Your Business Won't Transform Until Your People Do
Companies are racing to digitally transform their businesses to better meet the quickly changing demands of their customers. While companies don't lack enthusiasm, their ability to meet their digital ambitions often falls short. In fact, a recent survey from Couchbase showed that 9 out of 10 digital transformations didn't meet the needs of the business.
That's right, 90% end in failure.
While there are many problems that can lead to failure, one consistent theme is leadership's inability to foster the cultural elements needed to support a digital strategy. I see a lot of customers, and the one thing I know is that no strategy or technological implementation is so flawless, brilliant and groundbreaking that humans can’t totally wreck it if they have the wrong attitude or approach. By the same theory, leaders can come up with brilliant, groundbreaking strategies, but if the people aren't behind it all the way, it’ll be dead in the water.
The bottom line: Your business won’t digitally transform until your people do.
That's easier said than done because transforming an organization is like trying to move an iceberg. The mistake leaders make over and over is focusing their efforts on what they can see, the “above the waterline” activities. Once they devise a strategic vision, they focus on building and implementing systems, processes and structures to support that strategy.
That is the problem. Many leaders believe that the issues that lie below the waterline — the company culture, the unwritten values and rules and the assumptions people make about what they need to do to get work done — won't cause a problem if the strategy is good enough. I can promise you, no strategy is that good. If leaders don't engage with the troops, they'll find out the hard way.
The question then becomes how you change something like culture, as intangible and squishy as it sounds, to a culture that will support a transformation process.
To Succeed, Define And Foster New Cultural Characteristics
Every organization is culturally unique and needs to foster specific cultural capabilities to be successful. I've found that when it comes to culture, a refinement approach rather than a reinvention approach often gets the best results. So instead of boiling the cultural ocean, identify — and foster — those specific cultural characteristics that will accelerate your transformation.
First, consider what you need your people to do differently in order to support your strategy. These are five characteristics that organizations should embrace to create a digital culture today:
1. Customer-obsessed: Everything is about the customer, and all efforts and mindsets return to creating customer value.
2. Collaborative: People are empowered to execute via cross-functional, connected teams.
3. Responsive and agile: People create value by quickly learning and adapting to changes in processes, structure, strategy and technology.
4. Transparent and open: People feel safe to candidly share ideas, and leadership clearly communicates strategy and priorities.
5. Risk-taking and innovative: People understand that calculated risks — and learning from mistakes — fuel innovation.
Focus On Behaviors To Shift Culture
Instilling new cultural characteristics, like customer obsession, for example, requires a shift in values, mindsets and behaviors. Sound like a tall task?
We've all seen proclamatory emails and posts that announce a radical change in your company's culture, and we've all experienced the letdown that happens following those proclamations. Come Monday morning, everyone continues with their internally focused, status quo ways of working — because simply talking about new values doesn't work. Those values have to be fundamentals for a business to build and grow into a new chapter.
Smart leaders approach building new cultural characteristics differently by focusing on desired behaviors and rewarding the new behaviors appropriately. I like to call it “engage or perish.” When behavior shifts, mindsets and values follow, and you'll start to see results and traction with your chosen strategy.
For instance, if you want customer experience to improve, you need to focus on it to shift your employees' behaviors appropriately. Leaders need to model, acknowledge and recognize the behavior of asking how each decision being made impacts the customer experience in every meeting they attend and every conversation they have. If you want customer experience to be the center of every single organizational move, you have to go big and make customer experience a big deal.
As conversations happen, and acknowledgements of the correct responses are given, people across the organization quickly recognize that customer experience is now highly valued in the organization. People's mindsets then shift, and they realize that the best way to have a valued impact in the organization is to focus on the customer. With every decision they make, they begin to ask how it impacts the customer. The behavior spreads, and a new cultural norm of customer focus takes root.
Don't believe me? Find something you want changed in your organization, and follow the model above. I'm willing to bet you'll see results faster than you think.
