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Transformation Leader's Guide
The Complete Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) Method
Robert H. Miles
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eBook - ePub
Transformation Leader's Guide
The Complete Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) Method
Robert H. Miles
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About This Book
Sure to become the definitive guide for leaders facing the challenges of rapid enterprise-wide transformation, this book is the first detailed release of Robert H. Miles's proven Accelerated Corporate Transformation process – the ACT Method.
Many books on corporate transformation exist, often focusing on leadership styles and stories. This business manual goes further and deeper, providing frameworks, tools, and templates, to show what, when, and how a leader of enterprise-wide transformation should pace an organization through the essential transformation phases of Launch, Cascade, and Execute. The ACT approach is leader-led at all levels. It rapidly engages all employees and has reliably generated rapid breakthrough results across a wide variety of executive leaders, organizational types, and transformation challenges.
Complemented by an optional online course, this Guide will be an indispensable resource for anyone leading or supporting a rapid transformation in their organization. Line managers, strategy consultants, learning and development professionals, human resources managers, and anyone interested in the inner workings of top leadership circles will appreciate the insights this book provides.
The Guide is also available as an online course, Transformation Leader's Guide: The Online Course.
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chapter 1 Transformation Leader’s Challenge Gauging Readiness for Rapid Corporate Transformation
DOI: 10.4324/9781003272724-1
The Embedded “Inhibitors” to Rapid Transformation
No transformation challenge is greater than the one confronting you when you assume the mantel of executive leadership. Yet most executives only get a chance or two at most in their long careers to get this right.
From the moment their appointment is announced, new executives must quickly develop their plans for “taking charge” and for launching the next major phase in their organization. The transformation game plan they need to develop with their colleagues not only requires a re-examination of the organization's external and internal realities, strategies, and guiding purpose but also quite often a re-shaping of its management process and culture, a fundamental re-alignment of its organization, and a re-engagement of its managers and employees. A reboot of the total system.
Gauging Transformation “Readiness”
When rising to such a career- and institution-defining challenge, it is critical for you to be able to accurately gauge your organization's readiness to move forward boldly and rapidly before developing your transformation game plan. This starting point begins with recognition of the existence of embedded “inhibitors” in your organization, which although benign in their effects during steady-state conditions become major impediments to transformative change. Indeed, when it comes time for you to “take charge,” any one of these inhibitors can derail the whole effort if left unattended.1
Let's start by identifying the embedded inhibitors to rapid transformation in all organizations. At the end of this chapter, you will be given an opportunity to gauge their intensity in your organization. And in the chapters that follow, we will articulate a proven Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) methodology that was explicitly designed to enable a leader to engage and overcome each inhibitor to rapid transformation success.
The Transformation “Inhibitors”
Six embedded inhibitors will likely be encountered in any rapid transformation attempt. Five may be expected to emerge during your planning and launch stages and the sixth will appear at predictable waypoints during your first year of execution. Each will need to be anticipated, engaged, and overcome. This is a major role that you and your supporting cast will need to play very well.
Inhibitor #1: Cautious Management Culture
Executives keep their heads down, protect their business and try to avoid big mistakes by sticking to the tried and true.
When the call for transformation first goes out, managers and employees are usually immersed in activities that reinforce the existing business model. People are engaged in a deep routine of doing their own thing, supporting their own slice of the organization, and getting rewarded for it. There initially is no incentive to speak out with big, bold ideas to support the new transformation challenge. Contributing to this initial pattern of avoidance is fear about the unknown, the unproven, and the incomplete.
Managers and employees will have arrived at this moment of transformation launch by successfully mastering the competencies required by the business model being replaced. Finally, most employees will have seen managerial initiatives and mandates come and go; so, there will tend to exist at the moment of transformation launch, a vein of uncertainty that runs throughout the organization about the leader's commitment to stay the course. All these elements contribute to cautiousness in the management culture about signing on to the leader's new transformation agenda.
Inhibitor #2: Business-as-Usual Management Process
Day-to-day management processes are already overtaxed and there's no room for anything new or different.
Any attempt to plan and launch the next phase in an organization by relying on the existing day-to-day management process will initially receive short shrift because the agendas of all those routinely scheduled meetings will already be overcrowded. Indeed, you will always find executives waiting in the hallways, just hoping to get in for five minutes to present their ideas. The Business-as-Usual Management Process is also typically preoccupied with incremental improvements and quarterly plans and reviews, not new directions or breakthrough results. Attention to a new transformation agenda or initiative will be deferred until someone has come up with the “perfect” new model. Finally, within the existing business-as-usual process, only a few executives will be intimately involved with the CEO in planning the transformation and in defining its major initiatives. Hence, when it comes time to implement, the rest of the senior executives who have been in the dark will cast large shadows over their parts of the enterprise, leading to misunderstanding and misalignment down below during execution.
