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Taking the right first step to future proof your organisation

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At our recent invitation-only round table event, Future proof your organisation with 21st century leadership, we discussed many aspects of the current business environment and the challenge it poses. Some of the key points included:

  1. No one person has all of the answers. Adaptive and shared leadership is the only sustainable way forward
  2. Developing a culture which supports enterprise contribution will result in exponentially improved performance
  3. VUCA environments are a threat, but can become an opportunity if you have the skills and techniques to overcome them
  4. Creating the right level of attachment in your culture will set every one of your employees free to thrive and perform at their best, which in turn improves organisational performance
  5. If you’re a leader, change and culture start with you

But if you are leading an organisation which needs to transform, what is the single most important thing for you to do now to future proof your organisation?

A new perspective on the failure of change programmes

The failure of change programmes is usually attributed to poor execution, but based on a four-year study of 62 corporate transformations, an article in the Harvard Business Review, What Everyone Gets Wrong About Change Management, says something different.

The research team cites what might sound like an obvious, but previously overlooked, cause – organisations often pursue the wrong changes. They advocate that, before worrying about how to change, executive teams need to figure out what to change and in particular, what to change first.

What vs how

For decades senior leadership teams have worried about how to undertake change programmes. Various techniques have been in vogue at different points, and many hours have been spent debating one approach versus another at board tables around the world.

But this analysis paralysis took focus away from the most important aspect of change – what exactly is it that needs to be changed? What changes will have the biggest impact on the organisation’s success? And, crucially, what changes will have the biggest benefit to its stakeholders – both its customers and its team?

Understanding your organisation’s answer to what to change first requires a detailed and thoughtful look at a multitude of factors and metrics. An outside perspective is often helpful in uncovering key insight which can guide successful change programmes.

Transformation done poorly can be very painful. All transformation requires some form of disruption, but negative disruption can have disastrous effects on your business. It can, and often does, lead to confusion, wasted energy, time, effort, and money.

However, transformation can also be, well, for lack of a better term, transformational. Done right, it can position your company to take advantage of the challenges it faces, turning what were once challenges into opportunities.

So, what will your next step be? And how do you know it will be the right one?

13 Mindblowing Organisational Transformation Stats

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No doubt many of us have heard the oft-quoted statistic that 70% of all organisational transformation and change initiatives fail. But how many of us can recall some of the lesser known (and yet equally eye-opening!) facts and figures that paint a picture of the true impact of transformation, whether at an individual, team or organisational level?Leading Transformation

So hold on to your hats because we’ve got 13 awe-inspiring statistics on organisational transformation listed below. Feel free to add your own in the comments section!

  1. Company-wide change efforts are 12.4 times more likely to be successful when senior managers communicate continually. (McKinsey)
  2. 92 percent of change practitioners name top management sponsorship as the most important factor for successful change. (IBM)
  3. Nearly 60 percent of projects aimed at achieving business change do not fully meet their objectives. (IBM)
  4. When senior leaders role model the behaviour changes they’re asking employees to make, transformations are 5.3 times more likely to be successful. (McKinsey)
  5. Leaders create the climate for success – 50-70% of variance in organisational climate can be explained by differences in leadership styles. (Hay Group)
  6. Up to 30% of variance in financial results (profits and revenue) can be explained by differences in organisational climate. (Hay Group)
  7. 86% of C suite executives and 84% of all managers and employees say culture is critical to their organisations’ success. 60% see it as a bigger success factor than either their strategy or their operating model. (PWC)
  8. Less than 10% of leaders have the right capabilities and experiences required to successfully lead transformations. (PWC)
  9. Frontline employees taking the initiative to drive change elevates the success of transformations to a whopping 71%. (McKinsey)
  10. 12% of people don’t believe their companies are keeping up with the changing landscape of business (Mitch Joel, Ctrl Alt Delete)
  11. 31% of CEOs are fired for not managing organisational change well enough. (Forbes)
  12. 25% of change management initiatives are successful over the long term (Towers Watson)
  13. 95% of leaders using stakeholder centred coaching improved their effectiveness (Marshall Goldsmith)

So there you have it: the good, the bad and the ugly! All business change requires some form of disruption from the norm, which, as you can see from some of the above stats, means that transformation done poorly can be very painful. However, it’s not all bad news – transformation can also be, well, for lack of a better term, transformational. Done right, it can position you, your team and your company to take advantage of challenges, turning what were once issues into opportunities.

