Business Transformation

Business transformation is strategic; not operational and can be small and impactful; not just big and unwieldy. Some of the world’s most profitable and enduring companies have achieved their long track record of success by constantly reinventing themselves through business transformation. Executed successfully, business transformation reinvents a company and refuels an organisation’s purpose and growth engine.

We believe the word transformation matters because a transformation requires different ways to measure success and manage effort compared to a more traditional operational change. If an organisation is still using the same KPIs or measures of success after a transformation then what has truly transformed?

Business transformation requires a courageous leadership team. It can be hard work and involve significant risks. Our experience has shown that this not only provides an anticipated operational improvement, but it allows the business to earn the right to innovate and experiment with reinvented business models and new products.

We think of a business transformation as having two speeds:

• More immediate operational changes that greatly improve today, but not necessarily transformative
• Longer term, iterative, transformational change to the business that improves tomorrow

Business transformation can be “big bang” and bold rather than iterative, but we believe the risks of failure outweigh the potential benefits.

We find that most successful business transformations start close to their existing model and move out in small, discrete steps. Successful organisations stick to known customer needs and often complement or build upon their best products with experimentation.

This pragmatic and risk managed approach to business transformation is recommended as it avoids the big bold transformation failures in favour of smaller experimental transformation that, with each iteration, earns the right to further investment.

Try. Experiment. Iterate. Learn. Try Again.