A guide to enterprise transformation

We’ve all heard the saying before—change is the only constant. In today’s business world, this rings more true than ever as the pace of change and the need for swift response keeps increasing. Today’s organizations must respond with quick, effortless grace.

But instead, many have now retreated to the comfort of familiar, rigid behavior. Disillusionment with failed past transformation efforts has fueled this trend and the collateral damage of these failures has caused many to lose faith in agile methods.

Ironically, agile, and its focus on embracing change, is exactly what companies need. Botched transformation “installations” are partly to blame, but impatience with weathering the storm also plays a big part. Agile methods are the convenient target to blame.

In this article, you’ll learn about what enterprise transformation is, alongside eight ways to implement more effective change.

Many enterprise transformations have stalled out

Traditional organizations desperately need to meet change head on. However, hierarchical power structures and bureaucratic behaviors can’t respond deftly to change.

To make things worse, many corporate cultures are wired to support and sustain the status quo. Instead of challenging and adapting to changing contexts, organizations opt to reject change. It’s as if change is a foreign element and the organization releases antibodies to combat it.

To compete, you have to be willing to reimagine your product around a common goal of accepting change.

The headwinds

For the past couple of decades, organizations have chased agile methods and frameworks. Agile presented itself as a quick fix, but many enterprise transformations started and failed due to:

• The unanticipated enormity of the change in effort, cost, and duration
• The defeated realization that there is likely no end state where change is no longer needed
• A lack of leadership support
• Believing the transformation was isolated to the team level
• Pushing change on the organization without involving its members in the solution
• Performing the transformation only in information technology
• Consultants installing frameworks without customization to solve problems
• Surface change in name only without changing the underlying system and structure

These headwinds, to name a few, have stalled out many transformations. Millions of dollars, years of effort, and repeat attempts have produced little impact. The resulting change fatigue has left many searching for something to blame.

Can you guess what received the brunt of the blame?

The retreat

Exhausted and searching for a target to blame, many have pointed to agile methods as the culprit. Agile methods are easy to convict as the foreign element that disrupted the status quo. They have become the scapegoat and many have started to turn away from them.

This is a knee-jerk response to the discomfort of large, multi-year change efforts. In reality, the headwinds are where the blame should be, but blaming agile is an easier task than rectifying the headwinds.

What are these organizations turning to instead? Unfortunately, many return to the comfort of existing structure and behaviors.

So, where should you go from here?

A reboot: Back to the basics

One-size-fits-all, narrowly focused, time-bound change efforts haven’t worked out for many. Instead, traditional organizations must embrace a radically different approach to change. Below are eight ways to change the change game to target long-term impact.

1. Acceptance of a key truth

Change isn’t time-bound; it’s constant.

The word “transformation” implies there’s a beginning and an end to change. In reality, you’re in a never-ending series of change loops. Today’s new behaviors become tomorrow’s status quo.

Because of this, you need to meet this reality head on and make a permanent space for change.

You have to create a safe space to challenge norms, instead of just reinforcing the status quo.

Employees should be rewarded for change. This includes recognition for speaking up when existing patterns no longer work. Employees should also have the authority to implement change on their own.

2. It’s the system, not an individual team or function

Nine times out of ten, transformations focus on the team level. A narrow approach only serves to optimize for local concerns and does nothing to improve the entire system.

Building cross-functional teams can help you improve your nimbleness. Such teams have all the skills needed to understand and meet customer needs. In order to accomplish this, you need to put the right mix of people on the same team.

The best team mix has business, technology, and user experience specialties working together, but it also extends to the community around the team. This includes stakeholders, customers, and other supporting functions in the organization.

Effective teams aim to deliver the right thing, in the right way, at the right time. This won’t happen if you only tune one part of the system.

3. Boil a pot of water, not the ocean

Attempting to boil the ocean to expedite change doesn’t work. Yet, many PMs approach change by attempting to shift behaviors across the whole organization at once. The resulting pain and chaos often leads to abandonment of the change.

A better approach boils a pot of water at a time.

How does this work? The simple answer is to dedicate your focus onto a single section of the organization. For instance, you could focus all change efforts on a group of teams in a product area or center on a single product team.

Embracing change doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing or all-at-once. A focused, stepwise approach is more sustainable and repeatable in a continuous journey.

4. Change big in a small way

Small, focused change has a smaller impact radius, but if your change is narrowly focused, it doesn’t mean it has to be modest. You’ll often need to reimagine how work gets done instead of polishing what you already do today.

For instance, if the group in focus requires a big change, a localized reset might be necessary. This foundational shift typically involves stripping away what is nonessential. When you simplify the system, essential behaviors have room to shine and amplify impact.

5. Pull change, don’t push it

Forcing change on others doesn’t work. Resistance is born from being pushed. Instead, try to pull your team with change.

The best way to pull change is to co-create the change. When someone is part of the plan, they’ll feel like their input is necessary for the product moving forward. While this seems like common sense, it’s not common practice.

6. Leaders support change at the real place of work

You can’t change the way you do work from an office or a boardroom. You need to go to your real place of work to support and enable change.

Being present when work is flowing (or not) is enlightening for a manager. No longer will an opaque status report cloud your perception of reality.

The truth from the ground informs how you should show up to support the team. Applying the right leadership stance in context accelerates the enablement of effective teams.

7. Act, don’t think your way to new beliefs

When facing change, new behaviors rarely make sense. They run contrary to the comfort of old, familiar habits. As a result, reason often doesn’t work when confronted with new behaviors.

Fortunately, there’s a shortcut to warming up to new behaviors: try them. Avoid meticulously thinking it through or designing a perfect plan to change. Instead, take the new behavior for a spin, and you’ll learn by doing more than you ever could by planning.

When you take a step, you see a result. The result can start to alter how you view the action. When you see new results from new behaviors, your beliefs will shift.

8. Sharing is caring

Spreading the word of change builds momentum and leverages learning. You’re not going to flip the entire organization at once. However, sharing experiences will help prepare others for the change.

Seeing the results builds excitement. It provides a real example of the change happening in the organization. And when failures are experienced, learning happens. Seeing that change isn’t perfect helps prepare others for the reality of changing.

Conclusion

As a PM, your goal shouldn’t be to find a once in a lifetime transformation. Instead, you need to adapt to meeting changing circumstances on a daily basis. This involves adapting a growth mindset and questioning the practices you have in place.

Leadership plays a pivotal role in any change effort. As a leader, you need to foster an environment where:

• Questioning the status quo is safe and encouraged
• Change is pulled rather than pushed
• Learning from action trumps theoretical planning

The key to successful enterprise transformation lies in understanding that transformations are a continuous process, not something with a clear start and end date. Keep your head attuned to potential improvements and always listen to feedback from your team members.

Featured image source: IconScout