"Business transformation" is a hot topic in all sectors at the moment.And it's easy to understand why organisations are willing to embark on long term, multi-million dollar projects in order to achieve transformation. In addition to the customer-centric benefits, business or digital transformation projects are supposed to provide long term ROI, enhance efficiencies within the organisation, and promote competitive advantage.
But there's a question I think many executives leading transformation should be asking themselves -- is your business really transforming? It seems that in many cases, organisations are taking an iterative view, rather than a genuinely transformative one.
So how do we recognise (and measure) true transformation?
Within Telstra, we've been very focused on making sure that we lead genuine transformation. So I sat down to learn more with Jemma Vandali, Acting GM Service Creation and Design Practice at Telstra. Jemma is one of the change agents in the leadership team across the business given the task of helping to lead a "deep and genuine" transformation project around how Telstra builds new products.
Five years ago Telstra recognised a need to become far more customer-centric, and was struggling with how it could create a more responsive service development process. Jemma indicated that success has been built upon three key approaches - or adjustments in mindsets - that smoothed the transformation process across the entire organisation:
1) There was broad top-level support. The key to successful transformation projects is that they require the executive layer to understand that a transformation project involves a new way of doing things, and to have them unified on that vision.
2) There was also a bottom-up approach. A successful transformation involves giving people within business units more responsibility, giving them permission to have their