Inhibitor #3: Initiative Gridlock
Too many separate initiatives are being thrown at the organization and its people at the same time.
In most organizations, over time you can witness the accretion of layer upon layer of incremental improvement initiatives. Sometimes this happens because of the proliferation of well-intended, but uncoordinated functional initiatives, in which each department team, with the best of intentions, attempts to drive improvements from their functional perspective throughout the enterprise. In other instances, initiative gridlock emerges because the new leader lacks the courage to focus his or her organization on a few important initiatives to achieve early returns, learn from mistakes, shed outmoded projects, and redouble the effort behind the initiatives chosen to achieve breakthrough results. The consequence is task overload throughout the organization. This is the typical environment into which a leader's new transformation challenge dumps yet another set of initiatives on top of many existing ones, creating widespread gridlock.
Inhibitor #4: Recalcitrant Executives
Some executives remain unconvinced and uncommitted regarding the new leader's transformation agenda.
Protracted tolerance of nonaligned, uncommitted, or incapable leaders can most certainly derail any corporate transformation attempt. This is particularly the case for very senior executives who hold sway over large parts of the enterprise and whose skills at their advanced career stage may be out of sync with those required by the leader's new transformation agenda. Many of these key executives will be loath to alter the regimes they are already pursuing in the part of the organization for which they are responsible. They may resist requests by the Transformational Leader to re-allocate resources to help unproven or underperforming units develop, newer departments that may be better aligned with the transformation agenda. Finally, conflict avoidance on the part of some CEOs may cause them to allow recalcitrant executives to persist in their traditional ways and thereby undermine the organization's transformation progress.
Involving all members of the senior leadership team in tackling the first three to four inhibitors can help many initially reluctant executives find a way to not only come aboard but also actively champion the new transformation agenda. So, don’t try to take on Inhibitor #4 fully before you’ve worked with your senior team on identifying, engaging, and overcoming the first three inhibitors. Remember, the sequence by which you engage and overcome each inhibitor is important for transformation success.
Inhibitor #5: Disengaged Employees
Employees are always one big step behind leaders, putting the organization out of alignment and leaving employees disengaged.
Employee disengagement is a primary reason for corporate transformation failures; so, it is important for a transformational leader to address this inhibitor before moving forward into execution. What do you see when you encounter disengaged people? Disengaged managers and employees often do not understand the need for transformation. They do not grasp the new strategy and transformation agenda. They may work hard, but do not know where to best focus their efforts. They don’t believe they will be rewarded for their mastery of new behaviors and skills required by the transformation. Many will have experienced failed transformations and will assume “this too will pass.” Finally, disengaged employees will not know how to lead the transformation at their level in the organization.
Inhibitor #6: Loss of Focus During Execution
Just when the transformation effort seems to be taking hold, execution hits another slump in momentum.
By the time your transformation process shifts into the Execute Phase, some of your executive leaders may have become lulled into a state of exhaustion. They may wish to think that all that positive energy and intense focus achieved during the Planning and Launch phases will automatically be transferred and sustained during the Execute Phase. Falsely reassured, such leaders all too quickly delegate the transformation oversight and follow through to others before moving on to “shiny” new challenges. Such leadership behaviors are in direct contrast to what is actually required during the first year of execution.
During the first full performance year under a new transformation game plan, you can expect to encounter no less than three predictable “slumps” in energy and focus during the Execute Phase, which if unanticipated and unheeded can derail the transformation effort – just as surely as any of the five inhibitors encountered during the Planning and Launch phases.
The first predictable slump is the “Post-launch Blues,” which involves a desire on the part of leaders to relax immediately following a bold launch. After several months of distraction from their involvement in transformation planning, some executives reach their limit in being able to juggle their responsibilities for planning and launching the transformation while running their part of the day-to-day business. So, you are likely to hear something soon after launch like, “Hey, we’re over the hump!” For many, this will signal their return to business as usual, which everyone in their part of the organization will surely notice and imitate.
The second predictable slump, “Mid-course Overconfidence,” will emerge about halfway or two-thirds of the way through the first performance execution year. By that time, the transformation vessel will have cleared the harbor, many important things will appear to be on course, and the tendency will be to set the sails, lash down the tiller, and sit back to enjoy the smooth sailing. This kind of early complacency can sap important energy, learning, and focus that are so critical to keeping the transformation momentum on pace and on course.
The final predictable slump comes near the end of the first performance year. Called the “Presumption of Perpetual Motion,” this slump is based on the belief that by year end things are progressing so well that there is no need to re-examine, re-plan, and re-launch the effort at the beginning of the next performance year. Of course, nothing could be more ill-advised.
The “Readiness” Survey
To enable you to conduct a quick assessment of what you are going to be up against as you take charge to develop and lead your transformation game plan, take a moment to complete t...