7 Starting Points to Transform your Organisation
By: Dr Michael Heng
Tags: Strategy, Innovation, Organizational Change, Change Management, Leadership

7 Starting Points to Transform your Organisation

Håkon Grimstad on Unsplash

The goal of organisational transformation is to develop the competencies and capabilities of a Business Excellence Organisation (BizXO) at the strategy, management and organization levels.

The competencies and capabilities of an organisation are the two dimensions of its transformational readiness. The readiness of an organisation aspiring to be transformed into a BizXO refers to the extent to which it has possessed the requisite BizX competencies and capabilities. The intervention starting point of the appropriate change approach depends on the extent of BizX competencies and capabilities in the organisation.

BizX competencies are elements of the collective organisational capability to which it is equipped with the skills, knowledge and experience concerning business excellence or quality knowledge, methods, tools and processes. This characteristic defines its ability to employ and apply these knowledge, methods, tools and processes in its value creation processes, leadership and operational management systems.

BizX capacity is the extent to which the organisation possesses the values, belief, confidence, commitment and motivation to adopt and adapt business excellence management as its modus operandi. This passion defines its willingness to behave in a distinctively exceptional manner in the marketplace as well as in its dealings with stakeholders like suppliers, customers, employees, community and the environment.

The BizX Capacillity of the organization constitutes its capacity and capability for outstanding business excellence performance in a sustainable manner.

The following illustration shows the typology of change intervention approaches appropriate to the different situations defined by the “maturity” of its competencies and capabilities. Its maturity defines the motivation and willingness of the organization for transformational change.

© Illustration by Author

There are four basic generic transformational change approaches; namely, facilitating, participative, coaching and directing.

At the “directing” approach, organisation members are told specifically and frequently what to do and how to do them using whichever tools or equipment. Their performance is evaluated frequently, and both positive and negative feedback are immediately communicated to them with respective to business performance results. Intensive education and training in business excellence concepts, tools and processes characterize this stage to drive the embryonic development of BizX competencies and capabilities. Close supervision is usually necessary in this approach.

At the “coaching” approach, organisation members are allowed some latitude to innovate and develop business excellence ideas or plans for implementation, but they do not yet have the “big” or holistic business operation picture and therefore would be unable to reshape or redevelop in a way to impact overall business. Their performance is evaluated frequently, and both positive and negative feedback are immediately communicated to them with respective to business performance results. Having acquired some degree of BizX competencies, they are emboldened by continuous reinforcement as to learning impact and continuous learning to know the next steps so that their confidence, commitment and motivation in the cause of excellence in customer and people experience could be further enhanced and sustained. Fairly close supervision remains necessary to drive BizX performance in this visionary direction.

At the “participative” approach, organisational members have reached adequate levels of competency as well as the confidence and commitment to desire more intimate involvement in the innovation of new ideas and plans, and also new ways to apply the tools and processes learnt. Performance feedback continues to be provided regularly. They are also able and ready to participate in decision-making, to suggest ideas and expand on them. In the process, they continue to grow and improve their competencies, and additional dosage of motivation to further enhance their confidence and commitment. Supervision is less frequent, but accessible and regular.

At the “delegating” approach, organisational members have become highly competent as well as highly committed and motivated. The BizX ideology has been adequately diffused throughout the organisation, and is becoming the new organisational culture. The organisation has also evolved into an agile and self-learning organisation. They only need to have an indication of what the customer expectations are and develop the appropriate responsive ideas and plans, often innovative ones instead of following past or legacy practices, to meet and exceed them. Little individual feedback is needed at this stage since their excellence performance at the enterprise level would make perfect sense to them within the holistic framework of a rewarding BizX experience for all its stakeholders.

As illustrated, coaching continues to drive the acquisition of BizX competencies until a high level of competency has been reach. It should be noted that BizX competencies are built through systematic human resource training, education and development, while BizX capabilities are learnt, inspired and enhanced by visionary leadership, participative management, culture creation and communication. Continuous sensemaking pervades the underlying cognitive pattern to create a completely new mental paradigm for cognition and evaluation in accordance with the evolution of the BizX ideology into the culture of the transformed organization.

The maturity approach is not prescriptive for BizXO transformation. The intervention level would depend on the contingency factors of (1) commitment to customers, (2) problem situation and (3) business environment before the appropriate approach or mix of approaches is deployed.

© Illustration by Author

At the management level intervention, coaching and directing are used to drive the building of BizX competencies through education and training programs in quality concepts, tools and processes. Competency in these would obtain superior results in terms of customers satisfaction, and such benefits would in turn facilitate the momentum of BizX values diffusion. Diffusion of BizX is faster with increasingly higher level of BizX ideology.

At the organisation level intervention, participating and directing are used to build BizX competencies through intensive education and training programs in excellence concepts, tools and processes, as well as to reinforce BizX concepts to further enhance the growing BizX capacillity. The participative approach empowers re-visiting the organisation’s basic purpose for existence and could lead to a re-direction, a re-creation and/or a re-alignment of organisational efforts and resources towards better customer and people experience results. This may also involve a re-formulation of the organisation’s purpose to anchor it on stakeholders instead of technology or products/services. A re-alignment of organizational mission with BizX goals emboldens faster diffusion of BizX values to develop stronger BizX capacillity.

At the strategy level intervention using the delegating approach, the BizX ideology has already been adequately diffused throughout the organisation, and as a result, BizX is effectively installed as the transformed organisational culture. The organisation has also developed into an agile self-learning organisation. With high BizX competencies and capabilities, organisational members are also highly competent as well as highly committed and motivated.

When the strategy level is reached, organisational transformation has succeeded to generate self-momentum, self-organising and sustainable growth. Such is the journey of effective transformational organizational change.