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  • Who should drive organizational change?

    From ‘Done to Them’ to ‘Driven by Them’ – Discover the psychology behind successful change initiatives. Learn how involving your team in the driver’s seat, fostering trust, and embracing a cultural approach can lead to transformational success.

    Last week I had a question from a project leader who is working with a new team on a change initiative. The project leader described the team as “prickly”.

    This got me thinking about why the team felt like this, who should feel like they’re in the driver’s seat, and who should take the “glory” of strategy success.

    My tip for this week:

    People impacted by the change should feel as if they are driving the change, not having change “done to them”. This applies to all levels of an organization. Based on psychological principles and neurological reactions, this best suits our ego, and the need we have to feel a sense of status in relation to others, and control over our own destiny.

    Here’s an example.

    I was once introduced to a client business team who was initially very defensive and unfriendly. I was foisted upon them by their manager’s boss to improve the performance of the business. They saw this as an outsider being sent to improve their performance … and they resented the intrusion. 3 teams of consultants had already been and gone, all producing reports with similar recommendations. I know…. I read them all. No wonder they were dismayed at another group of consultants.

    By the end of the project, my team, the client business team and I had delivered all the projects successfully, delivered the commercial outcomes that the executive wanted, and had friendly and respectful relationships with the client team.

    What we did that worked in driving change:

    • Asked the business team (the business owners) to rollup their sleeves and co-design the approach.
    • Earned trust by supporting the client business team to be successful by generously teaching them new skills.
    • When we presented progress, we got the business team on the train together to go up to head office to present the progress to the Divisional Exec, their manager’s manager. Some of the team were in clerical roles and not used to going to head office. The Divisional Exec was slightly surprised that I’d invited the whole junior team to the meeting. The team were very nervous to do this. Yet you should have seen them afterwards, how proud they were, how they were beaming from ear to ear after receiving the accolades directly from their Divisional Executive.

    This reflects my view that the business team are the ones who are rightly the “face” of the change. Email me and let me know your views, I’d love to hear from you.

    It is time to transform TRANSFORMATION.

    It is possible to combine a commercial, business perspective

    WITH

    a disciplined project perspective

    WITH

    a change management, people-oriented perspective

    WITH

    an approach aligned to the culture. For more, see this video

    In the Turbocharge Your Transformation membership next month, our topic is Turbocharging with AI for innovators, project leaders, change makers and transformation specialists. I can’t wait to share how I use ChatGPT and other AI tools to improve productivity and communications.

    *****

    PS Not sure what to do about getting your strategy unstuck, your projects powering ahead, your digital transformation turbocharged?

    You have 3 choices:

    🚀 Get your question answered free and discretely by emailing me (in 110 words or less) and I’ll answer as many as I can in my weekly emails.

    🚀 🚀 Discuss your question with me in a Zoom group coaching session. Email me beforehand to stay unidentified, then join the group in asking “what if” questions. Join Turbocharge Your Transformation membership.

    🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 Access 1on1 mentoring with me, simply reply to this email.

    If you’re interested in

    #strategyexecution,

    #digitaltransformation,

    #changemanagement…

    * Subscribe to my personal weekly email to your inbox here.

    See the OD Hive mastermind community – peer mentoring groups for OD and transformation professionals

    —

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbocharge their transformation and business planning. Lisa’s clients have an independent sounding board and expert advice so they have absolute confidence they WILL ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • 3 ways that strategy and projects are evolving

    Kath Hume interviewed Lisa Carlin on her podcast about her view on the “Reimagined Workforce”. Lisa discussed 3 ways that strategy and projects are evolving, including: strategy development, an agile, project-based skills-based organization, and multidisciplinary approach.

    Kath Hume interviewed me on her podcast about my view on the “Reimagined Workforce”. Kath is a talented Workforce Transformation specialist, with a warm and friendly manner. Thank you Kath for hosting me, you are awesome.

    I discussed 3 ways that strategy and projects are evolving:

    Moving out of the “dark room” of strategy development, and involving more people while the strategy is being developed (slow down briefly to speed up massively)

    Moving towards an agile, project-based, skill-based environment (inevitable, happening right now)

    Delivering projects and change successfully at scale through a multidisciplinary transformation approach (different to legacy project management, change management and agile)

    Listen to the Reimagined Workforce podcast here, or read the transcript here.

