Winning true believers is best way to achieving change for big results

Opinion and Analysis

Transformational change affects the way you think, what you do and how it is done. You need a team of believers who can act. Period. PHOTO | FILE 

By VIMAL SHAH

In Summary

• Transformational change is sort of the holy grail of organisational management.

It is the biggest and worst monster any organisation can take on, the toughest thing to lead and execute but on the other hand the best thing that could ever happen to an entity. Its achievement feels like change, looks like change and packs a mean punch.

What is transformational change? The easiest answer is to define what it is not. It is not changing systems or procedures; nothing mechanical like that. These things can be a part of the change, yes, but they cannot be it.

Transformational change is mental and behavioural – it affects how you think, what you do and how you do it. It is re-writing the organisation’s DNA, getting individuals within to see themselves in a different way, to develop a new understanding of their roles and more importantly to accept them.

It is letting go of the past, unlearning how things used to be and understanding how things need to be.

When Bidco first started, we were a manufacturing company. We made things because that’s what we are supposed to do.

The problem with being a manufacturer is you focus on things and processes and it’s robotic. However, we realised if we focused on people we could develop bonds, trust and loyalty, grow and do so much better.

It is difficult to go from being product-centric to customer-centric and from a manufacturing company to a marketing company. Back then we made things we thought people wanted; now we make what people want. Our business was run by managers now it’s run by leaders.

It was not easy, it took time and a lot of convincing during the transition but when we made the switch, we rose to another level. Our quality improved, our systems were faster and quicker, our people were sharper and we made our customers happier.

And that’s still happening. In my experience and to my knowledge, there are three critical elements to achieving transformational change.

First, discomfort with the status quo is the beginning of transformational change. The comfortable position is the beginning of complacency; the uncomfortable one is where the first stirrings of change come from.

This is perhaps the problem with Africa – we are very comfortable with all the wrong things: corruption is okay if my people are involved....
When I talk of discomfort, I mean the deep, earth-shaking, clench-your-fist in frustration variety.

You cannot begin the journey of transformational change unless you vehemently disagree with the present situation. The kind of change we are talking about is born of a deep disappointment and near total disillusionment with the now.

Secondly, the desire for change must embed itself in a vision or it will evaporate. The WHY must go with the WHAT.

Vision is the container that carries desire that shapes it and harnesses it towards an objective. It provides purpose. It is useless to be fired up and have nothing to burn.

The vision must be bold and it must be clear. At Bidco ours is to grab, grow and sustain the number one market share in African markets by 2030. It’s big, it’s bold and it’s clear.

That’s the target; that’s where we are going – all of us together, not half or the board or the management – all of us.

A strong vision unites people. It’s like 3,000 people climbing a mountain and sharing the same rope.

A vision must be big but it ought to be breakable into ‘ownable’ pieces that individuals and teams can run with.

The easiest way to sabotage a vision is to fail at communicating it powerfully. Create a narrative – human beings respond to stories – we all know this.

Do more than put it on email, charts or workshop. Bring the vision to life in an engaging way – the more creative and dramatic the expression the better. Ultimately, transformative change is about action. I use the acronym NATO to mean No Action Talk Only.

It is easy to spend a lot of time on talk. This is the easiest way to fail at transformative change.

Heart-attack action

People can spend a lot of time in meetings and workshops – debating, brainstorming, reworking the strategy and other smart things.

All that is time that could be spent on action and even worse it robs the change process of energy, momentum and the very important sense of urgency.

What is the first thing you need to do to make the vision come to life?

Start there. Heaven forbid, but if someone had a heart attack next to you right now would you call a meeting or do something about it?
Too much talk will stifle the effort.

Allow me to make a few footnotes. The first is on the place of leadership in transformational change. Leadership is critical, nothing can be achieved without it because the truth is change starts from the top and is sustained by the top.

As a leader you can either inspire or push your people towards the goal, if you are a pusher, please go back to 1985. Change needs an emotionally intelligent leader: someone who inspires, someone who listens and someone who builds relationships and trust.

Change may even call for a leader to get personal, to share their own story, in their own words – it demands that a leader come down from the C-Suite and talk one on one and persuade. It requires someone open to dialogue.

If the leadership has no passion for change, it will not happen.