Transformation

Transformation is a complete?change?in the appearance?or character?of something or someone, especially?so that that thing or person?is improved.

In an?organizational?context, Transformation is a?process?of profound and radical?change?that orients an?organization?in a new direction and takes it to an entirely different level of?effectiveness. Unlike 'turnaround’ (which implies incremental?progress?on the same plane) transformation implies a basic change of?character?and little or no resemblance with the past?configuration?or?structure.

It is a continuous process and will never be completed. Marketplace changes, and so do the needs of our clients and customers. Nowadays technologies accelerate all of those changes.

?Based on the Forbes Insight?of Business Transformation and the Corporate Agenda, KPMG surveyed more than 900 respondents in the report “Business Transformation and the Corporate Agenda[3], Ninety-three percent (93%) of U.S. multinationals are in some stage of?business transformation.

The majority of respondents (51%) define transformation as a continuous process of aligning a business model to support strategy. The second-largest group (31%) defines transformation as narrower efforts limited to specific functions, processes, or areas, continuous or finite. The fewer respondents (18%) define transformation as an all-out turnaround effort that results in an overhaul of a business model.

Business Transformation is a process whereby a business needs to put away a set of practices and adopts new ones.?This often involves the way employees work, the way the company is structured, and the way information technologies are introduced, adopted, and used in the business workflow.

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Dr. Ray O. Johnson, senior vice president and chief technology officer at Lockheed Martin said that “Rather than a tipping point or a trigger, we think of business transformation as a continuous process that we have integrated into all the components of our company and how we operate.”

For most people, business transformation have several benefits that they aim to achieve, such as:

• Ensure adequate workforce skills to successfully manage change
• Increase efficiencies and cut costs
• Create a sustainable business
• Improve responsiveness for a better customer experience
• Grow revenue and expand market share

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“There’s an entrepreneur right now, scared to death, making excuses, saying “ It’s not the right tme just yet.” There’s no such thing as a good time. – Kevin Plank. CEO, Under Amour.

Aaron Sachs and Anupam Kundu in their book of Unfinished Business Organizational Transformation in Chapter 1, explained on what holding back the transformations from success is a lack of commitment needed to usher in a change of culture. Culture is created and solidified over time through expressed actions and reactions and not through cooked up, generic sounding mission statements disconnected from real behaviors. Most of these transformations intend to affect change through assessments, recommendation checklists and ticking boxes; they fail to address the legacy budgetary procedures, management and hiring constructs, and performance evaluation processes.

“Don’t worry about failure: you only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston. Dropbox, CEO and Co-founder.

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When decided to change just one part of an organization, one will end up optimizing locally while creating adverse effects in other parts of the organization, even if they didn’t intend to. There is no such thing as changing just one part of the business. Usually interconnection within the organization means everything changes as a result of transformation.

Dennis Hobbs and Dennis P on their book of?Applied Lean Business Transformation (2011), stated that when decided to do a transformation, company needs to conduct a strategic business assessment (SBA) to determine the company’s need and a realistic estimate of the financial benefits to be expected from the transformation. As an objective, in-depth analysis of current condition in the company. By using existing performance measures, goals for improvement can be established and estimated of the benefits to be achieved.

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“It is always easier to talk about change than to make it.” —?Alvin Toffler. Journalist and Writer.

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There are several questions that need to be asking after doing a transformation as stated by Gary O'Brien on How to Measure Value, such as :

• Are we improving? (better than what we were before)
• Are we delivering per expectation? (kept our commitments to our customers and employees)
• Are we considered as valuable? (customers and employees want more of us than ever before)
• Are we contributing back to the society? (what is our overall contribution back to the society)

“It takes humility to realize that we don’t know everything. Not to rest on our laurels and know that we must keep learning and observing. If we don’t, we can be sure some startup will be there to take our place.” – Cher Wang. CEO, HTC.

The goal of the transformation is to allow the organization to collectively define and measure new behavioral constructs that allow the organization to “inspect and adapt”: find the balance between the following opposites enabling it to respond with urgency.

No matter how business transformation has been initiated (market forces or internally), we find that it succeeds when it follows the following six stages:

1. Recognition from the business leader to transform.
2. Building consensus across stakeholders on the need for change.
3. Identifying the end state of the company’s transformation
4. Planning in detail the new workflows in support of the change.
5. Piloting the transformation in a controlled setting.
6. Rolling-out the transformation company-wide.

Change Management is the operational component of Business Transformation.?It is through change management best practices that communications plans are formed, human resource issues resolved, workflows tested, buy-in accomplished, and successful change made into working reality.?

In?Business Transformation and Change Management by TMG-Emedia, In a sense, Business Transformation is initiated and managed at the executive suite, while Change Management lives in the day-to-day organizational trenches.?Although change management would not be necessary but for the need of Business Transformation, the two are different in scope and execution.?Specifically, the Change Management team is responsible for:

1. Articulating the goals of change in a clear and approachable way.
2. Identifying the metrics whereby success will be measured against.
3. Show the steps necessary to achieve the change.
4. Monitor the change process and create a transparent feedback responding mechanism.

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“The way I think about culture is that modern human have radically changed the way that they work and the way that they live. Companies need to change the way they manage and lead to match the way that modern humans actually work and live.” – Brian Halligan. CEO, Hubspot.

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“The distance between number one and number two is always a constant. If you want to improve the organization, you have to improve yourself and the organization gets pulled up with you. That is a big lesson.” – Indra Nooyi. Chairperson & CEO, PepsiCo.