What comes after Transformation?

Sep 22, 2017

It is an overused term today, often not really describing any significant change at all. I have seen it used to describe routine upgrades to the next generation of software for example. This is not Transformation. To us “Transformation is the deep review of everything within the scoped area to enable the creation of an environment that operates in the most effective and efficient way to meet its demands”. This often can and should include a behavioural review too.

This review is often cyclic in nature and can be very healthy for organisations. Many of us have seen the reviews to centralise services one year and decentralise them only a few years later. It could be argued that the decision to go one way or the other is not important, it is the review and understanding of which elements add value that is the real key. The change in itself drives the improvement in efficiency and process whichever direction the work is heading in.

In our world of Transformative change we believe there is one objective. To be an organisation that continuously transforms. The best performing businesses we know are always transforming, always looking to change their practices and performance to meet an ever changing demand. This is not change for change sake, this is more about getting closer and closer to understanding the needs of the world we serve and being unsatisfied until those needs are met perfectly.

The truth is that I don’t really understand the point of a single transformation “project”. To do this is to assume that once complete the world will hold its position until someday you are ready to transform again – hopefully that will be years away!!! To me this implies that it could be OK to just gently improve (or worse still stay the same) between “Transformations”???

More and more today our environment is not like this. Only a look at events of the news in recent weeks will tell you that we are in a time of huge change, not just politically, but socially, technologically and in the world of work. If we cannot adapt and change, if we don’t have people and systems that enable the agility to do so then we are limiting our horizons and possibly our organisations chances of survival.