    *****

    PS Not sure what to do about getting your strategy unstuck, your projects powering ahead, your digital transformation turbocharged?

    You have 3 choices:

    🚀 Get your question answered free and discretely by emailing me (in 110 words or less) and I’ll answer as many as I can in my weekly emails.

    🚀 🚀 Discuss your question with me in a Zoom group coaching session. Email me beforehand to stay unidentified, then join the group in asking “what if” questions. Join Turbocharge Your Transformation membership.

    🚀 🚀 🚀 🚀 Access 1on1 mentoring with me, simply reply to this email.

    If you’re interested in

    #strategyexecution,

    #digitaltransformation,

    #changemanagement…

    * Subscribe to my personal weekly email to your inbox here.

    See the OD Hive mastermind community – peer mentoring groups for OD and transformation professionals

    —

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbocharge their transformation and business planning. Lisa’s clients have an independent sounding board and expert advice so they have absolute confidence they WILL ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • Can you answer this culture question?

    Can you answer this culture question? The question was asked by a member of our Turbocharge Your Transformation membership academy. To protect her identify, let’s call her Lucy. She is launching a new digital product.

    Something absolutely critical that I’ve learned in over 25 years of transformation work: if you can figure out how to work effectively in your culture, you can turbocharge the way you get things done.

    So can you answer the culture question below?

    The question was asked by a member of our Turbocharge Your Transformation membership academy. To protect her identify, let’s call her Lucy. She is launching a new digital product.

    Lucy’s digital product launch problem (hint: it’s all about culture)

    No matter how hard Lucy and her team works, she can’t seem to get on top of things. Lucy is being held up by managers of other divisions who are concerned about the impact of her project on their business units. They each say their divisions are different and have unique requirements.

    Lucy feels like she is going in circles as she keep needing to change her focus in order to keep each of the divisional managers happy. As a result, Lucy’s product release is 3 months behind schedule. She feels stuck and burnt out. She is really worried that she can’t deliver on her project.

    What advice would you give Lucy?

    Tanal Basma’s answer for Lucy – Global Employee Experience at LaunchGood, San Fransisco:

    Tanal says: “Lucy needs to start to take time and understand their needs at the departmental level, then bring them together to align on priorities. Once that’s done, she can fine-tune her messaging with theirs and show them the cost of IN action. Sometimes, the long-term impact can be more detrimental than the short-term. Helping them zoom out will get her the buy-in she needs.”

    Congratulations Tanal Basma! Thank you everyone else for your terrific answers.

    Here is my advice to Lucy:

    Remember I told you that if you can figure out how to work effectively in your culture, you can turbocharge the way you get things done?

    I showed Lucy that she is working in a siloed culture. This means each divisional manager will be more focused on their own division than the overall organization. She needs to avoid a “one size fits all’ approach. To turbocharge her approach, she will need to work with each division to identify their priorities, needs and concerns. The decision making that counts most in this structure is the power of each Divisional Manager. She must get them on board through listening to them and their teams. They need to feel heard, and they must have a say in how this will work for their division.

    The launch strategy also needs to be tailored with their input. Lucy should also invite them to participate in the overall project by asking the Divisional manager to nominate divisional representatives in a product working party. if Lucy leverages their time effectively, it will make her job easier. She and her team will be able to work less hours and have more cut-through.

    The outcome so far for Lucy:

    Lucy has begun a consultation exercise to identify each division’s needs. She has found the Division Managers resistance starting to reduce, and be replaced by curiosity. There seem to be some concerns in common between the divisions, and Lucy now wonders whether each division may actually be satisfied if the product focuses on the key common concerns, which will save her time. The Divisional Managers are pleased by the idea that they can nominate team members to be part of a working party to manage the rollout. Lucy thinks this will restore their sense of autonomy and control over their own destiny. Lucy is feeling more optimistic about getting her project back on track.

    ***

    PS Do you also have confidential project / transformation / implementation questions?

    You have 3 choices:

    1. 🚀 Email me your question (in 110 words or less) and I’ll answer as many as i can in my upcoming weekly emails. I will change your name and particulars so that your situation cannot be identified. No cost.

    2. 🚀 🚀 Email me your question and I will answer in my monthly live Zoom group coaching sessions. I will not identify whose question it is, and you and others attending can ask “what if” questions and discuss. Sign up here, pay by the month Turbocharge Your Transformation.

