Changing business model ahead of the crowd
I was reading a magazine last week with a pull out advertorial from Accenture "Outlook: the journal of high-performance business". I suppose they are trying to be like McKinsey Quarterly or BCG.
Anyway, it has some useful insights…
Changing ahead of the curve - many companies wait too long to attempt transformations, doing so only when the signs of trouble have become obvious. High performers change before they must, knowing that the best way to transform is from a position of strength.
They identify four critical goals to enable corporate change ahead of the curve
1. Increase the company’s capacity for early change by deliberately fostering continuous renewal as part of its everyday operations.
2. Generate confidence in early change by sharpening the company’s business acuity
Key here - ability to embrace data sources beyond traditional enterprise systems e.g. frontline staff as sources for ideas or listening to critics. Pattern recognition - see through the data to the patterns and analyse them to create insights. Catalysing change and acting on the insights - possibly using internal sponsors to accelerate change.
This is where the techniques I find most helpful work best. I have always been an advocate of frontline staff - I was trained as a Geographer and an holistic approach including bottom-up research was key to the success of projects I worked on at that time. Spending time in Scottish Power’s call centre gave huge insights to a customer touchmap [ask me about the ‘gay’ corner!]. Read Church of the Customer’s blog about listening to critics as a way of building sales.
3. Overcome management resistance to early change by carefully and continuously evolving top mangement teams.
Using external resource to boost the team for key skills and at key times is often a useful way of injecting energy and perspective into a transformation project. Even getting someone in just for the kick-off meeting as a facilitator can be a great start. Accenture reckon 10-30% of the skills usually need to be sourced from outside the company. "High performers are open to leadership shake-ups, which contribute to education and growth."
4. Accelerate the behaviour changes needed to start and sustain transformation by using leading-edge tools and techniques for sensing and responding to organisational change barriers and opportunities.
Todays newest methods and tools recognise organisations as complex, adaptive systems. We are seeking leading companies applying new methods and tools to actively measure and manage aspects of corporate culture, an underexploited area of change intervention and management.
Here’s where the key theme of the web 2.0 tools comes in. AFAIK they are the widest suite of new ‘toys’ available to managers and business owners that are new to the management theory marketplace today. What’s the joy is that they really break down barriers and enable individual activity under the radar as well as through formal programmes allowing change to begin at a pace that the organisation is ready for. Those people who ‘get it’ will charge ahead and get going on things they can quickly influence within their area of work - those that are slower to see opportunity will then get dragged along later.
I hope that this is the sort of insight Adriana will give us on 30th May.