Take the High Road to Successful Transformation.

In these times of widespread transformations, we hear and read little about effective and successful transformations: meticulously designed and genuinely embraced and adopted by people on the floor.

So, that's why Scopernia and Ambits team up for successful transformation. 

In this article we share our joint vision why successful transformation is a result of two building blocks:

1. A clear-cut methodology (that's Scopernia's core) and

2. Reinforcing the leadership of your management (and that is Ambits' job).

Before we start

What really is a successful transformation?

Transformations are built from well-designed strategies based on solid market and consumer insights. Digital transformation re-defines your business model, your proposition, and everything that your business knows as business-as-usual processes.

The effectiveness of a transformation process is measured by the actually changed behavior of frontline employees, the utilization of new tools, and how capably new working methods are being applied. A transformation is effective when your organization embraces the digital-led market changes, when it adapts the business model accordingly, and when it impacts the customer experience and your P&L statement in a positive way.

A transformation is effective when your organization embraces the digital-led market changes and when it adapts the business model accordingly.

Jo Caudron & Dado Van Peteghem

See, Understand and Plan for Successful transformation

In 1960 the average lifespan of a company was 60 years, decreasing gradually to just 18 years today. The biggest mistake is to think that business can only change when all customers change. The reality is that business shifts when just a substantial minority of the audience starts to do things differently.

The SUPER-Change model is aimed to act as a guiding path to transform and future-proof your organization. You begin by spotting changes and disruptions in the market (See) to work your way towards a strategic model (Understand-Plan) that will translate to an operational transformation model (Enable-Run).

The fact that the model is shaped into an infinity loop is not a coincidence. Transformation has become a permanent condition. Something that works today might suddenly not tomorrow. This forces us to consider change as a permanent factor.

See The Changes

The first step in a successful transformation process is to get a clear understanding of what your organization is actually transforming for. This can be done by setting up a radar constantly monitoring trends and disruptions in the market.

The better you understand the change, the more agile you and your organization become, which enables you to be prepared to respond and deal with these changes.

It is crucial that the radar does not solely focus on initiatives from direct competitors, but actually scouts for changes on two higher levels. First, at the level of digital disruptions, looking at how startups are trying to disrupt legacy business models. Second, at the level of society, and how changes in working, living, and mobility behaviors might impact your traditional business.

Understand The Impact

Once your organization receives a regular flow of market and consumer insights, the next step is to evaluate how those insights might be turned either into opportunities, or potential liabilities that need to be looked after.

The trick is to understand which drivers impact your traditional models the most and using these forces to create your own alternatives at a later stage. Drivers that are identified as having a high impact on the traditional business combined with a low organizational readiness need to be prioritized when strategizing the transformation.

Plan For The Future

By now you must have a pretty clear idea of what is happening in the market, how it will impact your organization, and what you need to focus to ensure an effective transformation. This stage is about defining the “what” of your strategic model based on the “why” uncovered by the first stage.

A key to any transformation process is to review your North Star vision and 45° strategic ambitions. This means re-thinking your focus and what your organization wishes to represent in years to come. Once your North Star vision is sharp enough that you would be proud to print it on t-shirts, your strategic ambitions leading to it should be broken down into a list of concrete transformation initiatives, forming a tactical plan.

We use this term to define how you can place dots on the horizon, keep your focus on them, but remain flexible while moving in the right direction. This is your long-term view.

However, this angle is no dictate. Consider it to be the beam of your flashlight: it indicates, guides, and also leaves certain areas in the dark, keeping you on track.

If you want more details on how to See, Understand, and Plan the future, we recommend you to read the following books: “The World is Round” by Jo Caudron (https://www.dewereldisrond.be/), and “Metasystems, How Trust can Change the World” by Dado Van Peteghem (https://www.metasystemsbook.com/).

Once you See, Understand and Plan to face the upcoming disruptions, it makes sense to pursue the outside-in approach next to the inside-out, by bringing partners to the table for the implementation. The right partnerships will allow you to keep the right focus on your core business, while empowering you in Enabling and Running your transformation plans.

Enable and Run your transformation for Success

Once you've designed the strategic and tactical plans for the shift to a different business model, a new value proposition, or a re-centered customer experience, it's now time for action.

It's time to get the organization equipped to implement the plans. And in the case of an ambitious plan, the bad news is that it means transforming to some extent the organization itself and the leadership running it.

The good news is: it has been done successfully by others.