    3. 🚀 🚀 🚀 Email me about my 1on1 mentoring for executives leading projects/change/strategy execution/transformation.

    If you’re interested in

    #strategyexecution,

    #digitaltransformation,

    #changemanagement…

    * Subscribe to my personal weekly email to your inbox here.

    See the OD Hive mastermind community – peer mentoring groups for OD and transformation professionals

    —

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbocharge their transformation and business planning. Lisa’s clients have an independent sounding board and expert advice so they have absolute confidence they WILL ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • Understanding Your Culture Will Help You Get Things Done

    Understanding the culture within an organization will help you accelerate implementation of strategy, deliver change and digital transformation. When you have a good grasp of the culture, you can leverage that knowledge to navigate the environment more effectively and achieve desired outcomes.

    I’d like to encourage you to think about your culture, because understanding organizational culture will help you get things done.

    Whether you’re doing any work on change, projects, strategy execution or digital transformation, you will get things done faster and more successfully by observing your culture. In other words, what behaviours are rewarded within the workplace?

    To understand your culture, you need to be able to describe it precisely. If you were to describe your culture in one sentence, what are the most specific words you can use to describe the behaviours that you see?

    ⛔️ Please don’t say it’s a great culture.

    ⛔️ Please don’t say it’s a positive culture.

    You can do better than this. And armed with an understanding of the predominant behaviours, you can get things you want done, with integrity and precision.

    🔍 Read more on this in my article on culture published in Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) magazine September 2021.

    🚀 If you still want more, join my live Zoom masterclass, Culture Friendly Implementation, Tuesday 11 July 8-9am AEST / Monday July 10, 3-4pm PT. $99 USD for a whole month of value including a playbook with editable templates & a group coaching session (Ask Me Anything!). Register to Turbocharge Your Transformation.

    ✨You can subscribe to my weekly newsletter HERE for practical tips on implementing projects, change and strategy execution.

    Together, let’s reduce the unacceptably high 78%* failure rates of transformation (*Harvard Business Review 2021).

    Connect on LinkedIn

    __________

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbo-charge their business, cultural and digital transformation. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • How Multidisciplinary Skills Are Revolutionizing Business Planning

    Traditionally, business planning used to be a specialized function that focused primarily on financial projections, market analysis, and operational strategies. However, the increasingly complex and dynamic business environment demands a broader perspective and a more holistic approach to planning. Here are 3 things that will turbocharge your project and business planning.

    In this article, I’d like to share with you more specific ideas on how to speed up your implementation approach through taking a multidisciplinary approach to planning.

    I love doing a spin bike class at the gym. A spin bike has a flywheel at the back, a heavy wheel that stores rotational energy. It takes a bit of effort to get it going when you press down on the pedal, and then the wheel goes faster (and hopefully consumes more calories!) due to the energy it stores up.

    In the same way, when you set up a program of change or any type of strategy initiative, it takes a bit of upfront planning.

    The best way to approach planning is to gather a diverse, multidisciplinary team. Initially this can you feel like you’re slowing down while everyone has their input, but ultimately this type of planning helps you speed up implementation.

    🌟 Here are 4 reasons why multidisciplinary skills improve planning 🌟

    🔍 Diverse Perspectives: Multidisciplinary skills bring diverse viewpoints to the table, enabling you to approach planning from multiple angles, which is critical when conducting complex problem solving. In a McKinsey study (2020), 87% of executives agreed that multidisciplinary teams were more effective in solving complex problems.

    🌐 Holistic Understanding: By drawing upon various disciplines, you gain a comprehensive understanding of project complexities, leading to more effective plans. Projects led by multidisciplinary teams had a 30% higher success rate in meeting project goals and objectives (Project Management Institute, 2019)

    💡 Creative Problem-Solving: Multidisciplinary approaches break siloed thinking and challenge assumptions, enabling innovative ideas and unconventional solutions to complex problems. Li et al. (2020) found multidisciplinary skilled teams achieved a 25% higher rate of generating innovative ideas compared to specialized teams.

    🚀 Collaboration and Synergy: Combining expertise from different fields fosters synergy, teamwork and engagement – this builds critical mass in support for your intuitive (more on this later).

