Change & Transformation - HOW do you know it's Time?
Change and Transformation – HOW do I know it’s time?Interesting, isn’t it?
You hear plenty about “change” and “transformation” from people like me, but how do you gauge that it’s time to act?
The Sixsess Consultancy has written extensively on the subject of change, and the processes that contribute to a successful and sustainable change program (please see our Insights page)
Whether a commercial enterprise, not-for-profit, or public sector organisation, loss of competitive advantage is a clear sign that something needs to change and soon.
Yes, even not-for-profits need to compete for funding, and the public sector needs to be providing a competitive offering to its stakeholders.
For a commercial business, the loss of competitive advantage can be as insidious as it is deadly.
One day you’re top of the pile, and not long after, your position is usurped and there’s a gradual decline in market position, until viability can become an issue.
The Blockbuster/Netflix example is well known and worth a Google.
Are your current metrics leading or trailing? Do you use OKRs? What KPIs are you using? How are these communicated to your organisation. Do they care? If not, why not?
Are your running a digital deficit? How prepared are you for AI? How prepared is your team? Are you running legacy systems that just “get by”?
Is your revenue growing?
How about your net earnings?
How resilient is your balance sheet?
What’s your digital marketing and advertising conversion rate?
How does your website perform?
When was the last time your leadership team undertook personal development training, either individually or as a team?
Is your organisational structure hierarchical?
If so, how agile is it?
Does your organisation have a network structure?
If so, how do you ensure that you can also provide stability and reliability of delivery at competitive value?
What are the competitive forces that are unique to your industry or sector? What tools do you use to assess these? Are you still in the right business or sector?
If you’re a start-up, have you actually done this analysis?
How do you undertake your business modelling and strategy? Who’s involved? How accurate has it been?
How do your industrial relations look? Healthy? Confrontational? How are they affecting your competitive advantage? What can you do if they’re “sub-optimal”?
How was your last change or transformation initiative? Did it work? Did it achieve its strategic objectives and was it sustained?
What is the change or transformation process that you use?
Is your organisation’s culture and structure adapted to deal with the continuous change that’s impacting you? Are you set up to take opportunity from it?
Any of the above (and plenty more) should be triggers that tell you it’s time to plan for sustainable change – because change never, ever stops.