Business transformations are massive undertakings that can take years to achieve. Unfortunately, just one seismic shift in our daily lives can be exhausting. Change fatigue is real, but that doesn’t mean strategic business initiatives must be put on hold. It does mean, however, that organizations should be purposeful about achieving quick wins and taking a more iterative approach to large transformations.
But before we explore our favorite techniques to accelerate business transformations, let’s revisit the term itself.
What Is Business Transformation?
Business transformation is a buzzword that is used in a lot of contexts, but as it relates to our work, it refers to fundamental changes to the way an organization is structured or accomplishes work.
These changes could be related to personnel, processes, technology, or a combination of all of these.
Business Transformation Examples
A few common examples of business transformations include the following:
- Combining your operations after a merger or acquisition
- Optimizing your supply chain
- Developing a data culture
- A large cloud migration
- Defining a new operating model and organizational structure
The Tell-Tale Signs Your Upcoming Transformation Is at Risk
For 12 years, Pioneer Management Consulting has delivered complicated organizational transformations in partnership with our clients.
Here are the most common signs that an upcoming transformation is at risk:
- Your business’s strategy is unclear, inconsistent, unknown, or not defined to the vision
- Key stakeholders aren't in alignment with your company’s objectives
- Your organization doesn’t have a clear plan to execute its strategy
- It’s not clear what initiatives should be prioritized over others
- Your business doesn’t have the resources, quality, or skillset to run effectively and execute its priorities
- Your organization doesn’t track, benchmark, or measure the progress of performance toward its goals and what is important to its continued success
How to Make Your Transformation Successful
You know where you want to go. In order to find the best route, you need to know where your starting point is. It sounds basic, but many executives skip over assessing their current state and identifying roadblocks at the beginning of the program.
Our Transformation Quick Wins Assessment Framework
Our Transformation Quick Wins Assessment has three parts: asking targeted scoping questions, identifying unique issues and opportunities, and engineering quick wins deliverables.
Asking the Right Questions
We ask our clients eight questions to assess their organization, get to the heart of their issues, and learn how we can best assist them with their transformation:
- What do you know about the project, program, or transformation?
- What does success look like for this work, and what is the end goal?
- How does your team spend its time?
- What is important to you, and how do you measure it?
- What is in your project portfolio/roadmap, and how is it prioritized?
- Do you have a documented work plan?
- How are decisions made, and who makes them?
- How are you using technology and data analytics in your business today?
Additional Insight: If you can’t answer the questions, or the answer is inconsistent across the organization, you may want to spend additional time getting clarity before proceeding with a transformation. And while it can be intimidating to bring in a management consulting firm, an outsider’s perspective can often identify problems and resolve them quickly.
Identifying Issues and Opportunities
When we work with clients to achieve a new strategic objective, what we learn from asking those eight questions helps us identify what areas we should focus on to achieve the best results.
No two businesses are exactly the same, and no two business transformations will be either. Your focus should be on what will drive the most value for you. Too many businesses fail to achieve their goals during a business transformation because they’re too ambitious, and they’ve underestimated the time and resources that a successful transformation requires.
Achieving Quick Wins
Business transformations can be long and strenuous. All of that energy your leadership team has when they start out can be difficult to sustain. We find that identifying possibilities for quick wins can help keep teams excited and motivated throughout the process, and can help remind everyone — from the top of your org chart down — of what they’re doing all of this hard work for.
When we partner with clients, we try to find quick wins that can be deployed within days — or sometimes hours — of identifying an issue. Of course, our best practice tools have been developed from years of use and continuous updates by our team of expert consultants. Often these quick-hit solutions are the first steps toward deploying a large-scale solution.
What a Successful Business Transformation Looks Like
The Problem
A national retail client of ours had implemented a new strategic planning process. Through their strategic planning workshops, they identified top opportunities for initiatives that would help them realize their 3–5-year goals but were stuck on what to do next. They lacked the resource capacity to frame up an approach to prioritize projects, manage the initiatives, escalate risks and issues, and report progress. They needed direction on how to even begin addressing these issues.
Our Focus
A carefully crafted team of Pioneers led the strategic execution of their portfolio. Through leveraging our Transformation Quick Wins Assessment Framework, we discovered an instant opportunity to bring value, which included a standard way to report project status and progress used across the organization.
Quick Wins in Action
Within a week, we customized, socialized, and implemented a standard scorecard template for all programs across the organization. These scorecards provided the leadership team visibility into how their key strategic initiatives were faring and progressing toward goals on a weekly basis. It encouraged project teams to drive progress with more accountability and offered better insights for decision-making by leadership. Furthermore, they served to effectively roll-up key details into an integrated roadmap view.
Long-Lasting Results
While these scorecards evolved to better fit this client’s needs, they are still being used as a fundamental tool in their execution process… proof that even small, quick wins can have a lasting impact.
Easing Your Business Transformation
If your business is in need of a transformation, time is not your friend. There will always be pressure to deliver immediate value and execute. Some transformations can be successfully managed in-house, but if your leadership team doesn’t have the skills, expertise, time, or budget to accommodate a lengthy process, it may be best to bring in an elite team that can help you achieve larger milestones faster.
Whether it’s a workday implementation, finance transformation, or organizational design, at Pioneer, we already know what’s worked well for businesses much like yours. We know how to create value instantly for your organization, and we know how to set you up for success from the beginning. Believe it or not, what gets us out of bed in the morning is serving our clients behind the scenes and delivering at the top of our game.
Interested in how Pioneer can help your organization with critical transformation initiatives? Connect with our team to start the conversation.
