Leading with Grace

Insights Across the Strategic Transformation Cycle

How confident are you in your company’s ability to successfully transform?

McKinsey, Harvard, and BCG all agree that c.70% of transformation programmes fail, and while I’ve been there, I’ve also experienced hugely successful programmes. So I know it's possible, and I know that together we can greatly improve our odds.

In this newsletter series, I’ll share my insights on how to do this, alongside those all-important pitfalls to be aware of. I’d love to hear your experiences of what’s made the difference for you, whether you’re in a large Corporate or run your own business. Together, let’s boost our collective odds of success to well over 50%.

Because, let’s face it, transformation programmes are essential for businesses to stay competitive, adapt to market changes, drive growth and efficiency and thrive in rapidly evolving markets. We all know the big stories, like Netflix transforming from a DVD rental by mail to streaming, but I believe all companies, regardless of size, can achieve remarkable outcomes.

The Strategic Transformation Cycle

Over the coming weeks, I’ll take each element of the strategic transformation cycle in turn, sharing the tried and tested approaches I trust.

We start with Business Goals with the big questions about why your company exists (your mission) and what you want to achieve (your vision). These are set by the board, parent company or senior leadership team, and to warrant a transformation programme should be clear and ambitious, defining the long-term objectives and overall direction.

Then we’re onto Strategy and how to achieve the vision, including comprehensive plans with competitive strategies and detailed growth opportunities.

Change Management is a bit of an outlier; I’ve placed it after strategy for this transformation cycle, but it’s crucial at every stage. I would argue it’s the most important thing (yes, thinking of Drucker and culture does indeed eat strategy for breakfast).

We then get more granular as we move through Planning, where you set the programme up for success by allocating resources and investments based on strategic priorities, on to Implementation and getting it done through to Continuous Improvement and optimising embedded products and processes.

I’ve placed Coaching, Leading & Facilitating at the core as these are central in enabling your teams to achieve success, and of course, right at the centre, the focus throughout is on your Customer.

What I'm Reading

Richard Rumelt’s classic has clear examples and pragmatic suggestions. As you’d expect, he believes that good strategy is based on a clear diagnosis of challenges, a guiding policy to address them, and coherent implementation actions. In contrast, bad strategy has vague goals, ignores real problems, and confuses ambition with actionable plans

This is more current and is aimed squarely at corporate leaders looking to drive innovation in established companies. It’s extremely practical and I enjoyed the real-world case studies that show best practices and pitfalls. I recently attended a call run by Andrew Binns who is a Programme Director for the Strategic Innovation course at Henley Business School. I haven’t done this (I did Cambridge Judge Strategic Thinking for the CxO earlier in the year to ensure my thinking’s up to date) but I’d recommend looking into it if you’re interested, he was impressive, as was his co-director Narendra Laljani.

There will likely always be an HBR article; it’s essential reading... “In PwC’s Global CEO Survey, 45% of CEOs said they do not believe their companies would survive more than a decade if they remain on their current path”. So what should you do?

Whether you’re involved in large-scale programmes, wearing many hats in a start-up, leading business-unit initiatives or are running your own small business I’d love to hear from you over the coming weeks (months? years?) I have a lot of thoughts!

We all want to get things done, and to know we’re working on the right things, so let’s help each other to do that.

Next time we’ll explore Business Goals setting, and ensuring your vision and mission are built on market trends yet adaptable enough to respond to volatility. That you’re expending into adjacent industries and markets, or attracting new customers if that’s the right approach for you. Maybe you’re currently swimming in a red ocean and it’s time to find a blue one?

Grace