Business transformation management: How leaders get it right [STUDY]

We recently worked with Forrester to survey 1,007 VP-level-and-above decision-makers across Asia Pacific (APAC), EMEA, Latin America, and North America on business transformation management. We published the results today in a report entitled, The Capability Mindset: Turning Business Transformation into a Repeatable Discipline

Read the full study

We wanted to test certain hypotheses we had about organizational preparedness for business transformation. We believe–I would venture to say, “know”–that businesses transform continuously. We sought to test that hypothesis.

We also believe that every transformation has common dimensions: applications, processes, people, and data. We were curious to see if business leaders agreed and, if so, how they were taking care of these dimensions in the context of business transformation.

Finally, we believe that companies are best served by approaching the management of business transformation as a business capability, like financial management or human resources management. Here we hoped to identify and define levels of maturity for this capability across companies.

Key findings

Seventy-two percent of those surveyed for The Capability Mindset report running four or more transformation initiatives annually. When we say transformation is continuous, this is what we mean. At any given moment, your organization is transforming in some way: adopting a new ERP or HCM, acquiring or merging with another company, introducing a new product or a new commission system or a new security framework.

The thing is, as we also found out, most companies feel like they execute transformations well at the local level, but lack an integrated, enterprise-wide strategy.

We then found that more than half struggle with misalignment between business processes and IT, technical debt, data siloes, poor communication of transformation goals, inadequate training or upskilling.

Rather than viewing this situation as simply the price of doing business, survey respondents see value in successfully overcoming these challenges. Indeed, the vast majority agreed that the benefits of getting better at various aspects of transformation included:

• increased ability to pivot
• faster upskilling and reskilling of the workforce
• faster execution of strategic initiatives
• increased consistency and reliability in process execution
• increased leadership alignment and accountability.

While that all sounds great, the real question is: How do you get there?

That’s the final thing I will highlight from this study. When we looked at how different companies answered the survey questions, it became clear that you could sort respondents along a maturity curve, from Beginner (34% of respondents) to Leader (6%).

What stands out about that 6% in the Leader category?

They enjoy alignment around their enterprise architecture and risk governance, and most have some form of standard process governance in place. They are also far more likely to involve employees in transformation initiatives early on and to have a dedicated change management and training function in place.

You can get there from here

A maturity model helps you benchmark where you are and see where you could be. It also provides examples of what is possible as you evolve, develop, and, well, mature.

So, please take a look at the study: The Capability Mindset: Turning Business Transformation Into A Repeatable Discipline. My guess is you will begin to see where your own organization falls on the maturity curve when it comes to business transformation management.

My hope is that you will also begin to see what you could do next to help your organization transform, continuously and successfully at scale.