It’s a fast-paced world; be it business or personal life. ‘Change makes business win?’ – that era is long gone. Change can be matched overnight by your competitors. Change isn’t enough to respond to external challenges.
It’s got to be ‘revolutionary change’ that transforms businesses, if your goal is to beat the competition. Change usually occurs because of events outside an organisation’s control. The advent of new technologies, fierce competition, influx of substitutes, changing regulations, and fluctuations in the economy. Businesses today operate in a time of profound and fast-moving change in almost every facet of life - political, technological, economic, environmental, demographic, and social.
Every business undergoes periodic change - sometimes shocks. Revenues rise and fall; employees retire and are replaced by younger workers with different attitudes and skill sets. It is how they cope with these changes, internal and external, that determines their future success and continued growth - or their decline into irrelevance.
To stay relevant, it is not enough for organisations to respond passively to these great changes in our society and economy; they must instead prepare to undergo a fundamental transformation in their operations, organisational structure, and market proposition to stay relevant and competitive.
But in the race to respond to today’s great changes, organisations can often overlook one of the most important elements of transformation: the human factor. Businesses are fundamentally about people, and no true transformation can be considered effective unless it is supported by the right combination of skills and leadership throughout the organisation.
This is the difference between change and transformation: the first is a response to external factors which, while they may lead to certain short-term benefits, do little to prepare a business for the impact of long-term change. The second, by focusing on human capital, leadership, skills and organisational culture, aims at refashioning a business and providing it with the capability to adapt effectively to whatever the future holds.
Change culture
It is not processes that change businesses - it’s culture. The result of a transformation initiative may be new processes or product lines, updates to organisational structures or targeting new markets. Ultimately, none of these can be achieved unless the right culture is instilled throughout the organisation, along with the skills needed to make transformation a success. That is why having the right leadership is so imperative - and where many organisations face the main obstacles to their successful transformation too. Without the right leadership, any transformation initiative is doomed to full or partial failure, which is why it’s so important to get the right leaders on board before implementing strategic change
Sense of purpose
In a time of great change, what makes a great leader? It might sound facile to state that “leaders lead”, but all too often organisations find themselves with senior managers who are not fulfilling their responsibilities, such as instilling a sense of purpose and vision in the teams which should be driving transformation projects forward.
It is not enough for leaders to be technically skilled, important though this is. To be truly effective, leaders need to have a very clear vision of the future, and the ability to take people with them on this journey.
Truly effective leadership requires senior managers to secure buy-in from workers; the ability to be agile and resilient, and to foster these values in their teams; motivating and engaging with employees; and being able to cope with uncertainty and rapid changes in direction.
They should also demonstrate a willingness to have difficult conversations about issues such as redundancy, changing roles, and the reasons why employees have not secured the pay rises or promotions they were expecting. While business transformation initiatives are planned from the top of an organisation, they are executed throughout the hierarchy, which is why leadership must be instilled at every level.