Transformation, while challenging and often disruptive, is essential for businesses to stay aligned with evolving customer needs and market dynamics. Absent organizational transformation, companies risk becoming “stuck”; losing touch with their customers and not getting the desired returns on investment. This remains true in most industries I’ve had the opportunity to work in.

Before diving further into some of my learnings I first want to align on my working definition for transformational. A transformational business initiative is a strategic and comprehensive effort that significantly alters a company’s direction, operations, structure, or culture. This is done to enhance performance, competitiveness, and sustainability.

In the context of my work this has usually stemmed from a security finding that required a significant change in the operations and culture of the business. In pursuit of this sort of change, I’ve been witness to major restructuring within a business. While the specific challenges related to this work are often unique to the business there are some common themes that I thought worth exploring:

• Patience
• Follow Through
• Communication Strategy
• Refinement Strategy

Patience and Perseverance

Organizational transformation takes significant time. The need to be patient in terms of results cannot be overstated. That’s not to say that results can be ignored but it’s important to make sure the expected results are realistic. It’s a cliche but there is truth to it. Large organization are like a cruise ship. You turn the wheel and then over a longer period the large ship maneuvers into the desired direction. This is admittedly a tough pill to swallow for any organization. It’s a gamble that takes significant time and investment with no guarantee it will pay off in the end. The challenge is that organizational transformation is required to stay relevant with today’s fast evolving technology. So if we accept that not pursuing transformation isn’t an option and we accept that organizational transformation takes time that leads us to follow through. Transformation initiatives will have their own lifecycle with their own valleys. It’s important to recognize that these initiatives are required for the organization to survive. Rather than abandon the initiative we need to find our way through. Which is what ultimately leads us to a communication and refinement strategy.

Communication Strategy

Strong leadership is required to identify the need for transformation but strong leadership alone cannot lead to the success of a transformational initiative. This is where a strong communication strategy comes into play. In order for a transformational initiative to be successful you need buy-in from the entire company. This means having a clear plan that describes the what, why, and how of what the organization will be going through. Change isn’t easy for everyone and the unfortunate reality is there will be individuals who opt out of the vision for the future. Making sure the drivers behind the change are clear help individuals get on board with the added work they may have to do or the new ways of working that they may need to adopt.

Strategy Refinement

Having a strategy refinement approach is also critical. There will be things that are learned along the way that will inevitably impact the strategy and approach of the transformation. It’s important to accept this reality up front and establish a clear plan for refining the defined strategy at regular intervals. It’s also important to recognize that legacy processes and procedures were established to support the need of the business at a given time. Decisions of the past may not make sense in today’s environment, and in many cases may lead to one scratching their head, but they were established to support the business in a time of need. In order for transformations to be successful it’s important not to over index on the decisions of the past and instead to focus on what the right decision is, for the business, in the present moment.