Driving successful business change

Buttons depicting business success. FILE PHOTO \ NMG 

By NDIRANGU NGUNJIRI
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Before you embark on you business strategy, take a look at your organisation’s growth model and
take into account the needs of your stakeholders. Ascertain whether it is meeting their needs.

Without a well-thought out plan, a change in your marketing mix may only worsen the issues which are faced by the customers. If your post-service sales is not up to the mark and you launch a new series of digital campaigns, you may end up having a larger section of customers reporting an unsatisfactory experience.

Business transformation is a change management strategy which aims to align people, processes, and technology initiatives of an organisation to its business strategy and vision.

Whether it is a small business in Shamakhoho which launches with one concept and shifts to another after realising that there is no market or multinational second generation owners taking over the business from the parent with changes taking place on a large scale, all are all business transformations. Without this, you can risk becoming irrelevant in today’s fast changing landscape.

Irrespective of the industry you are in, your organsation needs to transform to survive in the evolving business environment. Research shows the failure rate of change programmes at 70-80 percent. Many organisations are struggling due lack of transformation.

To realise the benefits will depend on leadership of the organisation, the effectiveness of the leadership and the quality of communication and engagement with all the various stakeholders of the firm.

With effective business transformation plan, your company can help drive lasting positive change in your people and their work through better leadership, strategy, and culture.

Transformation can take place on a large or small scale; it can involve the front, middle, or back office; it can be conducted by any type of firm, from a startup to a global enterprise.

It will affect every aspect of the organisation’s structure, including such functions as innovation, finance, marketing, sales, human resources, and operations. At any scale, it requires a cultural shift and highly engaged leaders, who take control of the organisation’s future in these four ways:

Treat your legacy as an asset. Save the best of your past, divest the rest for advantage, and use the income to fund the future.

Design for trust. Develop ways to attract and deserve the commitment of everyone related to your enterprise — particularly customers and employees

Create a strategic identity. Articulate a single desirable future for your enterprise and focus all your efforts on achieving it.Master the pivot from sprint to scale. Test new practices in an intensive, experimental, startup-style manner. Pick the approaches that work, and rapidly implement them throughout the larger system.

Each step of the business transformation process should be carried out with open communication, flexibility, and transparency. Do not hesitate to resort to outside help but at the same time your internal team should be empowered and equipped to supervise the process as it evolves.

Don’t be afraid to try something new with the possibility of altering the flow of work for the better and setting the precedent that your company is leading the way through business transformation.

We think of these as the basic building blocks of any successful transformation. They aren’t specific steps, stages, or organisational designs. Those will vary from one firm to the next. Rather, they are ways of thinking about influence and change: perspectives on how to shift organisational and individual behaviour in a more productive, competitive, and engaging direction.