    Here are 3 things that will turbocharge your planning:

    1. I encourage you to take the time to harness multidisciplinary skills to develop robust, innovative plans with strong engagement. “In a wicked (complex) world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous.” David Epstein, Author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

    2. Boost the different opinions in planning by including some diverse people, and also generalists in your planning sessions, people that aren’t overly specialised. They will provide unique insights

    3. Build multidisciplinary skills of your team – foster their interest in a broad range of content …….or invite them to sign up to Turbocharge Your Transformation membership where I go much deeper on all of this and build management-consulting-style problem solving skills sets and more.

    Feel free to circulate this post to spread the importance of diversity in planning, and inspire others!

    Together, let’s reduce the unacceptably high 78% failure rates of transformation.

    Here’s to your transformation success.

    —

    If you want more on this topic:

    1. Get the playbook jam packed with templates, tips and examples.

    2. Attend my LIVE Zoom masterclass

    3. Join my group coaching session

    This is all part of Turbocharge Your Transformation membership academy. You can join and pay by the month $99 USD, cancel anytime. Join here.

    ***

    If you’re interested in digital transformation, organizational development, strategy implementation subscribe to the Unicorn Zone direct to your inbox here.

    Connect on LinkedIn

    __________

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbo-charge their business, cultural and digital transformation. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • Program Design with Impact

    Lisa Carlin’s 3 quick tips for designing strategic programs with impact. Implement your business, cultural and digital transformation programs with influence and momentum.

    You may be well down the track with your business plans, or you may be just beginning to get your new plans documented. Either way, you will have many projects underway in your team and you want to ensure everyone understands the part they play in the success.

    Here are 3 quick tips for designing strategic programs with impact:

    • Draw diagrams to portray the program structure and how all then projects fit together – 65% of us absorb information visually, and diagrams captivate your audience better than words
    • Provide a one page scope – executives and boards particularly appreciate this
    • Consider your culture – what questions are your stakeholders most likely to have?

     

    If you want more on this topic:

    1. Get the playbook jam packed with templates, tips and examples.

    2. Attend my LIVE Zoom masterclass

    3. Join my group coaching session

    This is all part of Turbocharge Your Transformation membership academy. You can join and pay by the month $99 USD, cancel anytime. Join here.

    ***

    If you’re interested in digital transformation, organizational development, strategy implementation subscribe to the Unicorn Zone direct to your inbox here.

    Connect on LinkedIn

    __________

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbo-charge their business, cultural and digital transformation. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • Do you have the multidisciplinary skills to implement a business or digital transformation?

    Do you have the multidisciplinary skills to implement a business or digital transformation? by Lisa Carlin. Read more to know what is the proven approach to implement a business or digital transformation that will not just survive, but thrive, now and into the future.

    You may have heard this fact before: around 70% of transformation efforts, strategy implementation and change projects fail – this is according to McKinsey research. Last year, Harvard Business Review reported this number at 78%.

    I’m committed to improving these dismal odds by building skills in digital transformation, cultural change and business improvement. I’m proud that over 96% of my projects have been successful (48 out of over 50 projects). So I know what works and what doesn’t work and I’ve captured these in a unique diagnostic tool.

    Our complex environment makes it impossible to base our approach on a single specialization.

    The proven approach is multidisciplinary, and draws off change management, project management, agile, management consulting problem solving techniques, design thinking, strategy execution and other disciplines.

    Are you curious about where the gaps are in your own transformation skills? You can now rate yourself against the 50 work practices essential to implement transformation. I invite you to take my FREE self-evaluation now, and calculate your Transformation Success Score in under 5 minutes. You will receive a confidential summary.

    ***

    If you’re curious about the OD Hive, please click here and register for the waitlist. I will invite you to a trial session as soon as there is a spot available for you in your time zone. See my newly launched page, the OD Hive.

    We provide a forum for warm, inspiring conversations that generate useful ideas, and a deepening of skills, relationships and mutual appreciation. We give members the confidence that they are on top of the latest in their field, can cut through the noise out there, and can apply the insights in practice. Members are organizational development (OD) practitioners and transformation specialists who are interested in change, digital transformation and business innovation.

    I promise if you register here, you’ll get to meet some fabulous people.

    —

    If you’re interested in digital transformation, organizational development, strategy implementation subscribe to the Unicorn Zone direct to your inbox here.

