"How can leaders have the greatest impact on business transformation success?"

Back in February this year, we ran a fascinating Chief Disruptor Virtual Breakfast Club on the subject, ‘Why do so many business transformations fail, and what can business leaders do about it?’ As ever, it was a lively, caffeine-fuelled discussion, with members reflecting on the impact leaders have had on their working lives (good and bad), and more importantly, the leaders they would like to be. It’s fair to say that we could have continued well beyond our 10 am finish-time, and inspired by our insightful discussion, I wanted to find out more about how leaders think they can channel their impact most effectively, to enable business transformation success. Now, onto our March Chief Disruptor Insight poll: 'How can leaders have the greatest impact on business transformation success?' But first, let’s set some context for these latest insights with learnings from The 2024 Disruptive Trends Report.

First of all, it's clear that business transformation is ubiquitous with 94% of respondents to our 2024 Disruptive Trends Survey reporting that they are undergoing business transformation and 41% of respondents undergoing multiple business transformations.

It is also well understood that achieving enterprise-wide business transformation is hard, which explains why so many fail to deliver their expected value. But while no two struggling business transformations are the same, our 2024 Disruptive Trends survey points to people and culture issues, including silo mentality and resistance to change as the greatest threats to business transformation success.?

“The cost to a large company of changing behaviours, processes and organisation is, in my experience, much higher than the cost of technology change.”?

Alan Inglis, Director of Enterprise Architecture at Astellas Pharma

And addressing this fear of change and the ‘what’s going to happen to me’ was front and centre at our recent Chief Disruptor LIVE in March.

So let's dive into our latest poll results, and find out how leaders think they can have the greatest impact on successful business transformation. Looking at the responses, there were two clear outliers, both receiving an equal number of votes in our poll. These were, ‘focusing teams on ‘the why’ and ‘transparency, empathy and openness’.?

Chief Disruptor member, Sarah Ashurst, Director, Digital Experience at Ashurst, explains why she thinks this isn’t a surprising outcome.

"Both these answers completely resonate and are inextricably linked. To be able to foster a culture of transparency, empathy and openness, leaders need to empower teams to ask the big “why” questions and to anticipate and articulate answers to these questions from the beginning so that teams feel part of the transformation as opposed to it being something that is foisted on them."

We also spoke with Lee Bojczuk, Senior Service Designer at Kingfisher about his choice, ‘transparency, empathy and openness.’ He told us,

"The best leaders are the ones that are open and honest, approachable to everyone. They cultivate an environment of transparent communication and provide a safe space where individuals feel empowered to express themselves freely, ensuring a culture where contributions are valued without fear of judgement."

Clare Savage, a highly experienced Change Director in Financial Services also shared her view on why she thinks it’s so important to focus teams on the ‘why’ and to highlight the importance of everyone having a role or sense of purpose in the transformation journey.??

"I believe there is a direct correlation between successful transformation and change colleagues having a clear and tangible understanding of the value that they are contributing to the business and technology strategy of the organisation."

She went on to add,?

"If the “why” is clear, change leads have a higher chance of influencing through effective accountability and ownership for realistic outcomes."

‘Enlist stakeholder advocates’ failed to receive any votes in the poll and yet this was identified at the previous breakfast club discussion as being fundamental to success. Indeed the importance of finding and recruiting the right influencers was also reinforced by the panellists at the Opening Keynote of Chief Disruptor LIVE in March. We also learned that co-creation activities, designed to communicate the purpose and engage everyone in their role, were great opportunities to identify the best advocates for your transformation aims.??

Finally, I’d like to leave you some thoughts on the art of successful transformation, as ever, from one of our experts at the Coal Face. And for this, I’m going to refer to the wise words of one of our Chief Disruptor LIVE March panellists who said, ‘Progress not perfection. We have to be ok about failing’. See you in June for our latest Chief Disruptor LIVE!

Connect, Learn and Disrupt with Chief Disruptor