Organisations Need Human Transformation

We are going through an industrial revolution, the 4th one. The world is changing. Business is changing. You hear or engage in conversation about Organisational Transformation very often. You also hear about Digital Transformation, to adapt to the new reality. What is too often lacking, is the conversation on the transformation of the most critical ingredient of an organisation; the constituent human being.

Organisational Transformation

Organisational Transformation, describes something beyond Organisational Change. It implies restructuring and redesigning of the whole layout, appearance, workings and mechanisms of a whole organisation as a body. And that is apt as a description. The problem is, an organisation beyond its structure and design, is the sum of the people that form its constituent parts. A change in the designs, structures, processes, protocols, policies and flows, surely do make a difference, in the efficiency, effectiveness and relevance of organisations within the wider world around them. They leave two questions though:

1. Without a change in the constituent parts, how much of the desired change in all else to amount to transformation, is effectively possible for an organisation?
2. How effective is an Organisational Transformation, when the constituent parts remain the same as before?

This is the point where many will argue, that culture is also factored and considered in organisational transformation. And that opens space for another two questions:

1. What is culture?
2. Can culture change, transform or evolve, without change, transformation or evolution first occurring at the individual human level?

Now ask the honest question: How often do you hear or part-take in the conversation on Human Transformation?

If a conversation on Human Transformation is a taboo topic or subject, then that taboo, is either a root or symptom of a bigger problem; inertia on the human front. Inertia prevents improvement, change, transformation and evolution.

Human Transformation

Organisations have been busy in transformation efforts since the 4th Industrial Revolution has become apparent, to survive, thrive and succeed upon the latest revolution, to rapidly keep up with changes in the external environment or to stay ahead of foreseen changes that are rapidly coming.

Yet, the definitions, in practice of Organisational Transformation, wherever you may encounter them, are almost always limited to the non-human aspects of the organisation. This is because it is easier to quickly and abruptly change a structure, a design, a layout, a policy, a strategy, a set of goals or a process, than to change a person. This is a tough reality.

Purely linguistically in fact, without the Business context, Transformation as a word, is read to imply change that is quick, rapid and sudden. And this becomes problematic. A human being does not wholly fundamentally change in his or her beliefs, values, mental model or thought process at the writing of some sentences on a piece of paper or the dissemination of a memo. And that suffices as a reasonable explanation, why the human aspect is generally and mostly omitted from Organisational Transformation efforts.

All human beings are unique, because of the unique basic personalities, beliefs and characters they each come with. Probably, it is not even right or correct to want to change these. What is fair game however, is how they view work or business, the perceptions that they bring to it and mental processes to do with it. Work or business does not make humans. It is the other way around. That much of the moral and ethics issues out of the way.

And besides, gradually, we humans do change. It is called evolution. Over time, we are supposed to adapt to the changes in the world around us or the needs that emerge, which ensures our survival. The sort of challenges humanity is facing today, whether in the form of climate change or terrorism or threat of war or much else on a similar scale, to be able to collectively surface adequate solutions to those challenges, the next human evolution is in order anyway. And for their transformation efforts to be worthwhile beyond the 4th Industrial Revolution, organisations have a vested interest in driving that evolution, through a slow, gradual but certain transformation of its human resources. Its people.

The End Goal

To make current efforts of Organisational Transformation worthwhile to thrive with the new rules of economy, market, industry and business, upon the 4th Industrial Revolution, Organisations will need people with the values, besides competencies, to match the work requirements.

The nature of work in the new industry reality will be about constant innovation, disruption, flexibility, adaptability, intuition, creation, co-creation and collaboration. This would require a sense of ownership, responsibility, integrity, selflessness, conscientiousness and transparency. These are strong values that on a universal survey across the corporate world if one were conducted today, you'd have 100% of respondents claiming an ability to relate to without exception. Yet the following questions must be asked:

1. Do prejudice and bias prevail?
2. Do politics play out in organisations?
3. Does somebody get shortchanged in negotiations or do conversations end in loggerheads?

If every individual universally does possess all the right desired values for Industry 4.0, or the world of it, why do these problems occur? And if these values are not present today, sufficiently, what is the guarantee they will be sufficiently present tomorrow?

Values don't grow on trees. People with desired values don't grow on trees. Those values need to be nurtured and cultivated. People need to evolve to live those values, so that they can bring them into the organisational environment, on each workday. Off course, for that, the organisational environment also needs to be shaped suitably.

The Business Case

In design and structure, your organisation may take any form you might want to give it, but it will remain only as good, as its people. Therefore precisely, while the focus thus far has been predominantly on technology and processes, it is now time to allocate as much of it, to the intrinsic values, of the people.

Harish Shah is Singapore's first local born Professional Futurist and a Management Strategy Consultant. He runs Stratserv Consultancy. His areas of consulting and Keynote Topics include EmTech, Industry 4.0, HR, Digital Transformation, Marketing, Strategic Foresight, Systems Thinking and Organisational Future Proofing.