What If, HOLY SHIT, You Focused On People Over Money?

A handy dandy guide to business transformation (and maybe people too).

Business transformation is a topic that’s been top of mind for some execs in the last few years. Part of this comes from concerns around disruption, and part comes from a change management approach showing you can make more money if you’re “agile” or “adaptable.” Problem is: the shift to “agile” is a legitimate business transformation for a lot of companies. Organizations mostly have operated on command-and-control, rank-and-yank, products-and-processes, hierarchy-drives-all for about two generations now. Maybe Silicon Valley and some tech companies are shifting that, but “that’s not our business model,” some steel executive will bellow. That’s incorrect. It’s now everyone’s business model. There are dozens of buzzwords for the era we’re living in — Sharing Economy, Knowledge Economy, On-Demand Economy, Third Industrial Revolution, etc. — but in reality, a lot of it comes back to “it’s time to think about people and how we organize them.”

Here’s the full dirty little secret arc:

• Companies, and their executives, are scared of being “disrupted” or losing market share.

• As a result, they might consider some type of business transformation.

• In reality, what they’ll probably do is kick that to HR, where no ROI will be seen for 3,000 miles.

• All the while, no one will realize that companies who get “disrupted” were just slower, more plodding companies.

• You know, like companies with 9–14 layers between the CEO and the customer.

So these bullet points above are somewhat of a mess. Here’s the second tier of this being a mess. Most executives at midsize to large companies totally miss the idea of what “profits” are. They think profits and share prices are the goal of organizational action. No. Profits are the result of organizational action. This sounds like semantics, but it’s really important.

It all comes back to this lesson: business transformation isn’t about money. It’s about people.

Business transformation: Some of the challenges

I’d argue the main challenge is described above. Most orgs are set up totally around money, financials, quarters, etc. Executives want to look at spreadsheets and make decisions “off their gut.” This doesn’t so much work in the modern era. First off, there’s a lot of data around. Maybe look at that? OK. Second off, business transformation isn’t a “set it and forget it” play. That’s how a lot of leaders (“leaders”) approach it. You see what I said above — they kick it to HR because HR is supposed to “own” change or whatever. 11 months later, nothing has really happened. They hire some consultants for an arm and a leg. That doesn’t go anywhere either, ultimately.

At this point, it’s 20 months later. The company has spent tons of money on their “business transformation” and guess what? Everyone in every silo is doing the exact same shit they were doing 21 months prior. That’s, ahem, not business transformation. It’s running in circles. And yet, companies do this often.

Business transformation and the power of “relentless development”