Monthly Archives: December 2014

Business Transformation is the radical and holistic change companies undergo to grow the business faster, make them more relevant to the market, and de risk them from any technology or environmental change. Like any change companies can either pursue a big bang approach or a state-wise approach. In this blog, we share our experience of companies that have successfully embarked and achieved business transformation using an incremental approach.

Like the Chinese proverb, a long journey starts with small steps, successful business transformation starts with small but measured initial steps. The first question when companies attempt transformation is which process to touch. In most businesses, the easiest function that is amenable change and one without too much dependencies and investments is “sales”. Moreover, any minor changes in sales function has a direct impact on the “outcome”, be it new customer acquisition, or more orders from existing customers. Either ways the outcomes impact the overall mood and functioning of the company. Sales outcomes are also highly visible, all across the organization people can see the flurry of activities that start once a new client is gained. Any win, however small, can uplift the mood for change and thaw the resistance to change. Employees should not feel threatened by it; instead they must be allowed to participate in this change – especially the critical members of the team who are key influencers. It must vibe with a sense of growth and pride in the organization. What such changes do is to convince fence-sitters that change is good and doable. A highly visible short term win will also enable the top leadership of the firm to start change on a winning note.

Once this clarity of purpose is communicated through changes in sales, it becomes necessary to get the second level. It is best at this stage to use existing resources within the firm and enable them to drive change on two areas eliminate waste and improve visibility. Create groups to improve the operations, ask them to identify and drive changes where they feel empowered. Next involve people in information, communication and advocacy changes. Ask the employees to suggest changes to website, the sales and marketing collaterals that work best and ask them to drive these improvements. Their buy-in is absolutely essential to drive the second-order change. Now that we have a broad based team that believes in the new vision, we need to build a sense of urgency so that the change that has been demonstrated can be capitalized upon. Once this happens, creative inputs on products, offering and markets start to pour in. It also gives everyone a chance to delve deeper into the core offering to examine possible extensions. This helps build the roadmap for the company as to which markets and products they need to be in. Once we have the top and second level of leadership involved in this exercise, they believe in the new vision and positioning, especially since it is their aspiration that has been translated into the firm’s vision and strategy.

Once there is trust, comfort and belief in the vision and need for change, it becomes easier to begin small structural changes within the organization. The structure needs to align the capabilities within the organization to the new goals and strategies. Given today’s environment, no team or division can work in silos. Hence it becomes imperative that we put in place review mechanisms that will facilitate cross functional work. Implementing measures and balanced scorecards that help break silos should be thoughtfully designed and implemented. Training and reviewing team members to drive this, building their capabilities and motivating them becomes essential. Working as teams and leveraging off each other needs to become a habit, a new way of working. Once success can be shown in a couple of inter-functional initiatives, a broad base of employees becomes adept at adopting such structures across the entire organization. Making change happen in other functions and departments new becomes a lot easier. Hence managing transformation in stages with the right vision, by building the right capabilities, help build the foundation for a large business transformation.