Transformation creates value. Are you transforming or tinkering?
Transformation creates value while tinkering just keeps us busy. Transformation is driven by a strategic focus on being in a different place in the future.
Strategic transformation redefines an organisation’s operations, identity and direction. That can mean entering new markets, shifting from products to services, digitalisation at scale, switching from physical stores to online etc. Transformation creates value that is tangible and measurable.
A transformation changes your business’s value proposition, your target markets, your risk profile, your profitability, your way of thinking. For Government and Not for Profit it can mean redefining value, upending the services you provide, the outcomes you seek and how you prioritise and fund them.
Tinkering is an attempt to repair or improve something in a casual or desultory way. It keeps you busy, seems to be low-risk and it is vaguely satisfying. But tinkering takes up time and money and defers important tasks. Are you polishing the brass on your boat when it is taking on water?
Many so-called strategic projects do not create value because they lack strategic focus. There is no line of sight to a better future. The cash invested is real but the benefits are vague and illusory. They don’t follow a strategic roadmap that steers a course through obstacles and aligns workstreams for desired outcomes and benefits. They are more casual and less considered than that. A new system or restructure is seen as an end in itself with a vague hope that it will make things better. That is not transformation. It is tinkering.
Sometimes little things are the drivers of change. Not every change needs to be a monumental one. Ongoing continuous improvement is a powerful tool for improving organisations and value to customers. It can be even more important following transformational change, to bed in new ways of working and make them cost-effective. Small, internal innovation teams or business partners can develop great new products and services. Organisations can successfully change without a huge, strategic transformation. Small changes that support strategy are not tinkering because they systematically create value. They are strategy in small bites.
The issue is that if you bet the farm on what you call a transformation then you need to have a transformed organisation at the end of it all. A slightly different current state will not justify the investment and the upheaval. What does that future state look like? Things change so which variations on that future state would still make transformation worthwhile and which would not?
So many IT and change projects fail to deliver anything like the benefits promised. The money is spent, everyone is exhausted but your rocket still doesn’t fly. The best way to ensure success is:
- Plan strategic change strategically – do solid thinking and planning up front
- Implement iteratively and learn as you go, adapting as necessary
- Define the financial benefits but also the impact you expect on operations and customer value
- Integrate strategic change into operations and reporting
The purpose of strategic transformation and change is to transform the way you deliver value, and (often) to whom you deliver it. Every major change and transformation project therefore needs to understand and describe what that value transformation looks like up front and review it as ideas and action evolve. If the final results meet or exceed expectations you have achieved a transformation. If your organisation and value proposition are broadly similar or worse after transformation then you were just tinkering.
Hague Consulting helps organisations set themselves up for strategic success and get things back on track if they go askew. We help track value and realise benefits. Uniquely, we also help recover lost benefits for those projects where you spent the money but didn’t get the results. Very often, there are ways to still achieve lost benefits without starting over.
Phil Guerin, Consultant/Director, Hague Consulting Ltd. © Hague Consulting Ltd 2024. If you like this content, subscribe to our blog – it’s free!
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