For our lessons learned on what it takes for organisational transformation to be successful, enter your details below and download our top ten tips.

Enter your details to download "10 Tips for Painless Transformation"

Transformation To The New Triumpha

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How does one transform a transformation company? And more importantly, why?

The simple answer is that we didn’t change all that much. We aren’t changing who we are, what we do, or how we do it. What we are changing is how we show up in the world.

It’s a re-brand so that our outside image represents what we always have been on the inside.  Although WHO we are hasn’t changed, we are changing the ways in which we can be of service. We are focusing on ways to better support you, our clients.

Our new website, new complementary resources and new services were all transformed into something better than they were so that people can better understand who we are, what we do, the value of what we do, how we do it, and perhaps most importantly, why we do it.

Like any transformation, the first steps afterward can be uncomfortable. As people who deal with transformation on a daily basis we also understand that progress never comes comfortably.

We welcome you to peruse our new website, download our new reports and resources, and to reach out to us with your thoughts and feedback. We love our new brand, and we hope you do to.

To your success,

Andrea Adams

Psychology Insights for Extraordinary Organisation Performance

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Back in 2005, I was HR Director for BAE Systems Air Support. Looking for new ways to drive the extraordinary performance required to execute the business strategy I turned to the new field of positive psychology.

The business was doing well with a solid order book, £1 billion turnover and profit in line with expectations. We also had a superb management board with a shared ambition to double the size of the business in the next five years. Our strategy was to move beyond the design and development of military aircraft and provide new services, namely maintenance work and capability upgrades for in-service aircraft.

This was unchartered territory, we needed approaches that would help us engage our workforce with the new strategy, encourage extraordinary performance from our people and build from our leadership strengths during a time of significant change.

Positive Psychology

Scouting for ideas I discovered the fledgling field of positive psychology. This offered a profoundly different approach to the way organisations, manage and create value through people. Positive interventions are unique in that they are aimed at optimal functioning rather than just functioning.

Imagine a person recovering from surgery and visiting a physiotherapist. The physiotherapist engages the client in physical activity with the goal of recovering ‘normal’ functioning. In other words moving along a scale from say a -3 to a zero.

Now think about a person visiting a personal trainer at the gym. The trainer engages in many of the same activities, running the client through repetitive physical exercise, but this time with the aim of taking an already healthy body and making it perform even better. For example this time moving from +3 to +8.

This simple explanation gave me the light bulb moment I had been looking for.  I realised that many of the approaches in use within organisations for leading and managing people stop short. They deliver neutral levels of performance at best. Not bad but not that good either.

I began to believe that there was as much, or more to be gained from capitalising on strengths and positivity as there was in trying to overcome weaknesses and fix problems. We needed to generate extraordinary levels of performance. It was time to try a different approach.

It was a risk, it could have gone badly wrong. However positive psychology is built on a foundation of careful study and empirical evidence, so the risk didn’t feel so large.

By 2007 we had a number of ‘first of their kind’ availability contracts under our belt and had doubled business turnover to £2 billion sooner than anticipated. In addition the leadership development, strategic change and employee engagement approaches we used were awarded a Gold Chairman’s Award for outstanding contribution to business success.

If you are looking for new approaches on how to improve leadership effectiveness, employee engagement and the execution of organisational and behavioural change, positive psychology offers impactful tried and tested solutions.

The Science of Emotions

At the heart of positive psychology is the science of emotions. Professor Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina is one of the world’s leading scholars. I recently had the opportunity to learn directly from Barbara in a cutting edge masterclass packed with insights on how positive emotions boost energy, relationships, performance and health. Of particular note, they provide the key ingredient for sustaining behavioural change.

Look out for future blogs where I will be talking about some of the leading edge ideas from emotion science and positive psychology and how they can be applied in the workplace.

Read more about the BAE Systems case study.