How an organisation manages its resources through leadership has considerable influence on the success of their business endeavours. A truly transformational organisation achieves a perfect synergy between its resources and leadership. The journey towards becoming such an organisation starts with an introspective analysis of these two aspects. The following article describes the 'resources and leadership' traits of a transformational business.

At the transformational level the business is vibrant and full of energy.  People understand and own their accountabilities and are empowered to make decisions and take actions which deliver the required results for the customer.  There is a high level of knowledge in the organisation and this is shared willingly to enable the whole team to deliver added value.  The dominant leadership style is ‘transformational’: they are inspirational and focus time and energy on creating the environment and culture within which people can perform. They place great emphasis on developing capability and consistently role model best practice. They encourage people to challenge and question the way work is done currently and why the organisation works as it does.  Business processes are structured to meet the demands of the extended enterprise yet can be challenged and modified readily if doing so provides a better result for the customer.  Such changes are either speedily incorporated into the business as best practice, or seen as an isolated process to deal with a specific situation – either way the changes are understood and accepted.  There are no real boundaries within the business and people work seamlessly across the whole value chain, engaging customers, and suppliers to deliver superlative performance.  The performance culture is challenging at every level and people are continually expected to enhance their performance and deliver sustainable and measured value.  People are comfortable with complexity and ambiguity and are able to navigate a route through according to the contingent needs of the market.  Leaders recognise that they do not know all the answers and continually ask questions to enhance their understanding of the market and society.  People understand and shape the market within which they operate and the business is seen as the datum point for people best practice.  Talent management is given high emphasis and future business leaders are developed with an innovative, people focused and highly inspirational capability to craft and implement strategy. The dominant form of commitment is ‘affective’; people give their effort and loyalty to the organisation because they believe in the values of the organisation and the value it delivers to customers and wider society.

There is an overwhelming and substantial consistency of behaviours and cultural alignment across the business.  Espoused theory does not differ from theory – in – practice.  The business is boundary-less with people collaborating to understand and deliver high value added contributions to their customers. People identify with the business enterprise not the specific team or technical area they work within.  The dominant leadership style is ‘transformational’; business leaders are inspirational and seamlessly connect across the business to provide focus and purposeful direction.  Leaders at all levels consistently encourage people to question why work is done the way it is. Teams focus on the future from a commercial and entrepreneurial perspective and have a track record of developing future-proof solutions.  Leaders and teams are able to work within ambiguity and complexity.  Talent management is high on the agenda with a strong focus on understanding and meeting the future business requirements. 

People in the business are highly effective at dealing with disruption and commit time and energy in understanding the broader operational and commercial context so that disruptions can be foreseen and proactively managed.  People within the business are empowered to deal with disruption with clear lines of authority to make decisions.  Leaders positively encourage development of capability to deal with disruption.  People are accountable for dealing with disruption and follow the principles of ‘fail fast – fail forwards’. The workforce at all levels are highly confident in their ability to cope with change and disruption. There is high self – efficacy at all levels.