Transformation Management

There’s an urgent need for companies to shift their focus from developing individuals to enabling networks and relationships between employees, and authentic transformation leaders know how important this is to orchestrate better business performance. In this episode, Jon Ingham, author of the book “The Social Organization” elaborates on some of the strategic, innovative approaches to people management and organisation effectiveness that leaders can consider.

These days, leaders face contradictory challenges. They could be under pressure to make incremental improvements, while at the same time invent radically new business models. This results in ongoing tensions between succeeding for today while transforming for tomorrow. Wendy Smith has spent considerable time exploring how adopting a both/and approach to these kinds of tensions enables individuals and organisations to achieve results that are more creative, generative, and sustainable.

Healthcare is something we all depend upon in the most personal and intimate of ways, and how this industry evolves as a result of digital transformation will impact many of us. Heather Hancock has 20 years of experience in this space and she believes that technology has three purposes of value in it. These are to improve the patient experience, improve population health and reduce the per capital cost of healthcare.

These days, large, successful organisations are experiencing flat growth, acquisition, and in some cases, bankruptcy. What they’ve done in the past to make bring them success no longer works as it did. And doing more of the same won't bring them to where they need to be to remain in business for the next 5, 10, 20 years. Australian transformation leader Heidi Beets explains how companies of the future are designed, and don't happen by accident.

The successful orchestration of business transformation requires a collaborative operating model between business, technology, and data teams. Void of the digital sugar coating and delusion of transformation that is leading so many established companies to an early grave. Isaac Sacolick - author of Amazon bestseller ‘Driving Digital’ - elaborates on why agile practices are at the heart of executing transformation and he shares examples of what he refers to as ‘bottoms-up transformation’.

The view of transformation and change can often be one-sided as it takes on the language of the originator and doesn't translate well to those who don't understand that language. This means that a breakdown in communication can happen very quickly. Andrew Ward elaborates on ‘The Layers of Change’, which is a way to model a change so we can all understand it, whether you're from a UX, CX, architectural or business discipline. 

Disruption is an opportunity for those with the right mindset but a threat to the rest. With recent advances in technology, the possibilities to innovate and disrupt are greater than ever, regardless of size. Daniel Burrus, author of the book ‘The Anticipatory Organization’ explains how he believes we can anticipate disruption before it happens, and turn it into opportunity and advantage.

An increasing number of leaders know that to accelerate digital transformation their organisations should learn to flex their empathic muscle, while at the same time encode empathy in Artificial Intelligence. Following the launch of his latest book “Heartificial Empathy” Award winning author Minter Dial elaborates on the role empathy plays in digital transformation, its importance for business executives, and how organisations can weave empathy into their fabric.

A continuous stream of well-established companies is in decline and going out of business because despite their past success, they’ve not been able to either defend or orchestrate disruptive transformation in a way that allows them to thrive in the new digital economy. In this episode, Charlene Li–author of five books and Founder and Senior Fellow at Altimeter–talks about her belief that more companies need to stop talking about disruption and start doing it. And she’ll share some ways to get started with that.

The threat of disruption from smaller, more digitally savvy firms has motivated big corporates to launch efforts to build disruptors of their own. A few have succeeded, while many are wondering how to convert new ideas into new revenue. Andy Binns - an Executive Fellow at the Center for the Future of Organization, at Drucker School of Management - explains that most firms over emphasize ideation at the expense of two other innovation disciplines. He also elaborates on what they can do to correct that and accelerate the odds of success.

There’s never been a need for organisational change management and a focus on the people side of change more than today, but a lot of organisations still struggle with it. Karen Ferris is the author of several books about Organisational Change Management and she helps organisations thrive in the face of volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous change, providing new tools and approaches for a new age in organisational change management. Effectively, breaking the mould!