    Connect on LinkedIn

    __________

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbo-charge their business, cultural and digital transformation. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • My top 10 learnings on AI for OD from the OD Hive masterminds

    Lisa Carlin’s top 10 tips in using AI for OD – including learnings from several OD Hive mastermind discussion groups in March 2023.

    I’ve had some fabulous conversations in our OD Hive mastermind groups in March. Everyone comes with such different perspectives and backgrounds, so it is a very rich conversation. One person who recently registered for a free trial session told me they look forward to the talk. I explained these sessions are not presentations, they are not webinars or training. They are cameras on conversations. Everyone learns from each other and meets new people.

    In one of our masterminds, we had an interesting discussion about whether we could lose some of our humanity by working with AI tools. Everyone has agreed though that it makes our white collar knowledge work more efficient, and more effective. Here are my top 10 takeaways for how to use AI in OD.

    Lisa Carlin’s top 10 uses for ChatGPT and AI in OD:

    1. Writing first draft of documents, articles, job descriptions, FAQs, Q&As, in the tone and for the context needed
    2. Designing workshop outlines or training programs, integrating a quiz or assessments
    3. Fielding enquiries (eg candidate enquiries for HR departments)
    4. Researching topics and synthesizing the information
    5. Reviewing documents, grading and providing feedback
    6. Analyzing tone of employee or customer research (sentiment tools)
    7. Providing coaching for personal develop from a bot
    8. Training someone on technique through question and answer, like a natural conversation (particularly GPT4)
    9. Summarizing information with a particular focus (eg to influence a particular audience)
    10. Generating creative names and themes (eg for projects, products, groups, businesses) and images (eg DALL-E)

    ***

    Here is the best video I have seen on how generative AI is improving with GPT4 (and how to write prompts in Bing). Watch the entertaining bit towards the end, having a conversation with a drunken bot. Thanks Gerard Neiditsch for the suggestion.

    ***

    If you’re curious about the OD Hive, please click here and register for the waitlist. I will invite you to a trial session as soon as there is a spot available for you in your time zone. See my newly launched page, the OD Hive.

    We provide a forum for warm, inspiring conversations that generate useful ideas, and a deepening of skills, relationships and mutual appreciation. We give members the confidence that they are on top of the latest in their field, can cut through the noise out there, and can apply the insights in practice. Members are organizational development (OD) practitioners and transformation specialists who are interested in change, digital transformation and business innovation.

    I promise if you register here, you’ll get to meet some fabulous people.

    —

    If you’re interested in digital transformation, organizational development, hr tech, subscribe to this update here

    Connect on LinkedIn

    See my newly launched page, the OD Hive

    __________

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbo-charge their business, cultural and digital transformation. Those working with Lisa have an independent sounding board and expert advice so they have absolute confidence they WILL ACHIEVE THEIR GOAL. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust, and on the Advisory Board of Rebelliuz, the Tiktok for jobs. Lisa runs an Organizational Development Community exploring leading edge ideas in digital transformation, culture change and business innovation. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • Critical capabilities and skills for successful digital transformation

    Critical capabilities and skills for digital transformation by Lisa Carlin and Dr Norman Chorn. Read more if you’re wondering how to de-risk and accelerate your own digital transformation and growth journey. This is the final 2021 edition of the Unicorn Zone.

    In this last article for 2022, I’ve collaborated with one of our FutureBuilders co-founders, my colleague Dr Norman Chorn. We provide guidance on the critical capabilities and skills for digital transformation. Read more if you’re wondering how best to de-risk and accelerate your own digital transformation and growth journey.

    HOW HAVE CAPABILITIES AND SKILLS CHANGED?

    The term ‘digital transformation’ is almost a mantra these days. It has become a key theme for both established enterprises and digital native startups. But in essence, digital transformation has been around for decades. So, what capabilities and skills have actually changed, and what is needed for success?

    The challenge is to think ‘digitally’ in order to find better ways of increasing efficiency and effectiveness. For start-ups and scale-ups, the focus is to transform an idea into a new scalable value proposition (business model) that is capable of hyper-growth.

    For incumbents, the pressure is to reinvent the business digitally in order to avoid extinction or replacement.

    The purpose of digital transformation can include improved collaboration, new ways to address customer pain points, step changes in productivity through automating workflows and new work practices, and connecting players to form new ecosystems.

