#2: Vision - Alignment - Results (VAR) Cycle

All transformation agendas are not one-time, isolated events but a set of ongoing activities. In all such work, generally, the strategy part is given too much attention, and the other aspects should be addressed.

If I look at the programs that succeeded and the ones that failed to yield expected outcomes, the issue is that attention should have been given across the entire value cycle, and there were significant misses in some areas.

The three major segments are:

1. Vision: Where do we want to go as a company? Why? What needs to be improved in the current state that is driving the urgency?
2. Alignment: Who is the core group of people (leaders, experts, and connectors) who will help take us there? What is our message in terms of "What's in it for me? (WIIFM)" for each of these players?
3. Results: What type of results will this create for the company, and how sustainable will it be over the long run? How can we bring it back into the next set of subsequent cycles?

However, across your programs and projects, you may have experienced something like this:

• When you engaged a top-tier consulting firm to create the strategy or assessment work, significant gaps were identified when you wanted to implement the strategy.
• You have a fantastic team of experts (both employees and vendors ) who do excellent technology work, but you later found that the engagement aspects were not adequately addressed. So even when the implementation was a success, you are left wondering what came from these investments?
• Lastly, when the project ideation, execution, and delivery phases generate significant results in a localized manner, it is challenging to scale up those results.

What is going on? Independently, each phase seems to be a success, but collectively, companies need to catch up on their transformation and growth efforts.

If this is your situation, the following pic may help you understand the missing ingredients.

Three significant aspects must be considered between each of these phases. These three are not technical or process expertise but are related to leadership acumen and come from experience. It needs in-the-trenches experience to assess and face situations, challenges, and opportunities as they transpire and adjust the core focus.

Organizational Intelligence:

A strategy that looks great on paper is just that. Promising to present but may be very difficult to execute. For the vision and strategy to move to effective execution, a clear level of organizational intelligence is needed. This is not about knowing the people to be engaged but identifying that core group that must be aligned. How do we uncover what drives them? Who are the silent supporters and the passive resistors? When would you like to engage, deflect, escalate, or avoid?

Execution Intelligence

Even with a fantastic vision, well-defined strategy, and actively engaged stakeholders, some programs fail. When that happens, it is not because of a lack of technical know-how or project management gaps. The issues are deep-rooted around the areas of execution intelligence.

It is the ability to take the vision, organizational intelligence, and alignment and evaluate the current situation to create the desired results under given conditions. Internal and external factors can influence the outcome.

If one of your core sponsors gets replaced, a critical SME resigns, or a system that supported a piece of the process was not identified earlier in the process, or any kind of challenge that is large enough to derail the program comes up as a surprise, all of our best plans suffer. Experienced leaders will anticipate, plan for, and build countermeasures to handle such situations.

Decision Intelligence

It is easy to create results in a smaller area, one business unit, within a particular function, for an engaged sponsor, etc. But how do we extend similar or even bigger results across the company? This requires understanding the interconnectedness of the various business functions. The following is not a comprehensive list of questions, but it will give directional clarity:

• How does work get done across the company?
• What are the individual leaders' aspirations, worries, or even FOMO?
• What type of resistance can be anticipated, and which groups would be active supporters?
• How do we sequence the subsequent waves of work so that incremental wins are piling up to alleviate the fears of others who want to stay on the sidelines?
• Which groups within the company may be worried that your work in one area may impact their long-held expert status?
• Where does it make sense to invest the next round of funding?
• How can we stack up the wins so the programs start moving to partial self-funding based on what's already delivered?

Transformation and growth work leveraging data, analytics, and digital is an ongoing process. A project mindset kills progress, and in many cases, when done with limited visibility, the results are a hit-or-miss situation.

What types of challenges have you seen? What would you add to this?

PS: If you need help with your transformation agenda, you know where to find it.

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