Transformation learnings

March marks the first six months in my role as COO for twoday Denmark. One of the key dimensions of my role is to lead the Danish transformation together with our Managing Director Lars Berthelsen and the rest of our leadership team to accelerate our transition from being a group of loosely coupled companies to a more coherent twoday . Or as some phrase it – from a house of brands to a branded house. This six-month milestone prompted me to reflect on my learnings since I began in twoday . And since constant transformation is the new normal for many organizations, I thought I’d share these five reflections more broadly. ?

None of these learnings are rocket science and some might even fall in the category of being corporate clichés, but it’s often meaningful to reflect on clichés through a lens of practical examples. I’m not pretending that we are doing these things perfect in twoday Denmark. Most of these reminders are indeed also work-in-progress for our own organization.

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1.?????? Insist on a market focused perspective

?When going through organizational change it is easy to fall back into an inside-out view and slip into an inward-looking perspective as the main one. It’s in my opinion important to continue to insist on a market focused outside-in view at every stage of the transformation. It might sound a bit ignorant to even highlight this, but ensuring structured customer and partner feedback as an iterative process is something that needs to be designed and planned for. At twoday Denmark we are trying to augment the normal customer feedback processes by establishing a customer advisory board that will serve as a point of reference through our change process.

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2.?????? Avoid the temptation and keep accountability levels

?Transformations can’t be done centrally. It’s tempting to formulate a central playbook for all possible details of a transformation process, but in real-life an organization needs to appoint leaders of the future organizational structure and empower them to construct the details of the to-be structure for the adoption to mature and the transformation process to move to a more advanced stage.

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3.?????? Make the central corner posts of the transformation crystal clear

?When I was working with Data & AI in my previous job, my organization often referred to a principle of “discipline at the core to allow for flexibility at the edge”. This paradigm also applies to organizational transformations. I believe it is important to formulate the key corner posts that everyone should aim to adhere to through the transformation. These corner posts reduce uncertainty and supports better frontline decisions as the transformation progresses. One of the corner posts in our example is that we will continue to have de-centralized P&L’s. This key principle informs several important decisions in future HR, Finance, and management structures etc. ???

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4.?????? The beauty of documentation

When going through larger transformations as a company, there are an extensive number of details that needs to be discussed, scenarios that needs to be iterated and of course decisions that need to be made, communicated, understood end re-enforced. Too often a decision is made in a meeting and communicated mostly verbally to a finite number of stakeholders. My experience is that this practice will only take you so far. The deeper we have come into our transition at twoday , the more important central documentation have appeared to be. Ensuring access and keeping documentation up to date with most recent information and decisions is imperative. Documentation sounds trivial, but it’s a key enabler of transparent communication and organizational transformation. ???

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5.?????? Provide context

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When changes are made in several dimensions at the same time, you need to be aware that only very few colleagues will be up to date on the full context of how several changes are interlinked. Going through a transformational process is intense and time is limited, but if context isn’t provided a decision alone can appear counterintuitive and frustrating for the receiving part of the organization. Most colleagues have a broad view and appreciate trade-offs – even beyond their own business area. I’ve found it increasingly important to set time aside to provide broader context when discussing an area that at first appear isolated. This practice consumes more time short term but is the more efficient one in the longer run. ?

As mentioned in the beginning these five learnings above are not rocket science but are learnings that I have experienced through my first six months at twoday . If you want to read more a different perspective on our transformation in the below ITWatch article ?? (Danish & paywall apologies)

Twoday vil tage mere ansvar og udkonkurrere markedet — ITWatch