This article from blackswan CEO Maurice Duffy addresses the topic of business transformation. This is the first of 5 articles in a series on business transformation being released over the coming weeks.

Understanding how to change business faster and smarter than your competitors.

Authors Note.

I start from the presumption that corporations are whole living things and that you cannot administer an individual therapy or silo diagnosis without considering the consequential impact on the entire organisation.

I have seen and been victim of PowerPoint re-engineering, industrial re-engineering, total quality management, systems integration, Empowerment and domain bias. I understand there is no silver bullet, no miracle cure, no single therapy that will create a healthy organisation that is transformational in its DNA.

That is why I start by positioning my thinking on trying to capture the entire organisation, not any part, and why the approach I suggest is holistic. I often describe my question as this. How do you manage the macro, whilst expertly changing the micro, or in my real language, how do I maintain a vehicle speeding forward in the right direction whilst removing and improving the parts. This series of five articles will hopefully capture my views.

Machiavelli's The Princewritten in 1513:

“It must be rememberedthat there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.”

Organisations seeking to adapt during turbulent times — like now — cannot force change through purely technical approaches such as restructuring and reengineering. They need a new kind of capability to reframe dilemmas, reinterpret options, and reform operations — and to do so continuously. But organisational change is not for the faint of heart or the quick-change artist.

Serious change demands that serious people apply a relentless application of energy to the transformation journey.

Are you up for it?  In most cases the answer is a resounding “no”. Yes, we might talk a good story but when the fanfare starts and the sail is raised usually the ship is weighed down with so many anchors it is unlikely to leave port. The dragging anchors are those who have a vested interest in preserving the old system, those who are frightened by the prospect of real change supported by a bunch of fence-sitters who like to play politics or apply silo thinking, such that their negative energy totally dilutes the whole transformation agenda. The challenge we all have is that when companies reorganise, few achieve all the benefits they so desperately need. There is now a fear and inertia inbred within leadership that translates into incremental strategy and change tinkering rather than true transformation and innovation. The starting point of the transformation journey is usually sound, where the purpose of the redesign by the business is to unlock the latent value. What we find however, in many cases, is that there is typically a great deal of attention to the form of the new design but, in our experience, much less to actually making the hard decisions and implementing the robust execution with the right sense of engagement which will make the plan actually happen.

Why Transform? 

We all know and accept that today's business world is highly competitive. The World of Business is in the midst of a perfect storm, according to leading researchers—and the forecast could be grim—unless organisations invest in the appropriate strategies that will change their perilous course. The Global Perfect storm looks at the convergence of five powerful socioeconomic forces that are changing the world of business:

1) Seismic economic changes;

2) Substantial disparities in skill Levels;

3) Sweeping demographic shifts;

4) Speed of change;

5) Social need to align the three Ps: People Planet Profit. (See Figure 1).