    All this requires new skills and behaviours.

    No alt text provided for this image

    However, organisations have been transforming digitally since computers starting becoming mainstream in businesses in the 1980s. One of our previous projects in 2001 was the transformation of a large, traditional organisation into the “information age”. At the time, there was significant interest in the transformation of organisations through digital means – it was just called something different.

    So, let’s take a look at what has changed in the last 2 decades since the dot com crash of 2001, what has remained the same, and what are the implications for successful transformations.

    THE ENVIRONMENT, HOW WE WORK, TECHNOLOGY AND VALUE PROPOSITIONS HAVE ALL CHANGED

    Over the past two decades, there are four key differences that affect the implementation of successful transformations:

    • The business environment provides a different context in which we operate. The “new normal” is faster and more complex, described by the acronym “VUCA”. If you haven’t heard this term, google it, you are living under a rock!
    • Technology has advanced across every category. The current proliferation of developer tools and platforms are set to continue to automate common tasks, improve collaboration and reduce development time.
    • The way humans work has also changed. New tools and methodologies have been invented to further speed up innovation cycles and improve collaboration. Along with these changes comes new jargon — when did Google even become a verb? Project management methodologies have morphed from Waterfall to Agile “sprints” and accelerated execution cycles.
    • New genres of value propositions (business models) have been invented, enabled by these new technologies and tools. For example, omni-channel models; B2C digital marketplaces (eg Amazon, Tinder); business models based on network effects (eg Trip Advisor) with valuable data being created by users to make these models very sticky; and publishing businesses (particularly based on social media platforms).

     

    Despite all of this, some things remain unchanged.

    CORE ORGANISATIONAL CAPABILITIES ARE THE SAME

    The 5 core organisational capabilities for successful digital transformation remain the same. These are:

    • A clear cohesive strategy guides the decisions, resource allocations and initiatives to achieve the digital transformation.
    • A purposeful leadership team motivates and engages people in the change.
    • The deployment of people ensures the right people are in the right places and can move flexibly to deliver the change.
    • A nimble governance framework sets the appropriate project execution architecture.
    • Sound commercial nous optimises decisions on business cases and throughout the implementation.

     

    It is clear that new skills sets are needed in individuals to achieve these organisational capabilities critically important for digital transformation.

    NEW SKILLS ARE NEEDED FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

    Groundbreaking research has identified 8 categories of skills that are required to successfully implement digital transformation. As shown in the Skills Base Digital Transformation Skills Taxonomy to the right, these skills categories include technical and behavioural skills, as both are critical to successful digital transformation.

    The skills required for each of the 5 organisational capabilities described above have radically shifted over 2 decades. The table below summarises each of the 5 organisational business capabilities and the relevant skills categories. There are over 400 skills in the taxonomy.

    For example, sound commercial nous requires new skills across ALL categories. Even a basic level of IT skills are required for non-technical business managers who are leading digital transformation. A case in point is cyber security, which is now a significant threat for all technology development.

    KEY IMPLICATIONS OF THIS ANALYSIS

    There are some important implications of this analysis of capabilities and skills required for successful digital transformation.

    We sometimes see instances where the excitement and focus on the new technology has masked the understanding and need for the core organisational capabilities and associated skills required for digital transformation. This leads to several shortcomings for the transformation process, including:

    • The business does not acquire or develop the core organisational capabilities and skills needed, and the digital transformation fails although the new technology and value proposition are sound.
    • The new language and jargon surrounding the new technologies serve to exclude some older people, or those unfamiliar with the new technology. In this way, valuable and experienced individuals are not considered for roles.
    • There is sometimes more focus on the technology than the people: staff, customers, users. Techniques such as design thinking and human centred design help address this.

    However, there is a bright side to this as well:

    • Once organisations understand the need for the core capabilities, the use the skills matrix can identify the specific skills required. This can improve the suitable deployment of people through the business.
    • A number of the skills can be easily learned by competent and experienced people.
    • There is an enduring need for skills in strategy, leadership, change management and commercial acumen. These are all part of the ingredients for a successful digital transformation.

     

    We believe that the success of digital transformation can be enhanced by identifying the appropriate skills related to the core organisational competencies, and never losing sight of the non-technical behavioural skills required.

