mind your business: Are You Committing the Seven Deadly Sins of Business Transformation?
Every day millions of Americans arrive at work filled with dread and resignation. Since the recession hit (or perhaps before), they've been overloaded, overstressed and overwhelmed. The typical workday is a marathon of rushing from one task to another. There are few breaks between these bursts of effort, and even fewer words of thanks from frantic managers and co-workers. By the time employees drag themselves to the finish line at 5:00 (or 6 or 7 or even later), they're completely drained and wondering how they'll do it all again tomorrow.
The problem is not that employees don't want to work hard. It's that they have nothing to believe in. When people are motivated by a cause, they'll work without stopping and without loss of energy. Unfortunately, too many companies aren't animated by a cause at all—and their employees just live for Friday.
If your company isn't giving employees a cause—if the organization exists solely to create revenue, in other words—they won't be partners. They'll be foot soldiers. And when you fail to meet your employees' needs, they'll fail to meet yours.
Giving employees a "power source" is crucial. That cause, which bears little resemblance to the corporate-speak mumbo-jumbo in the typical mission statement, should spark enthusiasm in consumers and dedication in employees. It should be an inspiring ideology that is intrinsically linked to the company's value proposition and competency.
Think Apple. Think Disney. Think Google.
It's this cause that powers strategic business transformation. And because our world is changing so rapidly, businesses have to continually transform themselves in order to keep up or lead markets.
It used to be that markets reformed every several years with new ideas about customers' interests. But now markets and customers are transforming because they encounter more unknowns and unexpected changes and notice only after they have happened. Companies that want to survive and grow must determine what their customers value and what they'll pay for repeatedly.
If you're ready to transform into an innovative, cause-driven, employee- and customer-inspiring organization, be wary of the seven sins waiting to trip you up:
Sin #1: Ignoring the new principles of business transformation. If you think of making money without thinking of the greater contributions to society, you will not attract the right people or make money in the long run. This is because people themselves are changing. The 21st century employee population seeks to find meaning at work. This population knows insincerity from truth, so leaders cannot "fake it." They have to be able to feel the plights of customers and people in our society.
Sin #2: Driving without a cause. Once organizations know why they exist, to whom they want transformation to happen and why, they gain the audacity and authenticity to drive strategic business transformation. They have a cause.
Don't confuse "cause" with "mission." A cause is a lasting theme, an architecture that supports the transformation of the greater environment. A mission is a bounded, purposeful action. Missions impose the will of managers on employees—causes are grounded in the latent, unexpressed will of the overall organization.
Discovering a cause greater than any one employee and greater than the whole propels organizations beyond the speed of lofty, purposeless or narcissistic goals.
Sin #3: Missing market momentum. Traditionally, products seek customers, customers form markets and markets move with momentum. In transformation principle, momentum is identified before anything else, customers and prospects respond to momentum, and products then respond to serve these prospects to move with purposeful intent. Momentum is a unique way to view the market. Companies that don't understand it will miss the drivers that indicate where momentum is headed.
Being able to predict these changes of mind and heart before customers do allows companies to get in first with products destined to be hot sellers. A telling experience occurred recently when I was watching a sunset. Thinking of taking a photograph of the sunset, a person nearby stated, "I wish I had my phone." In the past, customers would have rejected the idea of a phone that also served as a camera. This is transformation at its best.
Sin #4: Ignoring the two orders of value. If you assume that rational and emotional value propositions are all you need to consider, think again. There's also a "higher order" value proposition: the symbolic. Customers symbolically attach to the product or the company that sells the product. They come to identify with the purpose of the product and what it represents. Organizations that are able to turn market momentum into value for the customers will gain market share and be very successful.
Trader Joe's has convinced its customers to bring bags that they bought from the store to collect their own groceries. It has successfully tapped into green market momentum.
The customers of Trader Joe's are participating at both levels in acting to save paper or plastic and to recycle bags every time they visit. This helps Trader Joe's save on the cost of bags, but the consumers do not see it that way. Consumers see themselves aligning with the grand vision of a world without excess, and they believe that Trader Joe's is conforming authentically to their worldview.
Sin #5: Overlooking transformational servant leadership. If you aren't practicing true servant leadership, you won't be able to attract the talent it takes to compete in the transforming marketplace.
What is transformational servant leadership? While the concept is maddeningly difficult to pin down, it contains several basic truths:
- It's based on service rather than hierarchical controls. Leaders believe in something greater than themselves.
- There are no sharply defined leaders and followers. Leaders lead when it's appropriate and follow when it's appropriate.
- Organizations are populated by project-centered self-leaders who partner with one another when needed.
- Leaders strive for dramatic inner change, re-engineering, and self-identification with corporate goals. In other words, it is about personal change creating group change that triggers corporate change—and not the other way around.
Sin #6: Mistaking capability for strategic competency. Customers appreciate capability. Competence is the combination of your capabilities and customer perception of your skills. You can always gain a new capability. Stopping there instead of understanding your competencies and using them to formulate your strategy—that is the sin. It keeps you from being able to create the value that people want and are willing to pay for.
Being capable in one aspect or area is not sufficient—unless, that is, it is non-replicable. Winning by using competencies, involves:
- Creating brand awareness among your customers and prospects who feel an alignment between the organization and their values.
- Defining communicable cause/purpose that is about a transformed customer and experience with that customer.
- Combining key ingredients that reflect a valued recipe that creates a strong, enduring and authentic "flavor" to the customer who keeps returning because of it.
- Creating a structure that drives social networked feedback interactively with an approachable organizational structure.
Sin #7: Expecting flawless execution without a performance platform. There are two categories of performance management corporations must master: human (inspiring, organizing work, people performance and incentives) and corporate (analytics, systems and methods around the financial, operational, customer and strategic outcomes and outputs). To successfully execute the second category, a company must have capabilities in four areas: monitoring, measurement, management and direction setting. If that isn't complicated enough, companies must be able to strike a careful balance between surviving today and investing in tomorrow.
I call this balancing act "building the plane while flying the plane." You have only one plane, but if you just kept flying it you would eventually encounter a storm that you would not survive. If you stopped and built the plane of the future, you would lose the battles you currently face. So you must build a new plane while flying the plane into battle.
This is all deeply complicated stuff, to be sure. But it is possible for corporate leaders to transform (themselves, their organizations and their customers), to make money, to keep their collective soul and to give the people who do the work a real reason to come to work.
I challenge today's businesses to choose to transform. Develop a strategy that reflects your beliefs and let others, both employees and customers, choose to take up your cause. Transformation is never easy, but it is almost always worth the blood, sweat and tears that come with it.
By Mohan Nair
Mohan Nair is the author of the new book Strategic Business Transformation: The 7 Deadly Sins to Overcome (Wiley, 2011, ISBN: 978-0-470-63222-2, $49.95). He also is an innovation officer of a health plan in the Northwest/Mountain region.
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- Mohan Nair