformation

Who would have predicted Iraq, ISIS, the rise of Modi, Apple from computers to consumer gadgets, Google from advertising to driver-less cars, Amazon from retail to cloud computing (AWS), Walgreens from pharmacy retailing to treating chronic illnesses, and so on (yeah I missed Donald Trump!).

But we did embrace all of the above. And you know what, it “Transformed” the world and not “just changed” it!

In older days change would just be termed as cyclic in nature (what goes up would come down and what goes down will go up too!) of the business that was driven in order to give you pleasure and comfort. The interesting fact that we have missed is, even the nature of change has “Transformed” from being cyclic to structural, pretty straight forward isn’t?

Change vs Transform

The amount of research we have available from the business schools explaining different sides of change management, the unlimited supply of books, blogs published on this very subject. And that is not all, we have companies investing heavily on this, manufacturing consultants and imparting training's.

One would have believed, by now we are better placed and understood the key differences between “a change” and “the transformation”. But the fact of the matter is that many of us have still struggled to differentiate between "a change" and "the transformation".

To start with they are not the same, and while we’ve actually come a long way in learning how to manage change, we continue to struggle managing effectively the transformation.

Change management: means implementing finite work packages or initiatives, which “may or may not” cut across the organization. An approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations using methods intended to re-direct the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly reshape a company or organization.

Transformation: unlike change management, it doesn’t focus on a few discrete, well-defined work packages, but rather on a portfolio of initiatives/changes, which are dependent on each other. More importantly, the overall goal of transformation is not just to execute a defined change — but to reinvent the organization and discover a new or revised business model based on a vision for the future and thus is much more unpredictable, iterative, and experimental. It carries much higher risk.

Let us see a perfect example:

Netflix: 

Original Model: started with a DVD-based model, where you would select a movie and place an order which will get delivered at your doorsteps. It requires managing warehouse utilization and physical distribution costs.

Transformed Model: It moved from that model to online streaming model, that needed managing website up-time and bandwidth costs.

What all got transformed during this course?

1. They did not do away with DVD distribution, but added online streaming (one change)
2. They ended up upgrading their supply of movies into thousands by partnering with many media houses (another change)
3. Above resulted into expanding their services to more places (another change).
4. and so on….

Let us understand this more, what do you suggest? Can Netflix continues to use same metrics before and after its so-called “transformation” effort? The answer is no, they can’t as any strategic transformation should change a company’s competitive set of measurement and if there is no change in that set then it really hasn’t transformed in any material way.

Couple of more examples on the real life transformation:

Google: in its core advertising business, Google competes against other content and technology players; its driver-less car will competes against manufacturers like General Motors and BMW.

Apple: always competed against Microsoft, IBM, and Dell; the iPod and iPhone led it to take on new companies like Sony, Nokia, Motorola, and more.

Another example from real life scenario providing more relevance:

Let us assume as large technology Product Company had been very successful because one of their unique product had constituted for more than 75% of its last year revenue.

Competition Evolved: And as we all know nothing is permanent, so when its competitors started developing a less expensive version of the similar product with additional features.

Clear Message: it became clear that they could not survive on only one product and they need to do something to change the way they are looking into the market.

It resulted Into: The leadership kick started a “Business Transformation” strategy with the ultimate goal of agreeing on much more sustainable, profitable, acceptable, business model. It included number of initiatives:

1. Plan on how to get more immediate revenue from the current product.
2. Adding features to the product so that it is more appealing to the customers.
3. Putting in place a much leaner support organization or think about the outsourcing.
4. Including external consultants with much more in-depth knowledge of the target market to partner in product development.
5. Evaluate for acquisitions and adjacency.

The list is big, still it does not end here and this would call for a new set of organization policies and would result into exploring different cultural geographies (in case you decide to go outsource), performance management, taxation etc.

Each one of the above key initiatives would require a change management approach, remember it should get aligned to the much broader set of transformational “Cause”, which would require, thought leadership, disciplines, aligning the capabilities, such as more flexible and dynamic coordination of resources, stronger collaboration across boundaries, and communication in the midst of uncertainty. Message is clear: you would not achieve success if you don’t have people aligned and they agreed to the “Objective” rather than to the “Mission Statement”.

Now how to align the transformation to us, humans, and humanity?

Let us be very clear, humanity is transforming and becoming highly impatient. We somehow have forgotten that we still are human and most of the business strategy that we have in place to run our business is deprived of the need of “human strategy”. Remember humanity is itself a strategy and we have always built Business Empire on this basis!

Let us try to see the Truth beyond Strategy

The key question to ask would be: How can we transform? How do we understand the truth? And how do we see the truth before anyone else could see it? Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi are the perfect examples of how to see the truth and put that into work and build a strategy around it and just start performing!

Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement, non-violence were hugely impactful! It was just a small idea. Isn’t it interesting that how just one idea can impact the all the other ideas and can be transported to the other parts of the world with a person or a group of persons, impacting other places with the same idea and thus resulting in “Transformation”!

Now, what would you call the above movements? Mission or Objectives? For me mission is something that is someone else’s idea being imposed on you and whereas objective is more about you, yourself and would be “you-centric”!

The objective causes are more “me” inclusive and mission are more towards “me” exclusive. Thus it is time to be more cause specific transformation rather than mission specific transformations. Truth is people stood for Gandhi’s idea, objective and not for him as a person.

Let us discuss this further more. Mother Teresa, you can term her as an entrepreneur! Was not she? She has a logo, yes it is true. She, so effectively transformed the entire mindset of the generation and it still is transforming our generation and I have no doubt will continue to do so. Mother Teresa is a brand, which has power to transform, and generate great economic enterprise value.

Let us all pull our socks and start the “Business Transformation”, because business needs us and it is now time, where “Transformers” like us first recognize the humility of the power that we need to serve the world with, find your cause, identify it, find your value, create a presentation and then turn that into something practical that can literally change the manner in which the world views itself.

The last but not the least, do sell it to the world and it is OK selling!

Don’t hesitate to declare your participation in this relationship and remember, that is what is turning into the business strategy. Let us Engineer the Transformation and we will start transforming the World.