Three out of Four transformations Fail

A 2015 McKinsey Global Survey states that only 26% of transformations "have been very or completely successful at both improving performance and equipping the organization to sustain improvements over time". It's striking that both PROSCI's 2018 Change Management benchmarking report and McKinsey's 2015 Global Survey show the same 26% to 27% success rate of transformation projects. So, we generally can assume that around the world only one out of four transformations are successful.

Three out of four transformations are considered a failure by the business owner, just one year after delivery. This obviously provides room for improvement and for adding Business Mentoring or change management support to the transformation process.

The difference between Success and Failure

The road to effectiveness will traverse the mountains, cliffs and pitfalls of the organization's heritage, the reigning leadership culture and entrenched industry-specific customs and practices. These are factors of complexity and ambiguity that strategy and technology implementations often make abstractions from or take for granted.

It's the middle manager who is responsible for making the big ideas, the big plans a reality.

These factors are challenging to put into a standard model, as they are hidden in the details, within informal networks and traditional ways of working. Most importantly, they are always related to what makes the difference between success and failure: people.

Taking a closer look at your people, it's the middle manager who is responsible for making the big ideas, the big plans a reality. Middle managers hold the power when it comes to employee engagement. They literally are the bridge between top management and the people on the floor, turning plans into new ways of working and servicing customers.

How to beat the odds of only 26% of transformations being successful? How then to reinforce your people to meet the challenge?

We believe a people challenge needs to be met by bringing in the right people and leadership.

Enable and Run your Transformation with Business Mentoring

Meet the Business Mentor: coming in with vast, hands-on expertise of personally leading a transformation as a business leader.

Although coaching, training, consultancy and change management involve each some form of reinforcing leadership, Business Mentoring integrates all of these elements and adds deep business leadership expertise.

Business Mentoring has the capacity to increase the effectiveness of transformations from the current 26-27 % effectiveness rate to 75%. It integrates coaching, training and change management in the transformation process, which in aggregate contribute up to a 59% (*) effectiveness rate of transformations.

Augmenting this with a Business Mentor's unique business leadership expertise and hands-on, directly applicable advice, a 75% (**) effectiveness rate may be confidently projected.

Business Mentoring is the best available option to safeguard your investment.

Having stood in the shoes of the business leader

Although the business remains the owner of the transformation, the Business Mentor brings mastery of the people and leadership elements in the process and actively supports the transformation. The Business Mentor will closely collaborate with the strategy and technology consultants to ensure alignment.

The Business Mentor will put the necessary focus on how to engage people and middle management in the transformation process, what kind of organization and governance will be needed, and how to engage top management at the defining moments. A Business Mentor will be centered on people and organization, while fully understanding what the business and leadership require.

The Business Mentor will be able to handle the complexity and ambiguity because of his or her experience in the business.

Having stood in the shoes of the business leader, the Business Mentor has instant authenticity and credibility to facilitate the kind of collaborations needed to enact transformations. A solid basis to work with the mentee and swiftly develop an in-depth understanding of the business and leadership challenges.

The Business Mentor will also be able to handle the complexity and ambiguity because of his/her experience in the business. Having hit the walls of an organization in the past and exercised the leadership needed to drive new ways of working.

No transformation is alike

No organization is alike. Therefore, no transformation or implementation is alike. As a result, Business Mentoring comes in various forms.

First of all, the Business Mentor needs to fit the industry and have demonstrated expertise in delivering the specific implementation at hand. For that reason, Ambits has built the community of Business Mentors that fit 17 different industries and 15 types of transformations.

Secondly, Business Mentoring needs to adapt to the manager or the team that's being reinforced. Some managers will need structural help, visible in the organization, so to speak in tandem with the business owner. For others ad hoc support or an occasional smart sounding board is sufficient. Business Mentoring can be both on-site or remote. It basically adapts to the business challenge at hand.

Wrapping up our vision

In this article we've tried to demonstrate how successful transformation is built on two pillars:

1. A clear-cut methodology (Scopernia's core) and

2. Reinforcing the leadership of your management (Ambits' job).

We have said enough. It's time to hand back the baton to you and your people.

• Where do you stand in these times of transformation?
• Have you got the right methodology to start off transforming your business?
• Is your leadership equipped to engage your people on the floor to deliver the change?

Join us at The Successful Transformation

One-Day Seminar.

What the Seminar will bring you:

1. Discover from Scopernia's founders how to See, Understand, and Plan for your transformation.

2. Learn from the expertise and cases of Ambits Business Mentors how to Enable and Run your transformation successfully.

Available both in-company and per seat.

Contact us for more information

Co-written by Jo Caudron, Dado Van Peteghem, Gerrit Sarens and Vincent Fierens.