Most organisations today don't need to be convinced of the need to transform, but they do struggle with how to do it. The harsh reality is that despite the best of intentions, and billions spent in pursuit of successful transformation outcomes, the vast majority of programmes fizzle out, falling well short of what was hoped for. In this episode, Professor Michael Wade – author of the books ‘Orchestrating Transformation’ and ‘Digital Vortex’ unpacks the transformation challenge with a particular focus on responding to digital opportunities and threats.

A lot of organisations embark on transformation without understanding why, along with the market dynamics they need to address which their current structures and processes can’t contend with. Haydn Shaughnessy, author of the book Shift - A Leader's Guide to the Platform Economy - explains how new market dynamics - ecosystems - force us to find new ways to work.

Changing business outcomes requires people processes to change. The problem for many organisations is that they think new technology will do that, which is one reason why change and transformation initiatives have been failing for decades. Max Blumberg - a visiting Professor at Leeds University Business School - explains why you’d better get input from people on what changes would be acceptable and what changes would be best. Otherwise no one will use the changed process, for which you might have paid a consulting firm a small fortune to conjure up!

Digital transformation in large and complex organisations continues to challenge even the best traditional managers and leaders – often because they still rely on old ways of thinking and working. Roland Deiser is a Drucker Senior Fellow and, in this episode, he touches on three distinct arenas in which digital transformation happens, along with the ambidexterity challenge and agile architectures. Roland also explains why boundaries and boundary management are so important for leaders who have aspirations to orchestrate successful transformation.

Most organisations fail at innovation because they fail at change. They aspire to innovate but often struggle and continue to lose pace along the fast-moving business landscape. Two-time author Braden Kelley is a Director of Innovation and Human-Centered Problem-Solving at Oracle and he shares some ways organisations can get better at innovation, change, and transformation.

Throughout history, great leaders have worked hard to create change, but not all have succeeded. In recent years–often labelled as digital transformation–that aspiration has spread like wildfire across the corporate landscape. Greg Satell has explored the parallels between revolutionaries, corporate turnaround artists, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and social visionaries, to discover that by harnessing the principles of successful social and political movements, business leaders can be more successful at driving digital transformation forward.

Demand for skills and talent looks different now to how it did five years ago, particularly in relation to digital transformation. This means that the challenges and opportunities HR professionals are faced with have shifted. Talent acquisition strategist Matt Alder shares his insights on the fascinating topic of recruiting innovation and the new talent acquisition strategies organisations need to consider.

Agility has become an aspiration for many organisations, but it's not always easy to achieve. Peter Abraham and Neil Perkin wrote a book 'Building the Agile Business through Digital Transformation' in which they describe how the components of Velocity, Focus and Flexibility combine to form the basis of a formula that can help leaders achieve business agility - and move quickly to a position of advantage.

At the intersection of innovation and digital strategy, Doyle Buehler talks about connecting business leaders and their prime business to their entire digital ecosystem, to help them build a remarkable, profitable digital business, and future-proof and leverage their digital assets with their unique audience.

Rod Collins is a Director of Innovation and a leading expert on the future of business. He is also the author of the book 'Wiki Management'. In this episode, Rod talks to Rob Llewellyn about a revolutionary new model for a rapidly changing and collaborative world, and highlights some of the innovative tools and practices used by a new breed of business leaders.

Lee Bryant talks around his belief that the greatest priority for digital leaders today is to redesign their organisational operating systems to create connected companies.

While enterprise cybersecurity spend is at an all time high, the plethora of high-profile data breaches continues, with British Airways recently in the spotlight. In this episode of Leading Digital Transformation, I'm joined by Chris Hodson - author of the book "Cyber Risk Management" to explore the modern world of enterprise cybersecurity.

Rob Llewellyn interviews Frank Mattes, who is a leading expert on scaling up corporate startups. Frank has written the first book on this subject, together with his clients which are Fortune 10 to Fortune 200 companies, and widely seen as innovation leaders.

Leading Digital Transformation is a weekly podcast series produced by Rob Llewellyn and The Digital Transformation People. Rob interviews experienced practitioners, authors and thought leaders whose stories and experiences provide valuable insights for digital transformation success.