    ***

    If you’re curious about the OD Hive, please click here and register for the waitlist. I will invite you to a trial session as soon as there is a spot available for you in your time zone. See my newly launched page, the OD Hive.

    We provide a forum for warm, inspiring conversations that generate useful ideas, and a deepening of skills, relationships and mutual appreciation. We give members the confidence that they are on top of the latest in their field, can cut through the noise out there, and can apply the insights in practice. Members are organizational development (OD) practitioners and transformation specialists who are interested in change, digital transformation and business innovation.

    I promise if you register here, you’ll get to meet some fabulous people.

    —

    If you’re interested in digital transformation, organizational development, strategy execution, subscribe to this update here

    Connect on LinkedIn

    See the OD Hive

    __________

    About Lisa Carlin

    As a strategy execution specialist and scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbo-charge their business, cultural and digital transformation. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, and volunteers as Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).

  • Unicorn Zone newsletter

    Is Company Purpose just the re-packaging of a “Vision”​?

    What is the purpose of having a company purpose? This is the second edition of a monthly newsletter by Lisa Carlin. The newsletter is called the Unicorn Zone, and it is about digital business transformation, culture and workplace technology.

    What’s the purpose of having a Company Purpose?

    Is company purpose a useless management fad?

    I’m sceptical of management fads and jargon, as so many “new” ideas and terminology are mostly re-packaged old ideas. Remember those Vision statements that have been around for decades? Is Company Purpose just the re-packaging of a “Vision”?

    The fact is, whether they are explicitly aware or not, people have a personal purpose, which is why we bother to get out of bed in the morning. If you aren’t sure about your own purpose, read my previous newsletter on the 9 steps to developing your personal purpose. Recent McKinsey research found that about 70 percent of people say they define their purpose through work (Naina Dhingra, McKinsey 2021). This means that more people will be drawn to your company if they identify with its purpose.

    Since Covid, we have seen the great resignation, the “Great Attrition”, skills shortage. With this comes the importance of inspiring our people, so that they love our company culture so much that don’t want to leave our organisation.

    So yes, your Purpose statement is a more contemporary term for a Vision statement. It also needs to be more powerful, more inspiring, and more meaningful in our current operating environment. They are then an important part of your commercial toolkit for hypergrowth.

    Once you have defined your purpose statement it will guide everything you do:

    …….Purpose will help you refine your strategy.

    ……Purpose aligns teams to pull in the same direction.

    …….Purpose strengthens culture.

    ……..Purpose energizes your people.

    ………Purpose inspires customers.

    Your purpose makes the world want you to win.

    If you’re developing your purpose statement, take a look at the purpose statements from companies in your industry. Here are some examples, mostly from workplace tech and HR companies. Spot the odd one out! Let me know what you think of these statements in the comments. Would they be meaningful to you if you worked in the business? Would they inspire you as a customer? Which one inspires you best?

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    I talked about purpose during my recent seminar at the Spark Festival. View the YouTube recording:

    Contact me if you want to hold a #designthinking workshop with your team to develop your purpose.

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    If you’re curious about the OD Hive, please click here and register for the waitlist. I will invite you to a trial session as soon as there is a spot available for you in your time zone. See my newly launched page, the OD Hive.

    We provide a forum for warm, inspiring conversations that generate useful ideas, and a deepening of skills, relationships and mutual appreciation. We give members the confidence that they are on top of the latest in their field, can cut through the noise out there, and can apply the insights in practice. Members are organizational development (OD) practitioners and transformation specialists who are interested in change, digital transformation and business innovation.

    I promise if you register here, you’ll get to meet some fabulous people.

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    See my newly launched page, the OD Hive

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    About Lisa Carlin

    As a scaleup mentor, Lisa works with ambitious digital leaders to turbo-charge their business, cultural and digital transformation. Those working with Lisa have an independent sounding board and expert advice so they have absolute confidence they WILL ACHIEVE THEIR GOAL. Lisa is Co-Founder and Director of FutureBuilders Group of organisational development specialists, Chair of the University of Cape Town Australia Trust, and on the Advisory Board of Rebelliuz, the Tiktok for jobs. Lisa runs an Organizational Development Community exploring leading edge ideas in digital transformation, culture change and business innovation. Her early career was with Accenture (South Africa) and McKinsey (USA).