The Successful Transformation Series | Part 1: Transformations start with knowing a business and the leadership.

In these times of widespread transformations, we hear and read little about effective and successful transformations: genuinely embraced and adopted by people on the floor.

So, Ambits being all out about successful transformations, we make it this month’s series of blogposts. In three posts we will share why highly effective transformations are a result of bringing in Business Mentoring.

Featuring today: Successful transformations start with knowing a business and the leadership.

Transformations are built from well-designed strategies based on solid market and consumer insights. Specific transformations start with technology platforms that have the capacity to re-define your customer proposition and processes.

The effectiveness of a transformation process is measured by the actual changed behavior of frontline employees, the utilization of new tools and how capably new working methods are being applied. A transformation is effective when it impacts the customer experience and your P&L statement in a positive way.

The road to effectiveness will traverse the mountains, cliffs and pitfalls of the organization’s heritage, the reigning leadership culture and entrenched industry-specific customs and practices. These are factors of complexity and ambiguity that strategy and technology implementations often make abstractions from or take for granted.

These factors are often challenging to put into a standard model, as they are hidden in the details, within informal networks and traditional ways of working. Most importantly, they are always related to what makes the difference between success and failure: people.

A 2015 McKinsey Global Survey states that only 27% of transformations “have been very or completely successful at both improving performance and equipping the organization to sustain improvements over time”. It’s striking that both PROSCI’s 2018 Change Management benchmarking report and McKinsey’s 2015 Global Survey show the same 26% to 27% success rate of transformation projects. So, we generally can assume that around the world only one out of four transformations are successful.

Three out of four transformations are considered a failure by the business owner, just one year after delivery. This obviously provides room for improvement and for adding Business Mentoring or change management support to the transformation process.

Strategy and technology consultancy makes a chance to lead to an effective transformation, when the business and leadership of the organization is taken into account. This is where a Business Mentor and his or her extensive business expertise comes in.

The Business Mentor will put the necessary focus on how to engage people in the transformation process, what kind of organization and governance will be needed and how to engage Senior management at the defining moments. A Business Mentor will be centered on people and organization, while fully understanding what the business and leadership requires.

Having stood in the shoes of the business leader, the Business Mentor has instant authenticity and credibility to facilitate the kind of collaborations needed to enact transformations. A solid basis to work with the mentee and to swiftly develop an in-depth understanding of the business and leadership challenges.

The Business Mentor will also be able to handle the complexity and ambiguity because of his/her experience in the business. Having hit the walls of an organization in the past and exercised the leadership needed to drive new ways of working.