Leading Digital Transformation is a weekly podcast series produced by Rob Llewellyn and The Digital Transformation People. Rob interviews experienced practitioners, authors and thought leaders whose stories and experiences provide valuable insights for digital transformation success.

New business models are at the heart of new disruptive companies we sit up and take notice of. And antiquated business models are at the heart of other companies that are on the road to closure.

I'm going to provide a brief overview of a book that arrived with me in May 2019. It's called The Technology Fallacy - How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation by Gerald Kane, Anh Phillips, Jonathan Copulsky and Garth Andrus.

The irony is that while all digital transformation professionals expect the organisations they work with to take advantage of digital to thrive in the digital economy, many of these transformation professionals haven't yet recognised that they need to do exactly the same themselves.

The most successful transformation professionals don't wait for their managers to help them. They own their personal career transformation in the way a CEO owns their company's transformation.

While there are many roles that are important to transformation, this episode looks at eight of those key roles, each of which injects significant value into the undertaking, which in turn increases the odds of transformation success.

To be a transformational company like Ocado, the six guiding principles of THRIVE need to be accommodated. And these principles provide a way that leaders can navigate both the strategic and execution components of transformation.

Some of the most successful start-ups look crazy from the outside. Their cultures are often complete opposites to what we see in an established corporate environment. It's extremely important to consider how two polar opposite cultures could work well together.

As people have been sucked into fake news, now some companies have fallen prey to fake transformation, as they've become lost in the hype around the word digital and the meaning of business transformation.

I want more people who focus on digital to recognise that you don't need another company to take advantage of the digital economy. Those days are well and truly gone.

It’s important that transformation leaders envisage a new future, ensure the organisation is equipped to build that future, and then orchestrate the entire effort.

The Business Transformation Management Methodology (BTM²) is a four-phase holistic and integrated business transformation management methodology.

Instead of focusing on legitimate transformation and re-thinking their business, too many and caught up tinkering in the sweet and colourful world of digital sugar coating.

An operating model translates strategic intent into operational capabilities. It serves as the foundation for execution and provides a clear guide for enterprise leadership teams, line managers and operational teams.

Programme management involves the coordinated organisation, direction and implementation of projects and transformation activities to deliver outcomes and benefits relating to an organisation’s strategic objectives.

Organisations need to be able to talk about digital transformation using one common language and the right kind of conversation is essential. But that's easier said than done when data, technical, business and other teams are all talking their own lingo.

Whether the aim is to respond to disruption, create strong and sustainable value, or fulfill your organisation’s purpose, transformation is now an essential habit.

Before a company can hope to reshape its culture, the leadership mindset must first make its own shift. Because if leadership mindsets aren't properly aligned, reshaping a company’s culture is going to be very difficult - or even impossible.

The purest and most formidable type of transformation is business model transformation. Look around and you'll notice that most companies that have disrupted markets did so by introducing new business models. Not by digital sugar coating.

Gone are the days when you could steer a business on gut feel and hunches. Because data is the new driver of the best firms, and authentic digital economy leaders know this. Which is why competitive intelligence is vital for competitive strategy.

The rise of conversational artificial intelligence is set to drive one of the most significant platform paradigm shifts of the decade. We're on the cusp of an explosion in its adoption by transformational companies.

The Digital Capability Framework is a strategic management tool set designed to help companies innovate and orchestrate digitally enabled business transformation. It helps assess the current situation and identify new opportunities.  

In this episode we look at how you can start, structure and scale digital transformation based on the advice and guidance of Mendix – the low-code software platform company which Siemens acquired for a cool $730M.

In this episode we look at three reasons why an increasing number of professionals are taking steps to become certified in digital transformation, and what that can mean for them and the companies they work with.

Rob Llewellyn addresses the importance of value management in transformation. He takes a look at how Intel once managed their value and he talks through the creation of a transformation business case. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming.

Rob Llewellyn considers why innovation is a prerequisite for legitimate transformation and how large organisations can succeed at it. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss what's coming.